Law360 (August 11, 2026, 4:54 PM EDT) -- The Eighth Circuit has ruled that a Minnesota woman lacks standing to sue a police department that failed to test her rape kit evidence for over 16 years, because police decisions on how or whether to investigate a crime are discretionary functions.

The three-judge panel said in its opinion on Monday that the woman, suing anonymously as Jane Doe, cannot bring claims against Anoka County and its sheriff's office for failing to test her rape kit, because Eighth Circuit precedent bars 14th Amendment claims against the government for failing to investigate a crime.

"Our cases establish that crime victims lack standing to assert equal protection claims against prosecutors and law enforcement officials for alleged failures to investigate," U.S. Circuit Judge Bobby Shepherd said in the opinion, adding: "We concluded that 'a victim has no constitutional right to an investigation of a crime committed against him — at least where ... the victim brings a class-of-one equal protection claim.'"

Doe was the victim of sexual assault in 2004 when she was 14 years old and provided a rape kit to the Anoka County Sheriff's Office for testing. Detective Larry Johnson was assigned to her case, and she provided a statement with the name of her attacker, the opinion said.

The sheriff's office located the assailant, who is unnamed in the opinion, and he was charged but not convicted of sexual assault. The opinion said the lack of a conviction is not connected to the lack of DNA evidence. Johnson later incorrectly told Doe's mother that no DNA was obtained from the test.

The reality, however, is that nobody in the sheriff's office had ever tested Doe's kit. Doe's was one of hundreds of untested rape kits in the office's custody, the opinion said.

The Anoka County Sheriff's Office reported in 2015 that it had 495 untested rape kits in its custody, including Doe's kit from over a decade prior. Doe's kit was finally tested in 2020, over 16 years after it was submitted, and it contained evidence implicating the same assailant that Doe had identified to police, the opinion said.

The assailant was re-arrested and Anoka County pursued criminal charges against him, but the Eighth Circuit said the disposition of that case is "unknown." Doe filed the lawsuit in Minnesota federal court against the county government, Johnson and the county sheriff at the time, James Stuart, alleging violations of her equal protection rights, the opinion said.

Doe's lawsuit claimed that by not testing the kit for over a decade and a half, police violated both the 14th Amendment and the Minnesota Human Rights Act. The suit also accuses Stuart and Johnson of negligence and intentional inflection of emotional distress, the opinion said.

The defendants all moved for judgment on the pleadings, and a federal district court dismissed Doe's suit, alleging she lacked standing to bring her claims. Doe appealed and while her appeal was pending, the Eighth Circuit released an opinion in a separate case, Pratt v. Helms, in 2023, the opinion said.

The court held in Pratt that a victim of an assault lacked standing to bring a lawsuit against a sheriff who refused to investigate the crime. The court in Pratt held that police investigations are "inherently discretionary and ill-suited to judicial second-guessing," the opinion in Doe's case said.

In 2024, the Eighth Circuit reversed the judgment in Doe's case, and returned the case to the district court to rule on whether the Pratt holding should apply.

This time, the district court issued a mixed ruling on what claims should be allowed to move forward, the opinion said. The district court in 2025 found that Doe had standing, but tossed Minnesota Human Rights Act claims based on the statute of limitations and granted qualified immunity to Johnson and Stuart on the negligence claims. The court kept equal protection and failure to train claims against Anoka County and Stuart, and emotional distress claims against Stuart and Johnson, the opinion said.

The defendants this time appealed, saying that under Pratt Doe should not be able to bring the claims because she lacks standing. The defendants said the claims should be cut because they did not directly cause her injuries and a judgment against them would not redress her injuries, the opinion said.

The panel held that because the standing was limited by Pratt, Doe is precluded from bringing her constitutional claims against the officers and the government. The panel did keep alive the inflection of emotional distress claim, ruling that the Eighth Circuit precedent only addressed federal constitutional claims, the opinion said.

U.S. Circuit Judge Ralph R. Erickson penned a brief concurring opinion finding that his reason for supporting the opinion was that Doe failed to show gender-based animus. The concurring opinion agreed with the majority that victims of crimes lack standing to bring "failure to investigate" claims against police officers and other officials.

An attorney representing Doe and a spokesperson for the Anoka County Sheriff's Office did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Circuit Judges Bobby Shepherd, Ralph R. Erickson and L. Steven Grasz sat for the panel for the Eighth Circuit.

Doe is represented by Adam C. Hagedorn and Charles J. Lloyd of Livgard & Lloyd PLLP.

The government is represented by Jason Stover and Robert Yount of the Anoka County Attorney's Office.

The case is Doe v. Anoka County et al., case number 25-1568, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

--Editing by Michael Watanabe.

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