Civil Rights Clinic Wins Case in the Ninth Circuit
The students of the UC Davis School of Law Civil Rights Clinic won another victory on April 19, 2016. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco affirmed a district court decision in a class action lawsuit challenging conditions of confinement at the Yuba County Jail.
In 1979, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California entered a comprehensive consent decree concerning conditions at the jail. In 2013, the county filed a motion to terminate that order. Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and Ninth Circuit precedent, the county had the burden of establishing a lack of current and ongoing violations of prisoners' constitutional rights. Clinic students interviewed and obtained declarations from several prisoners and reviewed hundreds of pages of documents obtained through written discovery. This investigation revealed evidence of several continuing problems at the jail, including medical and mental health care and a lack of outdoor exercise for prisoners. Students filed much of this information along with briefing in opposition to the county's motion. Senior District Court Judge Garland E. Burrell, Jr. ruled in favor of the Clinic's clients, holding that the county had failed to meet its burden under the PLRA.
The county appealed the order denying its motion to terminate the consent decree. Clinic students filed a brief opposing the appeal. Chief Judge Sidney Thomas, joined by Circuit Judges Stephen Reinhardt and Morgan Christen, in a per curiam memorandum opinion, rejected the county's argument that it was entitled to automatic termination of the earlier settlement when it did not present any evidence regarding current conditions at the jail. The court also rejected the county's procedural claim that it had been denied an evidentiary hearing, noting that the county had not requested such a hearing.
Benjamin Lewis '15 and Kevin Dubrall '15 co-authored the appellate brief. Abigail Wolf ‘ 16 also worked on the appeal. A number of other clinic students have assisted with the case including Johnathan Baldauf '15, Cody Berne '14, Junyong Huang '15, Anisa Jassawalla '15, Omer Khan '17, Jeff Mendelman '15, Sonja Prins '16, Mitchell Suliman '14, Rebecca Vorpe '16, Catherine Wellman '16, and Amanda Whitney '16.
The Civil Rights Clinic represents indigent plaintiffs in the state and federal trial and appellate courts. Carter "Cappy" White is Supervising Attorney of the Clinic.