Getting Permission Denied Error when saving work item when updating "Filed Against" attribute

RTC 6.0.3

Scenario:  I have 3 attributes that are only modifiable by the Product Owner role of the team.  The" filed Against" field  is modifiable by any role. The adverse condition we are experiencing is the roles without privilege to the 3 attributes cannot update the " filed against"  field without setting the values of the 3 enumeration  attributes to the default value. 

1.  The user shouldn't be able to update those fields

2.  The user should not get permission denied

3.  The Product Owner role also received permission denied and was not able to update the Filed Against without changing the values to the default value.  As a workaround I had to add all users with the Product Owner role to the top level of the Project.