Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55620/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55620-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 446
Nature of Suit: Americans with Disabilities Act - Other
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

BRENDA MILES; DANE SULLIVAN;

UNION DE VECINOS, a non-profit 

corporation; COALITION FOR 

ECONOMIC SURVIVAL, a non-profit 

corporation; PEOPLE ORGANIZED FOR 

WESTSIDE RENEWAL, a non profit 

corporation; INDEPENDENT LIVING 

CENTER OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, a 

non-profit corporation,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

DAVID S. WESLEY, in his official 

capacity as Presiding Judge of the 

Los Angeles Superior Court; STATE 

OF CALIFORNIA; EDMUND G. BROWN,

JR., in his official capacity as 

Governor of California; SHERRI R.

CARTER, Esquire, in his official 

capacity as Executive Officer/Clerk 

of the Los Angeles Superior Court,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 13-55620

D.C. No.

2:13-cv-01817-

MWF-RZ

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Michael W. Fitzgerald, District Judge, Presiding

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2 MILES V. WESLEY

Argued and Submitted

March 4, 2015—Pasadena, California

Filed September 8, 2015

Before: Ferdinand F. Fernandez, Barrington D. Parker, Jr.*, 

and Jacqueline H. Nguyen, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Nguyen

SUMMARY**

Abstention

The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal, on 

federal abstention grounds, of an action challenging on 

statutory and constitutional grounds the Los Angeles 

Superior Court’s plan to consolidate unlawful detainer 

actions into hub courts.

The panel held that the district court properly abstained 

under O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488 (1974), because the 

core of plaintiffs’ challenge was to the Superior Court’s 

management of its shrinking resources, and they sought 

heavy federal interference in the administration of the state 

judicial system.

 * The Honorable Barrington D. Parker, Jr., Senior Circuit Judge for the 

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, sitting by designation.

 ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has 

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

 

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MILES V. WESLEY 3

COUNSEL

Richard A. Rothschild (argued), Sue L. Himmelrich, and 

Navneet Grewal, Western Center on Law & Poverty, Los 

Angeles, California; Maria Palomares, Alexander Prieto,

Brian Bilford and David Pallack, Neighborhood Legal 

Services of Los Angeles County, Pacoima, California; Paula 

D. Pearlman and Michelle Uzeta, Disability Rights Legal 

Center, Los Angeles, California; Barbara Schultz, Paul J. 

Estuar, and Fernando Gaytan, Legal Aid Foundation of Los 

Angeles, Los Angeles, California, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Robert A. Naeve (argued) and Nathaniel P. Garrett, Jones 

Day, Irvine, California, for Defendants-Appellees the 

Honorable David S. Wesley and Sherri R. Carter.

Susan K. Smith, Deputy Attorney General, Office of the 

Attorney General, Los Angeles, California, for DefendantsAppellees State of California and Edmund G. Brown, Jr.

Karl Manheim, Los Angeles, California, for Amici Curiae

Civil Rights Organizations and Law Professors.

OPINION

NGUYEN, Circuit Judge:

Two recessions and a decade of budget cuts have 

dramatically transformed the Los Angeles County Superior 

Court (“LASC”), the largest trial court in the country. From 

2008 to 2012, LASC lost $110 million in state funding. In 

response, LASC closed courtrooms, furloughed employees, 

increased filing fees, and curtailed services to the public. In 

2013, the California legislature again significantly cut 

funding to the judicial branch, and LASC was required to 

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4 MILES V. WESLEY

absorb another $56 million in permanent reduction to its 

annual operating budget. Faced with a fiscal crisis, and 

already overburdened from years of shrinking budgets, 

LASC decided to fundamentally restructure its operations 

through a “consolidation plan.” The plan called for wideranging changes, including employee layoffs, more 

courtroom closures, and the consolidation of proceedings in 

certain types of cases heard in local courthouses throughout 

the county into “hub” courts—specialized courts that hear 

only one type of case.

After LASC announced the consolidation plan (and prior 

to its implementation), Plaintiffs Brenda Miles, Dane 

Sullivan, and numerous non-profit organizations filed this 

class-action challenge to one aspect of it, the consolidation 

of unlawful detainer (tenant eviction) actions into hub 

courts. Plaintiffs allege various statutory and constitutional 

violations on the ground that reducing the number of 

courthouses handling unlawful detainer cases 

disproportionately impacts poor, disabled, and minority 

residents. The district court dismissed Plaintiffs’ case on 

federal abstention grounds under O’Shea v. Littleton, 

414 U.S. 488 (1974). We agree that O’Shea mandates 

abstention and affirm.

