Nurses can contest Suffolk DA

Turnabout is fair play.

Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota charged 10 Filipino nurses with endangering the welfare of children in 2007 for quitting, en masse, their jobs at a Smithtown nursing home. An appeals court threw out the charges before trial, ruling they violated constitutionally protected free speech and anti-slavery rights.

The nurses sued Spota and Suffolk County last year for malicious prosecution, and a federal judge has now allowed the civil rights lawsuit to proceed. So Spota will have to explain the unprecedented prosecution. It won't be easy. The nursing home found other people to cover the shift. And before they were indicted the 10 had been cleared of any professional wrongdoing by state officials who license nurses.

Now it's Spota's turn on the hot seat.