Court Opinion

ID: 9843231
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:31:15.119617+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:04.200760
License: Public Domain

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
While I concur fully in the court’s opinion, I write separately to expand on a point that the opinion relegates to a footnote (n.9). Although Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994), establishes a subjective test for determining deliberate indifference in the case of individual defendants, in that case the Supreme Court made it reasonably clear that the same standard does not apply in actions against government entities involving the adoption of affirmative government policies. The Farmer Court stated that, while a subjective standard is appropriate for determining the liability of prison officials, “considerable conceptual difficulty would attend any search for the subjective state of mind of a governmental entity, as distinct from that of a governmental official.” Id. at 841, 114 S.Ct. 1970.
Here, whether we import the more stringent Farmer subjective standard or apply the less stringent objective standard employed in City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388-89, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989),1 the record, when *1199viewed in the light most favorable to Ms. Gibson, shows that the County’s failure to respond to her husband’s medical needs was a direct result of an affirmative County policy that demonstrated deliberate indifference to this need. Thus, there is no cause in this case to resolve definitively the question of which standard applies to the County, regardless of how obvious the answer may be. We can instead, for purposes of this decision, simply apply the more stringent standard.

. See also Farmer, 511 U.S. at 841, 114 S.Ct. 1970 ("It would be hard to describe the Canton understanding of deliberate indifference ... as anything but objective. Canton's objective standard, however, is not an appropriate test for determining the liability of prison officials under the Eighth Amendment as interpreted in our cases.”).