Erma Wilson was convicted of a drug offense in Midland County, Texas nearly two decades ago. The charges were minor—she never served any time in jail—but the conviction derailed her dream of becoming a nurse. Years after her conviction, Ms. Wilson discovered that the prosecutor was moonlighting as a law clerk for the judge presiding over her case. Ms. Wilson filed a lawsuit under § 1983 for this blatant violation of due process but was denied relief based on the Fifth Circuit’s misreading of Heck v. Humphrey.

The notion that the law affords a remedy to those whose rights have been violated is as old as our legal system. But to plaintiffs with serious constitutional injuries who find the courthouse door slammed in their face based on a court’s misreading of Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), Chief Justice Marshall’s timeless admonition rings hollow. The sad irony is that, far from disabling the federal judiciary from remedying the manifest wrongs suffered by Petitioner Erma Wilson, Congress has provided a remedy for exactly that type of injury, in the form of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. But the Fifth Circuit along with four others have misread Heck, transforming dicta from one of its footnotes into a sweeping rule of law that renders § 1983 a dead letter for many victims of outrageous government misconduct, like Ms. Wilson.

Respondents’ actions here—whether viewed as a concerted effort to violate Ms. Wilson’s due-process rights or simply inexcusable and gross indifference to those rights—are alarmingly similar to the structural denials of justice that motivated the passage of § 1983. The Cato Institute has filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to grant Ms. Wilson’s petition and disavow incorrect readings of Heck to avoid grafting a court-made limitation onto the broad remedial scheme of § 1983.