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Ninth Circuit Affirms Contempt Order Against California
Opinion Says There Was No Error in Finding That the State Had Failed to Comply With Decrees Requiring Hiring of More Psychiatric Workers in Prisons, but Vacates $110 Million in Fines Over Lack of Explanation as to Amount
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday affirmed a court order finding California in civil contempt for failing to comply with court orders requiring the state to reduce staffing shortages of psychiatric workers in the prison system, its decision coming in a decades-old class action by inmates who prevailed at a bench trial on their Eighth Amendment claims.
However, the court vacated the fines, which exceeded $110 million, saying that the “district court’s calculation of the fines” was not supported by sufficient explanation or findings, and remanded the case for further analysis.
In an opinion, authored by Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith and joined in by Circuit Judge Johnnie B. Rawlinson and Senior Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima, the court said:
“Despite years of patience by the judicial system, the class members, and many interested parties, the State has remained unable to carry out its constitutional mandate to ensure adequate mental health services for the thousands of individuals in its care. In the meantime, the number of state prisoners with serious mental health needs has substantially increased. The combination of inadequate mental health care and spiking patient populations has produced predictably grave results: delays in access to life-saving care, inadequate medication management, and a heightened risk of deaths by suicide.”
Smith continued:
“We agree with the district court that the State failed to satisfy its burden of proof to present either a substantial compliance defense or an impossibility defense….Nevertheless, we find that the specific fines imposed by the district court are not sufficiently tethered to the record….Therefore, we vacate the fines only to the extent that they exceed the State’s monthly salary savings, and we remand for the district court to further explain its reasons for the exact amount of fines that it determines to impose.”
Court Orders
At issue is a series of court orders requiring the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“CDCR”) to achieve a maximum of 10% vacancy rates for certain categories of mental health workers serving the prison system. After the state failed to achieve compliance in 2018-22, then-Chief Judge Kimberly J. Mueller for the Eastern District of California (now on senior status) initiated enforcement proceedings.
In a February 2023 order, Mueller said:
“[F]or twenty years defendants have been under court order to maintain a mental health staffing vacancy rate among case managers of no more than ten percent….For more than four years, the CDCR defendants have been out of compliance.”
She set forth a schedule of prospective fines, that were not to accumulate unless the state failed to comply for three consecutive months, at which point Mueller indicated that she would commence contempt proceedings to impose payment.
By the end of 2023, those fines had accumulated for the requisite period and Mueller held evidentiary hearings to consider the propriety of civil contempt charges.
At the hearings, the state argued that it had taken all reasonable steps to comply in the face of a nationwide staffing shortage. A labor economist, Erica Greulich, testified, saying that officials had made efforts—such as expanding the telepsychiatry program, raising salaries for mental health professionals, and participating in hiring events—to lower vacancy rates and improve patient outcomes.
On June 25, 2024, Mueller found that clear and convincing evidence established the state’s non-compliance and held three CDCR officials—Secretary Jeff Macomber, Undersecretary of Health Care Services Diana Toche, and Deputy Director of Mental Health Services Amar Mehta—in contempt and ordered payment, within 30 days, of all accumulated fines.
All Reasonable Steps
Addressing the state’s substantial-compliance defense, Smith explained that the doctrine is available to a party that has taken all reasonable steps to comply with court orders and has only committed technical violations.
He acknowledged that Greulich’s testimony showed that the state had made efforts to increase staffing but remarked that a party seeking to invoke the defense must show it took “all reasonable steps to comply.”
Looking to the efforts, he remarked that “[o]ne of the reasonable steps available to the State pertained to the working conditions” and noted that the officials had failed to show that they had addressed the areas of concern raised by staff members, including heavy workloads, egregious paperwork, and a lack of adequate security.
Under these circumstances, he concluded that “[t]he district court did not clearly err by finding that the State failed to take all reasonable steps to comply with the 2017 Order.”
Turning to whether the state had shown that the violations were merely technical, the jurist pointed out:
“[D]uring the 14-month period preceding the Contempt Order, the State’s vacancy rate for psychologists never fell below 35 percent. As the district court properly found, these numbers did not reflect technical or inadvertent compliance with the 2017 Order. Instead, they reflected serious and significant shortcomings in meeting the target vacancy rates that the State had been under order to achieve for two decades.”
He said this noncompliance caused “serious and consequential” effects, noting an increase in self-harm incidents.
Smith also rejected the state’s attempt to establish an impossibility defense based on evidence of a nationwide shortage in mental health workers, commenting:
“As the district court reasonably found, this evidence showed that it would be ‘difficult or expensive’ for the State to fill the positions necessary to achieve a ten percent vacancy rate. However, once again, the State’s burden was not to show that compliance would be difficult or expensive. Instead, it carried the heavier burden of establishing that compliance was ‘factually impossible.’ ”
Calculation of Fines
The judge was unpersuaded by the state’s argument that the “seriousness of the district court’s fines” transforms them “into the category of criminal contempt,” but commented that the high amount “draws our attention to a separate issue that the parties did not raise on appeal”—how the penalties were calculated.
Saying that courts are required to consider the defendant’s financial resources in fixing the amount of the fine, he opined that Mueller had neglected to provide a “reasoned consideration” of the necessary criteria.
He wrote that “it can be inferred” that Mueller decided to base the fines on a doubling of the average monthly salary for each unfilled position to “eliminate the State’s additional savings on items such as health insurance and retirement contributions” but concluded:
“[T]he district court offered no such explanation for its calculations, and it made no findings or estimates about the extent of such potential savings by the State. In the absence of such details, we cannot conclude that the portion of the fines exceeding the State’s monthly salary savings is calculated with the necessary level of precision.”
The case is Coleman v. Newsom, 24-4023.
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