I

LASC serves over 10 million residents and is the largest 

trial court in the country. For decades, LASC prided itself 

on maintaining a “neighborhood court” model with many 

courthouses located throughout the county. Rather than 

hearing cases only in a central business district like in many 

other parts of the country, LASC’s neighborhood 

courthouses handled criminal and civil matters in the 

communities where these matters arose. This model, while 

costly, provided convenient access to justice for the residents 

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MILES V. WESLEY 5

of Los Angeles County because, for most types of cases—

whether small claims, traffic, unlawful detainers, or criminal 

in nature—no one had to travel very far to attend court 

proceedings. In 2000, for example, LASC operated 58 

different courthouses.

California’s fiscal woes in 2002 and 2003 resulted in 

funding cuts to the judicial branch, of which LASC is by far 

the largest court. See, e.g., Jean Guccione, Court Workers 

May Face Furloughs to Cut Costs, L.A. Times (Apr. 4, 

2003), http://articles.latimes.com/2003/apr/04/local/meshut4; Anna Gorman, Courts Face Closures, Job Cuts, L.A. 

Times (Aug. 27, 2002), http://articles.latimes.com/2002/

aug/27/local/me-court27. Then, in 2008, in the wake of a 

financial crisis and the resulting loss of tax revenue, the state 

legislature again mandated significant cuts to the courts. 

LASC responded with furloughs, layoffs, service reductions, 

and increases in fines and court fees, but the neighborhood 

court system was generally spared. However, as funding 

cuts mounted year after year, LASC was forced to close 

some courthouses and consolidate cases previously heard in 

those courts to nearby courthouses. By 2013, 12 of the 58 

courthouses open in 2000 had closed. As of today, another 

eight have closed. See LASC Annual Report 2015 at 22, 

available at https://www.lacourt.org/newsmedia/uploads/

2015LASCAnnualReport.pdf.

Having already suffered a total of $110 million in 

permanent cuts to its annual operating budgets from 2008 to 

2012, LASC faced an even larger funding crisis in fiscal year 

2013-2014, when it was expected to absorb an additional 

estimated $56 million in permanent cuts to its annual budget. 

LASC concluded that its neighborhood court model was no 

longer sustainable, and to produce the required savings, it 

developed a consolidation plan that fundamentally 

reorganized its operations across many courthouses in order 

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6 MILES V. WESLEY

to achieve staff and service efficiencies. The plan called for 

many changes, including closing additional courthouses, 

eliminating court reporters, terminating referees in juvenile 

delinquency and dependency cases, and centralizing 

probate, small claims, and collections matters in fewer 

courthouses (in the case of probate, in only one courthouse). 

At issue in this case is one aspect of the consolidation plan—

namely, the proposal, since adopted, to centralize unlawful 

detainer cases from 26 neighborhood courthouses to five 

“hub” courts across the county in Long Beach, Santa 

Monica, Downtown Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Lancaster.1 

The plan, which was scheduled to take effect on March 18, 

2013, aimed to allow judges to handle a higher, specialized 

caseload per day, while at the same time ensuring that no 

tenant would have to travel more than 32 miles to a hub 

court. LASC had already implemented a hub court system 

for child dependency cases two decades earlier, with those 

matters handled in only Monterey Park and Lancaster—at a 

substantial distance from many locations in Los Angeles 

County, including the San Fernando Valley, Westside, and 

South Bay sub-regions.

On March 13, 2013, Plaintiffs sued the State of 

California, the governor, LASC’s presiding judge, and the 

executive officer of the court, challenging the plan’s closure 

of neighborhood courtrooms handling unlawful detainer 

actions. Plaintiffs claimed that because individuals with 

disabilities and minorities are disproportionately renters who 

rely on public transportation, the closure of these courtrooms 

 1 During the pendency of this appeal, in 2015, two additional unlawful 

detainer hub courts opened in the City of Norwalk and the Van Nuys 

district of Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. See LASC Annual 

Report 2015 at 8, available at https://www.lacourt.org/newsmedia/

uploads/2015LASCAnnualReport.pdf.

 

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MILES V. WESLEY 7

would have a disparate impact on these communities. They 

claimed that the importance of neighborhood court access is 

heightened in light of the expedited timeline of unlawful 

detainer actions, the fact that most low-income tenants are 

not represented by counsel, and the prospect that a default 

judgment could render a tenant homeless. Plaintiffs alleged 

violations of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 

42 U.S.C. §§ 12131-12165, the Rehabilitation Act, 29 

U.S.C. § 794, the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3604(a), (b), 

(f)(1) and (2), and the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth 

Amendments under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

On March 26, 2013, the district court dismissed the case 

on abstention grounds under O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 

488 (1974). Plaintiffs timely appealed.

II

The parties disagree on whether our review of the district 

court’s decision is de novo or for abuse of discretion. The 

applicable standard of review for O’Shea abstention remains 

unsettled, see Courthouse News Serv. v. Planet, 750 F.3d 

776, 783 (9th Cir. 2014), but we need not decide it here 

because we would affirm under either standard of review.

