U.S. Supreme Court Won't Hear Nurses' Case Against Former Suffolk DA

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case brought by 10 nurses and their attorney against former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota and then-assistant, Leonard Lato.

Spota prosecuted 10 Filipino nurses and their attorney in 2007 after the nurses all resigned from a Smithtown nursing facility on the same day in 2006. The nurses and their lawyer, Felix Vinluan, sought to challenge Spota and Lato's rights to absolute immunity after their lawsuit was blocked in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nonprofit Institute for Justice announced. The organization is a public interest law firm dedicated to ending "widespread abuses of government power and secure the constitutional rights that allow all Americans to pursue their dreams."

"For more than a decade our clients have been denied justice, and [the] decision not to hear their case is just the latest example of that," said institute attorney Ben Field, who represented the nurses and Vinluan in the Supreme Court appeal. "The immunities granted to these corrupt former prosecutors have slammed the door shut on any chance of holding them accountable."

The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in the case against Spota, documents show.

In 2006, the nurses were recruited from the Philippines to work at Avalon Gardens in Smithtown, a nursing home run by a company called Sentosa, the institute said. When they arrived in the United States, they lived in substandard housing, worked in harsh conditions at facilities that didn't match what their contracts promised, and were given fewer benefits than what they were told they would get, the law firm wrote.

The nurses reached out to the Philippine consulate and were put in touch with Vinluan, who advised them they could quit because Sentosa breached its contract with the nurses, so long as they made sure their shifts were covered — which they did, the nonprofit said.

Sentosa reported the nurses to the state's nurse-licensing agency, state court and Suffolk police, which all found the nurses did nothing wrong, the institute said.

"Undeterred by the first three failures, Sentosa reached out to then-Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota and his assistant Leonard Lato," the institute wrote. "The duo knew the nurses and Felix did nothing wrong, but still secured a 'patient endangerment' indictment against the nurses and charged Felix for providing them with legal advice."

Spota charged Vinluan and the nurses with conspiracy, child endangerment and endangering the welfare of a physically disabled person, Newsday reported.

In 2009, an appeals court ordered the prosecution stopped, as the prosecution violated Vinluan's First Amendment rights to provide good-faith legal advice and the nurse’s Thirteenth Amendment rights not to be subjected to criminal penalties that would treat them as indentured servants, the institute said. A lawsuit from Vinluan and the nurses to vindicate their rights failed, as Spota and Lato were found to have prosecutorial absolute immunity, according to the IJ.

"The nurses and I should have never been prosecuted in the first place, and every time we’ve tried to get justice we’ve been denied," Vinluan said in a news release. "It’s upsetting to not be able to hold the people who violated our rights accountable."

Scott Bullock, IJ president and chief counsel, called Monday's decision "unfortunate," as the IJ is "disappointed" to not be given the chance to vindicate their clients' rights.

"We stand committed to continue fighting back against the immunities that shield government officials from accountability when they violate people’s constitutional rights," Bullock said.

Spota and his aide, Chris McPartland, were sentenced to 5 years in prison in 2021 after they were found guilty of obstruction by a jury in 2019 for covering up an incident during which a man was beaten after he stole a duffel bag from a former police chief filled with sex toys and pornography.