In Reed v. Goertz, published April 19, 2022, a divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed dismissal of the plaintiff's 42 U.S.C. section 1983 lawsuit on statute of limitations grounds. The plaintiff was convicted of murder. He moved under Texas's post-conviction DNA testing law for DNA testing on certain evidence. The state court denied the motion as to particular items. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed. That court then denied the plaintiff's petition for rehearing. The plaintiff then filed suit in federal court under section 1983. He asserted the Texas post-conviction DNA testing law violated procedural due process. The district court dismissed the action as untimely. The Fifth Circuit affirmed, holding that the statute of limitations began running when when the Texas trial court denied the plaintiff's motion, not when the appellate court denied rehearing.
The majority disagreed. A cause of action accrues when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action. The existence of a complete and present cause of action depends on the specific constitutional right allegedly infringed. A procedural due process cause of action does not accrue when the deprivation occurs; it accrues when the the state fails to provide due process. The state's process at issue here includes both trial court proceedings and appellate review. Under Texas appellate procedure rules, the appellate process includes a motion for rehearing. The alleged violation of due process here was complete when the state litigation ended. It ended when the rehearing motion was denied.
Justice Thomas dissented, opining the plaintiff lacked standing. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Gorsuch, opined that the cause of action accrued either when the Texas prosecutor denied his testing request, or when the court affirmed that decision, but disagreed it did not accrue until rehearing was denied.
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