III

A

The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized a 

“longstanding public policy against federal court 

interference with state court proceedings” based on 

principles of federalism and comity. Younger v. Harris, 401 

U.S. 37, 43 (1971). In O’Shea v. Littleton, residents of 

Cairo, Illinois filed a federal action alleging pervasive racial 

discrimination in their state court system, because black 

defendants were subject to higher bail and harsher sentences 

than white defendants. 414 U.S. at 490–92. The Supreme 

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Court concluded that abstention was appropriate because 

intervention would be “intrusive and unworkable.” Id. at 

500. The O’Shea Court reasoned that the relief sought by 

the plaintiffs—an injunction to prevent the alleged 

discriminatory practices in future criminal cases—would be 

“nothing less than an ongoing federal audit of state criminal 

proceedings which would indirectly accomplish the kind of 

interference that Younger . . . sought to prevent.” Id. While 

O’Shea itself addressed interference with state criminal 

proceedings, the Supreme Court soon recognized that “the 

same principles of federalism may prevent [an] injunction by 

a federal court of a state civil proceeding once begun.” Rizzo 

v. Goode, 423 U.S. 362, 380 (1976) (broadly applying 

O’Shea to an action seeking to impose “prophylactic 

procedures” to reform a city police misconduct grievance 

procedure).

Naturally, whether O’Shea abstention applies is heavily 

fact-dependent. We have stated that generally, when 

“principles of federalism, comity, and institutional 

competence” are implicated, a federal court “should be very 

reluctant to grant relief that would entail heavy federal 

interference in such sensitive state activities as 

administration of the judicial system.” L.A. Cty. Bar Ass’n

v. Eu (LACBA), 979 F.2d 697, 703 (9th Cir. 1992). But we 

have examined the circumstances of each case to determine 

whether abstention is appropriate under O’Shea. Thus, in 

E.T. v. Cantil-Sakauye, we upheld the district court’s O’Shea

abstention in a class action challenging the adequacy of 

representation of foster children in dependency proceedings 

in Sacramento County Superior Court. 682 F.3d 1121, 1122 

(9th Cir. 2012) (per curiam). The plaintiffs in E.T. originally 

sought injunctive relief, but they narrowed their request on 

appeal to only declaratory relief. Id. at 1124–25. Yet we 

nevertheless concluded that ‘“even the limited decree []’ 

sought here ‘would inevitably set up the precise basis for 

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MILES V. WESLEY 9

future intervention condemned in O’Shea.’” Id. at 1125 

(quoting Luckey v. Miller, 976 F.2d 673, 679 (11th Cir. 

1992) (per curiam)) (emphasis in original). That is because 

the question of the defendants’ compliance with any remedy 

imposed could be the subject of future court challenges. Id. 

And “[l]aying the groundwork for a future request for more 

detailed relief which would violate the comity principles 

expressed in Younger and O’Shea is the precise exercise 

forbidden under the abstention doctrine.” Id. (quoting 

Miller, 976 F.2d at 679); see also Parker v. Turner, 626 F.2d 

1, 8 (6th Cir. 1980) (holding that O’Shea establishes a rule 

of “near-absolute restraint to situations where the relief

sought would interfere with the day-to-day conduct of state 

trials”).

In contrast, we did not abstain in LACBA, where the 

plaintiff, a county bar association, raised a constitutional 

challenge to the adequacy of the allocation of judgeships to 

Los Angeles County. LACBA, 979 F.2d at 699–700. 

Although we affirmed in favor of the defendants on different 

grounds, we explained that O’Shea did not apply because 

once the question of the number of judges was settled, 

“supervision of the state court system by federal judges” 

would not be required. Id. at 703.

B

Turning to the facts here, we conclude that the district 

court properly abstained under O’Shea. In reaching this 

conclusion, we need look no further than the breadth of 

Plaintiffs’ requested relief. Plaintiffs seek an injunction 

preventing LASC from eliminating even a single courthouse 

that, prior to the fiscal crisis, heard unlawful detainer actions. 

They also request an order requiring LASC to hold public 

meetings before planning any future unlawful detainer 

courtroom closures, and for the district court to retain 

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jurisdiction for an unspecified period of time to ensure 

compliance. In short, Plaintiffs seek precisely the sort of 

“heavy federal interference in such sensitive state activities 

as administration of the judicial system” that Younger and 

O’Shea sought to prevent. LACBA, 979 F.2d at 703. 

Because the core of Plaintiffs’ challenge is to LASC’s 

management of its shrinking resources, federal supervision 

in this case would place a district court “in the role of 

receiver for a state judicial branch.” Ad Hoc Comm. on 

Judicial Admin. v. Massachusetts, 488 F.2d 1241, 1246 (1st 

Cir. 1973). Moreover, the level of “ongoing intrusion into 

the state’s administration of justice,” Courthouse News, 750 

F.3d at 790, required not only to adjudicate Plaintiffs’ 

claims, but also to monitor compliance with any judgment in 

their favor, would be unprecedented. We therefore conclude 

that abstention under O’Shea is proper.

