Americans with Disabilities Act & Prisons’ Compliance

While prison is no doubt unpleasant for everyone, it can be even more so for those with disabilities. The facilities can be outdated and dilapidated and the prison staff can use excessive force on prisoners, apparently with an expectation of impunity, citing to the need for security and control of inmates.

In 1994, a class of California prisoners (called the “Armstrong Plaintiffs” by the court after the lead plaintiff John Armstrong) sued the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the Governor of California, alleging widespread violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act (RA).

Some of the allegations focused on physically inaccessible facilities in California’s prisons and other allegations accused Defendants of failing “to make reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities in the programs, activities, services, benefits and jobs they offer.”

The federal district court certified a class of “present and future California state prisoners . . . with mobility, sight, hearing, learning and kidney disabilities that substantially limit one or more of their major life activities” and held that Defendants’ treatment of disabled prisoners violated the ADA and RA.

Accordingly, the district court ordered Defendants to produce a plan describing how they would remedy the violations of the class members’ rights. This plan was called the Armstrong Remedial Plan.

Since the court ordered the plan, Plaintiffs have filed a series of motions contending Defendants have failed to comply with the court’s mandates. In response, the district court has issued further injunctions, most of which have been challenged by Defendants but affirmed by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, directing Defendants to take additional measures to ensure compliance with the court-ordered portions of the ARP and to prevent further violations of the class members’ rights.

The district court has acknowledged that many prisons have implemented the ARP and other prisons have not over time.

In 2020, Plaintiffs returned to court alleging pervasive violations of class member rights, filing one motion focusing on R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility (RJD) and a second motion focusing on seven other prisons, namely California State Prison, Los Angeles County (LAC); California Correctional Institution (CCI); Kern Valley State Prison (KVSP); California State Prison, Corcoran (COR); Substance Abuse Treatment Facility (SATF); California Institute for Women (CIW); and Salinas Valley State Prison (SVSP). As the motion was being litigated, Plaintiffs removed CCI and KVSP from the motion, leaving five prisons known as the Five Prisons by the district court.

RJD has the second largest population of disabled inmates of any prison in California and houses nearly 1,000 Armstrong class members. Auditors found instances of “staff members forcefully removing some inmates from wheelchairs” and “assaulting inmates who were already secured with restraint equipment.”

The State sent a “strike team” to RJD to investigate reports of staff misconduct and, through 102 interviews with inmates, found 48 instances of staff misconduct.

The strike team recommended that prison management install surveillance cameras at certain locations, increase the presence of supervisory staff and provide mandatory staff training, among other things.

The motion from the Armstrong plaintiffs included 87 declarations from inmates who claimed to have experienced or witnessed violations of class members’ rights at RJD, along with two experts criticizing RJD’s staff treatment and failure to discipline staff in response.

The court granted the plaintiffs’ motion in large part, citing to excessive force examples and incidents of retaliation by staff in using pepper spray and excessive, unnecessary force.

In 2022, Defendants appealed the orders, arguing the orders could not survive the need-narrowness-intrusiveness inquiry required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PRLA), among other arguments. The Ninth Circuit rejected this argument, noting that the district court had tried numerous times to order changes in prison operations through less restrictive means, so the new orders did not violate the PRLA because the prior orders were not effective in developing a system where the prisons held itself accountable.

We believe that this latest victory by the Armstrong plaintiffs is not going to cure the CDCR once and for all times, as there is systemic, cultural and organizational resistance by RJD and the Five Prisons to accept accountability for mistreatment of disabled prisoners (and perhaps all prisoners to a degree). However, it is at least an attempt to control the abusive environment.

For more information about the issues in this summary, please click on the following articles: