Supreme Ct Lifts Injunction Implementing COVID Measures at CA Jail that Reported 15 New Cases in a Week and Allowed Symptomatic Inmates To Commingle in General Population, thereby Spreading the Virus

From [HERE] and [HERE] The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted an injunction requiring the sheriff of Orange County, California, to implement COVID-19 safety measures at the jail.

The Wednesday ruling in Barnes v. Ahlman involves the Orange County Jail, which is located in Santa Ana, California, and currently houses more than 3,000 inmates, many of them awaiting trial. Between late March and Aug. 3, 476 people tested positive for COVID-19 at the jail. A group of inmates sued jail officials in April, alleging that the officials were failing in various ways to prevent the spread of the virus. They said the jail was ignoring recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by refusing to allow social distancing and failing to isolate symptomatic inmates. They alleged that inmates “were required to clean the bedding of detainees who tested positive for COVID-19” and that infected or symptomatic detainees were allowed to mingle with others in common areas of the jail. They also said the jail lacked proper cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment.

In one case, after a detainee tested positive for COVID-19, he was housed with those who had not tested positive, sharing “the same showers, phones, and pass[ing] the same newspaper around cell to cell.” Miranda Decl., ECF No. 41-14 at ¶ 25. Others that were infected and/or symptomatic were allowed to “comingle . . . in the common day room, playing chess and cards,” with no regard for their ability to infect others. [MORE]

On May 26, a federal district judge in California issued a preliminary injunction requiring the jail to take various public health measures to combat the spread of the virus. Among other things, the injunction ordered the jail to allow inmates to maintain at least six feet of social distancing; ensure that staff wear CDC-recommended masks and other personal protective equipment; immediately test inmates, staff or visitors who show symptoms of COVID-19; properly quarantine anyone who has the virus or was exposed to it; and provide soap, hand sanitizer and other cleaning products to inmates.

Jail officials appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and asked that court to pause the injunction while the appeal proceeded. The 9th Circuit declined to do so, prompting the officials to ask the Supreme Court for an emergency stay of the injunction.

In their application to the justices, the officials said the district court’s injunction was an unwarranted micromanagement of local jail procedures by the federal judiciary. They said that, prior to the injunction, the jail had “largely implemented” CDC guidelines “to the extent possible,” and they complained that the injunction required measures not endorsed by the CDC. They also said that, between March 1 and May 19, they voluntarily released more than half of the jail’s inmates to provide more space within the jail for social distancing. And they said they have “essentially eliminated COVID within the jail population with the exception of new detainees.”

Lawyers for the inmates disputed the officials’ claim that the virus is under control at the jail. They told the justices that, on July 24, a record-high 56 symptomatic individuals were in medical isolation at the jail, up from four symptomatic individuals who were in isolation a month earlier. “Even these numbers are likely an underestimate of the true extent of the disease,” they said, because jail officials “have never attempted or even claimed to test everyone, regardless of symptoms.”

In a three-sentence order on Wednesday, the Supreme Court sided with the jail officials and granted their request for a temporary stay of the district court’s injunction while the litigation proceeds. The five conservative justices voted to grant the stay but, as is customary with emergency orders, did not explain their reasoning. Sotomayor’s dissent was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan noted that they would have denied the request for a stay, but they did not join Sotomayor’s dissent.

In her dissent, Sotomayor called the majority’s decision to grant the stay an “extraordinary intervention” that failed to respect the findings of the district court, including a finding that – contrary to the assertions of jail officials – the jail had fallen “well short” of CDC guidelines and “exposed its inmates to significant risks from a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease.” And she argued that the Supreme Court’s action is premature. Citing her own dissent from the court’s decision last week to impose a stay on a lower court’s ruling that had loosened Idaho ballot-initiative rules during the pandemic, Sotomayor wrote that “[t]his Court again intervenes to grant a stay before the Circuit below has heard and decided the case on the merits.”

She wrote, “This court stays the district court’s preliminary injunction,” Sotomayor wrote, “even though the jail recently reported 15 new cases of COVID-19 in a single week (even with the injunction in place), even though the jail misrepresented under oath to the district court the measures it was taking to combat the virus’s spread, and even though the jail’s central rationale for a stay (that the injunction goes beyond federal guidelines) ignores the lower courts’ conclusion that the jail’s measures fell ‘well short’ of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.”

The jail asserted that it was implementing social distancing, providing enough soap for frequent hand-washing, and isolating and testing symptomatic individuals.

“Dozens of inmate declarations told a different story,” Sotomayor said.

Inmates said they were transported to and from the jail in cramped buses, they socialized in dayrooms with no space for social distancing, and they slept in bunk beds 2 to 3 feet apart, Sotomayor said.

Inmates were told that they could best protect themselves with frequent hand-washing, but many inmates said they received just one small, hotel-sized bar of soap per week. Many inmates said they were denied COVID-19 tests, and some told of sharing common spaces with infected or symptomatic individuals.

“The jail also faces an uphill battle in its claim of irreparable harm,” Sotomayor said. “The measures it now decries as vexatious judicial micromanagement are the same measures that just months ago it claimed were, ‘at a minimum,’ already being implemented. If the jail is already doing everything required by the injunction, then what irreparable harm does the injunction pose? And if it is not, and the jail misrepresented its actions under oath to the district court, then why should the jail benefit from this court’s equitable discretion?”

The New York Times, the Washington Post and SCOTUSblog had coverage of the Supreme Court’s order.

The case is Barnes v. Ahlman.