The Wyoming Attorney General’s office is asking a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit against several former and current officials at the women’s prison in Lusk for their role in hiring and employing a guard who was later convicted of sexually assaulting an inmate in 2023.
The state contends that the lawsuit does not make a plausible claim and was filed outside the statute of limitations. The motion to dismiss, filed Saturday, also argues that Wyoming’s U.S. District Court does not have jurisdiction in the case.
“Consequently, the State Defendants should be dismissed from this action,” the motion states.
Since 2020, three former prison guards at the Wyoming Women’s Center have been convicted of sexually assaulting female inmates. One of those women, Chasity Jacobs, filed a federal lawsuit in August that argued the sexual abuse violated her constitutional rights.
The lawsuit also makes a claim under the Wyoming Governmental Claims Act for what the plaintiff described as negligence by the prison’s Warden Timothy Lang and Associate Warden Robert Harty.
“The pervasive problem of sexual assault by WWC correctional officers was well known to prison administrators including, specifically, Defendants Lang and Hardy,” the lawsuit argues. “Despite this, Defendant Lang, and other supervisory personnel failed to implement safeguards or address the systemic breakdowns in hiring, training, reporting, or accountability that enabled repeated sexual abuse.”
Before he was hired to work at the women’s prison in 2019, Joseph Gaul was fired from at least two public-sector jobs in Nebraska due to misconduct toward women, according to the lawsuit.
In 2023, he pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault against the plaintiff. He was later sentenced to two to five years in prison and is eligible for parole in October, according to the Wyoming Department of Corrections.
In a Sept. 30 response to the complaint, Gaul, 46, wrote that he had not yet secured an attorney for the case. The Wyoming Attorney General is representing Warden Lang and Associate Warden Harty.
Motion to dismiss
In its motion, the Wyoming Attorney General’s office claims that the U.S. Constitution’s 11th Amendment — which prohibits federal courts from hearing lawsuits against a state filed by citizens of another state or a foreign country — provides the state with immunity in this instance.
More specifically, it bars federal court jurisdiction over a state agency, in this case the women’s prison, for both money damages and injunctive relief, the state argues.
In the lawsuit, Jacobs makes claims under a federal statute known as Section 1983, which allows individuals to sue state and local government officials for depriving them of their constitutional or federal rights while acting “under color of state law.”
The prison warden and deputy warden, however, “are not ‘persons’ subject” to Section 1983, the attorney general’s motion argues.
Furthermore, the state alleges, the lawsuit does not establish that Lang or Harty acted in a deliberate, intentional way to violate the plaintiff’s legal rights. In other words, it is not enough that either Lang or Harty acted in a supervisory role when Gaul violated the plaintiff’s constitutional rights.
“Jacobs manages to refer to a specific act… the hiring of Gaul… but she does not allege that the State Defendants actually did the hiring,” the motion states.
“Jacobs also does not allege that the State Defendants knew anything about Gaul’s alleged history, and thus she does not begin to allege they had a culpable state of mind (deliberate indifference).”
The state also accuses the plaintiff of filing a Wyoming Governmental Claims Act claim outside the two years allowed under the statute of limitations.
“The latest sexual assault alleged by Jacobs in this case occurred on July 24, 2023,” the motion states. “Jacobs had until July 24, 2025 to file a notice of claim under the WGCA.”
And because Lang and Harty are state employees, “Jacobs was required to file the notice of claim with ‘the general services division of the department of administration and information,” the state’s motion claims.
When the lawsuit was filed in August, attorneys for Jacobs included an exhibit of a notice of claim to the Wyoming Department of Corrections, the Wyoming Attorney General, Lang and Harty. It is dated July 21, 2025.
Interesting article about Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz and his office’s decision in this case. Formerly a Wyoming Supreme Court Justice from 2015 to 2024 and then appointed by Governor Gordon as the Wyoming AG.