Opinion ID: 177118
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prospective Relief to Address Dangerously High Temperatures

Text: The district court found that air temperatures above 85° F greatly increase the risk of heat-related illnesses for individuals who take psychotropic medications and found further that pretrial detainees taking psychotropic medications have been held in areas where the temperature has exceeded 85° F. These two findings are not clearly erroneous. Plaintiffs' psychiatric expert testified that many psychotropic medications, including those most likely to be prescribed to pretrial detainees, cause patients to suffer from a significantly increased risk of heat-related illness when ambient air temperatures reach 85° F. The defendants' own expert confirmed that high temperatures can affect someone's state when they are taking ... psychotropic medications. On the basis of this testimony, the district court reasonably concluded that temperatures in excess of 85° F are dangerous for pretrial detainees taking psychotropic medications. Sheriff Arpaio argues that this finding is wrong because the record shows that some psychotropic medications affect the body's ability to regulate heat, not all such medications. Even if the district court's over-generalization was incorrect, that error was harmless. Fed.R.Civ.P. 61. As we explain below, a more narrow factual finding would not have caused the district court to order more narrow prospective relief. Furthermore, plaintiffs' expert testified that he had found many seriously mentally ill detainees in segregation cells where temperatures are known to exceed 85° F, including some detainees on anti-psychotic medications. Although he had the burden of proof, Sheriff Arpaio did not introduce rebuttal evidence in support of his claim that pretrial detainees taking psychotropic medications are not housed in cells where the temperature is dangerously high. Considering the evidence in the record, we cannot say that the district court's findings of fact were clearly erroneous.
The district court concluded that the Eighth Amendment requires that the temperature of the areas in which pretrial detainees are held or housed does not threaten their health or safety. We agree. We have held that the Eighth Amendment guarantees adequate heating but not necessarily a comfortable temperature. Keenan v. Hall, 83 F.3d 1083, 1091 (9th Cir. 1996). One measure of an inadequate, as opposed to merely uncomfortable, temperature is that it poses a substantial risk of serious harm. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994). The district court did not err, therefore, in concluding that dangerously high temperatures that pose a significant risk to detainee health violate the Eighth Amendment. Accepting the district court's factual finding that temperatures in excess of 85° F greatly increase the risk of heat-related illness for pretrial detainees taking psychotropic medications, it follows that the Eighth Amendment prohibits housing such pretrial detainees in areas where the temperature exceeds 85° F.
Sheriff Arpaio argues that the prospective relief ordered by the district court violates the PLRA because it is not narrowly tailored to meet the requirements of the Eighth Amendment. The district court ordered Sheriff Arpaio to house all detainees taking psychotropic medications in temperatures that do not exceed 85° F, not just those pretrial detainees taking psychotropic medications that affect the body's ability to regulate heat. The Eighth Amendment protects against dangerously high temperatures, and temperatures in excess of 85° F are dangerous only for the latter, more narrow category of pretrial detainees. The PLRA does not require that prospective relief exactly map onto the requirements of the Eighth Amendment. Rather, the statute authorizes relief that is necessary to correct the ongoing constitutional violation found by the district court. 18 U.S.C. § 3626(a)(1)(A), (b)(3). The district court could have ordered Sheriff Arpaio to house pretrial detainees in areas where the temperature does not exceed 85° F if those detainees take psychotropic medications that affect the body's ability to regulate heat, but that relief would have been insufficient to correct the ongoing Eighth Amendment violations at Maricopa County jails. The district court found that mental health screening and recording-keeping in Maricopa County jails is inadequate, and as a result Sheriff Arpaio does not know which pretrial detainees are taking which medications. Sheriff Arpaio does not contest these findings. Given that Sheriff Arpaio does not know which pretrial detainees are taking medications that affect the body's ability to regulate heat, limiting relief to that category of pretrial detainees would have been impracticable and thus inadequate to correct the Eighth Amendment violation found by the district court. It was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to order prospective relief that covered all pretrial detainees who take psychotropic medications. [2]