On May 6, 1994, former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones filed a sexual harassment suit against U.S. President Bill Clinton and former Arkansas State Police Officer Danny Ferguson. She claimed that on May 8, 1991, Clinton, then Governor of Arkansas, propositioned her. David Brock had written, in the January 1994 issue of The American Spectator, that an Arkansas state employee named "Paula" had offered to be Clinton's mistress. According to the story, Ferguson had escorted Jones to Clinton's hotel room, stood guard, and overheard Jones say that she would not mind being Clinton's mistress.
The suit, Jones v. Clinton, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Judge Susan Webber Wright, who had taken a class under then-Professor Clinton at the University of Arkansas School of Law, ruled that a sitting President could not be sued and deferred the case until the conclusion of his term (although she allowed the pre-trial discovery phase of the case to proceed without delay in order to start the trial as soon as Clinton left office).
Both parties appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which ruled in favor of Jones, finding that "the President, like all other government officials, is subject to the same laws that apply to all other members of our society."
Clinton then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, filing a petition for writ of certiorari.
The court's decision
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals.
In the unanimous opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court ruled that separation of powers does not mandate that federal courts delay all private civil lawsuits against the President until the end of his term of office.
In his concurring opinion, Breyer argued that presidential immunity would apply only if the President could show that a private civil lawsuit would somehow interfere with the President's constitutionally assigned duties.
