Source: https://www.clearinghouse.net/detail.php?id=572&amp;search=
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 00:15:32+00:00

Document:
On June 29, 1994, disabled prisoners and parolees in California filed this lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, charging that, on account of their disabilities, the two divisions of the California Youth and Adult Corrections Authority California, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ("CDCR") and Board of Prison Terms ("BPT"), were generally depriving disabled prisoners of benefits and accommodations provided to other prisoners or required by due process. Plaintiffs were represented by the Prison Law Office, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, and private attorneys. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. § 12131-34, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 ("Rehab Act"), 29 U.S.C. § 794, and the Due Process Clause of the Constitution.
The district court (Judge Claudia Wilken) certified the plaintiff class in January 1995. In December 1998, the parties stipulated to amend the class definition to include "all present and future California state prisoners and parolees with mobility, sight, hearing, learning, and kidney disabilities that substantially limit one or more of their major life activities." The class was further modified in January 1999 to include prisoners and parolees with developmental disabilities.
By agreement of the parties, the claims against CDCR (prison claims) and BPT (parolee claims) were bifurcated and proceeded on two different litigation tracks. Plaintiffs and CDCR entered into a settlement agreement that agreed to liability for CDCR, if the district court found the ADA and Rehab Act applied to prisons. The district court did find that both statutes applied to state prisons. Armstrong v. Wilson, 942 F.Supp. 1252, 1258-59 (N.D. Cal. 1996). The court also found that the State was not entitled to immunity under the Eleventh Amendment for its violations of the ADA and Rehab Act. Id. at 1263. The district court entered a remedial order and injunction directing CDCR to develop a plan for compliance with the statutes by improving access to prison programs for prisoners with physical disabilities at all of California's prisons and parole facilities. The State appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Judge Alfred Goodwin) affirmed. Armstrong v. Wilson, 124 F.3d 1019 (9th Cir. 1997).
The claims against BPT were litigated by the parties; the district court held a bench trial in April 1999. Plaintiffs offered evidence including stories of a prisoner who used a wheelchair forced to crawl to a hearing, a deaf prisoner rendered unable to communicate with a sign language interpreter because he was shackled, and a blind inmate left without assistance to read complicated written materials. The court issued a permanent injunction in March 2001 and ordered the State to come into compliance with the ADA and the Rehab Act by identifying disabled prisoners and providing them with accessible locations for parole hearings, assistance in communicating, and special aid in the screening, appeals, and grievance processes.
The State appealed, asserting that the injunction regarding parole hearings was overbroad and violated the Prison Litigation Reform Act ("PLRA"). In November 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Judge Stephen Reinhardt) found that the class certified by the district court was overbroad, in that it included sexually violent predators, mentally disordered offenders, and prisoners or parolees with renal impairments--groups not represented by any named plaintiff. Armstrong v. Davis, 275 F.3d 849 (9th Cir. 2001). The injunction was upheld in all other respects.
The court entered a Revised Permanent Injunction on February 11, 2002, which required that the State create and maintain a system for tracking prisoners and parolees with disabilities, take reasonable steps to identify prisoners and parolees with disabilities prior to parole proceedings, and provide reasonable accommodations to prisoners and parolees with disabilities at all parole proceedings, including parole revocations and revocation extensions, life prisoner hearings, mentally disordered offender proceedings, and sexually violent predator proceedings. The State failed to fully comply with the provisions of the Revised Permanent Injunction and the Plaintiffs filed an enforcement motion, which was granted in an order against the BPT defendants entered on May 30, 2006.
In November 2006, Plaintiffs sought imposition of a population cap in California state prisons. Many of Plaintiffs' complaints about disabled prisoners being denied their rights stemmed from the fact that prisons were dramatically overcrowded, resulting in disabled prisoners often being placed in administrative segregation due to lack of space. However, at this time there were several ongoing class action law suits having to do with prison conditions in California. In this case, the district court appointed an expert in 2007 to facilitate the coordination of remedial processes in this case with three other pending class actions: Coleman v. Brown (E.D. Cal.), Plata v. Brown (N.D. Cal.), and Perez v. Tilton (N.D. Cal.). The district court also decided that issues relating to the sought population cap would be addressed in the other lawsuits.
On January 18, 2007, Judge Wilken issued a separate Injunction. She found that despite extensive monitoring of CDCR institutions by plaintiffs' counsel, the State was continuing to severely violate the rights of prisoners with disabilities under the ADA and Rehab Aact. She found the State was not compliant with the law, the Revised Permanent Injunction, or its own Remedial Plan (first put forth in 1998, and amended in 2001, 2002, and 2006). The violations were occurring with regard to inaccessible housing, denial of sign language interpreters to prisoners who need them, confiscation of medically prescribed assistive devices, late and inadequate disability grievance responses, and inadequate disability tracking. Judge Wilken ordered that the State increase the number of staff on its compliance and grievance response teams, develop and implement a state-wide computerized tracking system and integrate it with the tracking system previously ordered in February 2002, generate an inventory of accessible housing, develop a system to hold wardens and prison medical administrators accountable for compliance with the Remedial Plan and other court orders, provide proper training to health care staff and correctional officers, and establish permanent salaried positions for sign language interpreters.
The remedial phase of the litigation has continued since 2007. Defendants argued unsuccessfully on numerous occasions that they have no duty to provide reasonable accommodations for prisoners and parolees under the ADA. Defendants also argued that when they sent class members sent to county facilities, they were not responsible for any ADA noncompliance that occurred. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Judge Stephen Reinhardt) issued an opinion in 2010 that summarily rejected these arguments. However, it did remand to the district court for further hearings on whether system-wide relief was necessary on the grounds that the evidentiary record as presented was not sufficient. Once remanded, the Plaintiffs submitted additional evidence as to the nature and extent of violations, and the district court issued an order granting the renewed system-wide enforcement motion.
In 2012, the district court modified the 2007 injunction to clarify what was expected of the State. The modified injunction provided that the court-appointed expert would solve disputes between the parties. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Judge Tashima) vacated the provisions in the modified injunction relating to the dispute resolution mechanism, finding that it was an impermissible delegation of authority to an expert. The district court then amended the dispute resolution mechanism to make it reviewable by the district court on motion by any dissatisfied party.
On February 3, 2015, the district court granted a motion for further enforcement of the 2007 injunction. Judge Wilken found the State was still routinely housing class members in administrative segregation because of lack of housing in violation of the ADA and the court's prior orders. She ordered that if the State placed class members in administrative segregation, they needed to fully document their reason for doing so and submit such report to plaintiff's counsel. 2015 WL 496799.
On March 26, 2015, Judge Wilken filed a stipulated order confirming the undisputed attorneys' fees and costs for the fourth quarter of 2014. The amount totaled $1,190,379.99.
On June 29, 2015, Judge Wilken filed a stipulated order confirming the undisputed attorneys' fees and costs for the first quarter of 2015. The amount totaled $1,090,718.30.
On September 25, 2015, Judge Wilken filed a stipulated order confirming the undisputed attorneys' fees and costs for the second quarter of 2015. The amount totaled $1,246,103.35. Attorney fees and costs remained undisputed.
Over the next two years, the parties filed several joint status reports. As of October 2018, the most recent status report was filed on May 15, 2017. The statement presented the status of issues such as accommodating deaf prisoners with video phones, video remote interpreting/sign language interpretation in programs to increase accommodation, allegations of abuse and violence against prisoners and more. Overall, plaintiffs and defendants continued to work collaboratively and in good faith regarding accommodation issues. While the plaintiffs were willing to seek court intervention upon inaction by defendant in regard to the issues, defendants alleged that they were exploring solutions and addressing the issues in good faith, and did not believe court intervention would be ultimately necessary.
In regards to the issue of allegations of abuse and violence however, plaintiffs sought to include prisoners from the Salinas Valley State Prison as class members based on qualifying disabilities. Plaintiffs thus sought to expand the Amended Protective Order to include SVSP prisoners, and reserved the right to seek the court's assistance or to pursue separate litigation regarding this issue. Defendants alleged that they were looking into the allegations and were engaging in efforts to collaborate to the extent possible, but did not believe the protective order should be expanded to include these prisoners. The parties, with the assistance of the court expert, planned to continue to work collaboratively on these issues.
Plaintiff Description All present and future California state prison inmates and parolees with mobility, sight, hearing, learning, mental, kidney, or developmental disabilities.

References: § 12131
 § 794
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