The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Gov. Jerry Brown of a lower court’s order that the state is responsible for monitoring the care of approximately 2,000 disabled prisoners being held in county jails under Realignment.
The high court declined to comment when it refused in June to hear the state’s appeal asserting that the order “violates fundamental federalism principles” by making the state responsible for the mistakes of local officials.
Brown and California Attorney General Kamala Harris had asked the high court to compel the 9th Circuit Court to review a District Court’s order that the state was responsible for state inmates and parolees sent to county jails under a state program that changed how the state housed low-level convicted felons.
Realignment requires counties to retain low-level offenders rather than sending them to state prison. That was in response to the Supreme Court siding in 2011 with federal judges who determined that California’s prison system was dangerously overcrowded and ordered the state to reduce its prison population.
The Realignment legislation stated that those inmates shifted back to the county jails were the “sole legal custody” of county officials.
However, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the state must check on the welfare of every disabled parolee sent to county jail and is responsible to ensure that they are appropriately accommodated. This ruling was appealed by the state to the 9th Circuit.
But in 2013, federal Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled that the state could not abrogate its responsibilities for disabled inmates who had been under state custody prior to being sent to the county jails, and were legally responsible to ensure that those prisoners were given “reasonable accommodations” entitled to them under the Americans With Disabilities Act, even if they are held in county jails.
“These accommodations include the basic necessities of life for disabled prisoners and parolees,” stated Reinhardt in his ruling upholding the lower court decision. “The state is not absolved of all of its responsibilities for ADA obligations as to the parolees.”
