California District Court Grants Motion to Supplement in Solitary Confinement Action

On March 9, 2015, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order granting the plaintiffs leave to file a supplemental complaint to include solitary confinement prisoners who have been transferred from Pelican Bay State Prison in an administrative effort to moot litigation.

“. . .[T]his is a great ruling on the [mootness] issue,” enthused Alexis Agathocleous, Senior Staff Attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, The New York organization spearheading the Eighth Amendment claim on behalf of the affected class.

The causal chain that precipitated the class action suit started with the identification and isolation of security threat groups, usually gang members, into security housing units (SHU)—solitary confinement—leading to litigation and hunger strikes, and the enactment of the Step Down program (SDP). The SDP returned nearly 80% of reviewed SHU prisoners directly to Step 5 (population), with the rest still in solitary, many for more than ten years. That group brought the instant action in 2009.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was using their standard transfer-then-moot policy to circumvent 8^th Amendment claims. The court issued a certification order for class action in June 2014, stipulating “any inmates who have been transferred out of the Pelican Bay SHU must be excluded from the Eighth Amendment class.” The class was originally certified for ten continuous years at Pelican Bay, the certification relevant to the second amended complaint. Both sides answered.

Plaintiffs sought redefinition of the class to include Pelican Bay SHU prisoners transferred to other SHUs, arguing that the supplemental allegations were tightly bound to the current Eighth Amendment claim and thus served the goal of Fed. R. Civ. P 15(d) to the furthering of judicial economy and convenience. Defendants contended that plaintiffs’ supposition was only marginally related to the issue at bar and were in fact claims pointing to another legal matter. The court found that the issues were more than marginally connected and that “prolonged stays in SHU—no matter which SHU—may violate the Eighth Amendment.

The court also held for plaintiffs, stating that if they had to mount a new complaint, and conduct the extensive investigations a new complaint would require, they would be unfairly prejudiced and subjected to undue delay. The court also stated that splitting the claim would be meaningless with respect to a judgment that accounted for all the issues.

The court held with plaintiffs on all issues contended except plaintiffs’ request for relief in the form of mental health treatment and transitional programming—a new, unargued issue. The court allowed the class representatives who were transferred out of Pelican Bay SHU to another SHU after the class certification to remain in class, and those transferred out before certification to retain individual claims.

See: Ashker v. State, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Cal.), Case No. 4:09-cv-05796.

Source: www.ccrjustice.org

Related legal case