A federal judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by a fired corrections officer who claimed he was wrongfully accused of sexual relations with an inmate.
In 2024, Jarrod Eugene Diers of Mahaska County sued the Ottumwa Residential Correctional Facility, a state-run work-treatment facility; its manager, Ted Robinson; Dan Fell, the director of the Eighth District of the Iowa Department of Corrections, and corrections employees Lisa Houk and Nycole Harbison.
The lawsuit initially sought unspecified damages for defamation, denial of due process and interference with a contractual relationship.
According to the lawsuit, Diers worked at the Ottumwa Residential Correctional Facility as a residential officer from April 2023 until June 2023, when he was fired while still in his probationary period. Within a few weeks of being hired, Diers claimed, he learned that a rumor was circulating at work that he had been sexually intimate with a male inmate. One inmate allegedly stated it was Houk who was spreading a rumor about Diers and the inmate.
Diers allegedly told two inmates that if they wanted to provide statements about the matter to investigators, he would assist and submit them on their behalf. Diers’ supervisors later alleged that by answering the inmates’ questions about their statements, he had impeded their investigation. He was suspended without pay and one month later was fired.
In recently agreeing to the Eighth District of the Iowa Department of Corrections’ request for summary judgment in its favor, U.S. District Judge Stephen H. Locher noted that as part of his case, Diers had asserted certain job-protection rights under the Iowa Veterans Preference Act.
“The problem for Diers is that probationary employees are not entitled to the protections of the statute,” Locher ruled. “Diers is a veteran. But he was a probationary employee at the Eighth District who was on the job for less than three months at the time of his termination. This is permitted under Iowa law and Eighth District policy.”
Locher also noted that the inmate who had alleged Houk was spreading rumors about Diers later recanted that out-of-court assertion. “Diers cannot rely on this type of hearsay evidence to defeat summary judgment,” Locher ruled.