We recognize that Plaintiffs raise serious access to 

justice concerns. For example, litigants like Plaintiffs Miles 

and Sullivan, who struggle with physical limitations and rely 

on public transportation, may have a harder time traveling 

from their homes to a hub court to have their cases heard. 

But there is no dispute that years of budget cuts have taken 

their toll and, by 2013, LASC’s prized neighborhood court 

model was unsustainable. At that point, LASC’s challenge 

was not whether to close courtrooms but rather, which 

courtrooms to close and where to reroute matters previously 

heard in those locations. Further, because allocating limited 

funds is a zero-sum proposition, leaving more courts open to 

unlawful detainer cases would necessarily involve cutting 

services in other important areas such as criminal, juvenile, 

mental health, or family law. And contrary to Plaintiffs’

suggestion, LASC’s restructuring did not simply target 

unlawful detainer cases. Instead, LASC’s wide-ranging cuts 

included closing entire courthouses, eliminating Alternative 

Dispute Resolution functions wholly in civil cases and partly 

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MILES V. WESLEY 11

in family law, substantial layoffs of personnel, and, finally, 

consolidating high-volume civil cases like unlawful 

detainers into hub courts. Out of respect for the 

independence of state judiciaries, a federal court cannot 

substitute its judgment for LASC’s resource allocation 

choices under these circumstances. Cf. Horne v. Flores, 557 

U.S. 433, 448 (2009) (“Federalism concerns are heightened 

when . . . a federal court decree has the effect of dictating 

state or local budget priorities. . . . When a federal court 

orders that money be appropriated for one program, the 

effect is often to take funds away from other important 

programs.”).

Plaintiffs raise several additional arguments. First, they 

rely heavily on our decision in LACBA, but the facts there 

were far different. In LACBA, while we recognized that a 

federal court could, in theory, declare a simple number of 

judges required to maintain constitutional rights, we did not 

sanction the use of injunctive power to restructure the state 

courts. Nor did we condone federal interference in a state 

court system’s determination of where, when, and how 

different types of cases should be heard, or how to allocate 

its staff and facilities. Thus, the level of federal intrusion 

Plaintiffs seek is far beyond what we considered in LACBA.

Plaintiffs also argue that adjudicating their claims 

requires “only a single prospective determination.” But their 

theory of liability—which hinges largely on the difficulty 

that disabled plaintiffs would have in traveling up to 32 miles 

to court—shows why this is not so. Suppose, for example, 

that a judgment decreed that adequate access requires that no 

disabled individual be required to travel more than one hour 

on public transportation to an unlawful detainer courtroom. 

Plaintiffs could then raise noncompliance issues and request 

a reshuffling of hub courts with every cancellation of a bus 

route, change to a train schedule, or bottleneck from a 

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12 MILES V. WESLEY

highway construction project. Kaufman v. Kaye, 466 F.3d 

83, 87 (2d Cir. 2006) (holding that a federal court must 

abstain from inviting the “piecemeal” litigation condemned 

in O’Shea). Any reevaluation of whether a particular 

courthouse must reopen to unlawful detainer cases would 

necessarily require the type of ongoing “audit” that O’Shea

forbids. The district court could even be required “to 

monitor the substance of individual cases on an ongoing 

basis to administer its judgment.” Courthouse News, 750 

F.3d at 790 (emphasis added). To determine whether the 

locations of unlawful detainer hub courts satisfy legal 

obligations, the district court could be required to evaluate 

whether individual default judgments, which Plaintiffs 

contend will increase, were the result of tenants’ travel 

burdens, or simply the strength of landlords’ cases.

Finally, Plaintiffs’ reliance on Tennessee v. Lane, is 

unconvincing. 541 U.S. 509 (2004). In Lane, the Supreme 

Court rejected a state sovereign immunity defense to a suit 

involving a paraplegic who had to appear on the secondfloor of a courthouse with no elevator, and was required to 

crawl up two flights of stairs to reach the courtroom. Id. at 

513–14. Plaintiffs argue that, like Lane, they seek the 

removal of a systemic accessibility barrier that prevents 

disabled litigants from access to government services. 

However, nothing in Lane suggests that the accommodations 

may include an order for LASC to locate courthouses in a 

particular area within the county, or that a federal court may 

dictate and monitor a state court’s allocation of its resources. 

Lane does not control the outcome of this case.

***

The district court properly abstained under O’Shea from 

interfering with LASC’s allocation of resources to address 

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MILES V. WESLEY 13

historic budget shortfalls, and we therefore affirm the district 

court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ complaint.

AFFIRMED.

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