By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
Veteran corrections officer Claudia Cass, who was fired after she called attention to dangerously low staffing inside the men’s prison in Concord, got her case to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Cass filed an appeal challenging her firing and the subsequent Personnel Appeals Board ruling that sided with the Department of Corrections. Cass maintains she was fired for not following a hypothetical order after she raised concerns about staffing levels inside the prison.
“It should not be the policy of the State of New Hampshire that corrections officers must blindly follow orders regardless the legality, morality, or lack of safety it entails. Corrections officers have the right and responsibility to question orders and should not be terminated for expressing opinions on staffing,” John Krupski, Cass’ attorney, wrote in the brief.
Cass lost her job of 17 years after she told Warden Michelle Edmark in a December, 2022 email she would not release inmates from their cells during her next third shift rotation if staffing levels were dangerously low again. The prison, like all DOC facilities, is chronically understaffed. Cass stated she could not safely release all of the inmates at once for their breakfast as was the standard procedure.
The exact ratio of inmates to officers on that third shift is not known, as DOC officials have blocked the release of basic data, but it is likely hundreds of prisoners monitored by a few officers.
Under DOC rules, corrections officers can be fired for taking any action that could endanger inmates or other staffers. Cass maintains that going along with the staffing levels inside Concord would have put people in real jeopardy. Cass never actually followed through with a lockdown after she sent the email to Edmark, and she was never given an order by her superiors to not call a lockdown.
“There is no evidence that [Cass] failed to pop out the inmates, engage in a unilateral lockdown, or refuse an inmate medication or meals. [Cass] simply asserted and reserved her right to question orders that were illegal, in violation of policy, immoral or unethical, such as unreasonably unsafe conditions,” the brief states.
Instead, Cass was suspended after she sent the email, subjected to an internal investigation, and ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation by Edmark. All part of the DOC’s retaliation against her, Cass said. When that evaluation gave Cass a clean bill of health and cleared her to return to work, Edmark fired her.
“[Cass] was terminated for refusing to accept the status quo of placing inmates and co-workers in unreasonably unsafe circumstances when reasonable alternatives were available. [Cass] consistently provided throughout an eight (8) month investigation that she would obey any order unless it was unsafe, illegal or in violation of policy. [Cass] was terminated for requiring administration to finally address the institutionalization and acceptance of understaffing that permeated the culture of the Department of Corrections,” the brief states.
Cass appealed her firing, but the Personnel Appeals Board sided with DOC in a split decision released last summer. The board found 2-1 that she disobeyed orders by sending the email to Edmark. Jason Majors, then the chair of the board, dissented and stated he would have voted to reinstate Cass since she “never actually refused to follow an order from her superiors while on duty.”
The Department of Corrections now has until the end of the month to file a response.