The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Monday nixed a rule for holding government officials responsible for constitutional violations by their subordinates, in a decision that held a supervisor at a Connecticut women's prison could not be sued over an inmate's repeated sexual abuse at the hands of three corrections officers.

The ruling, from a panel of the Manhattan-based appeals court, held there was no special test for supervisory liability in light of a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which made it more difficult for civil rights plaintiffs to sue officials under a federal statute that allows plaintiffs to recover damages for constitutional violations.