9th Circuit rejects Brown’s prison oversight appeal

Reporting from Sacramento —  A federal appeals court Wednesday rejected Gov. Jerry Brown’s challenge of a lower court ruling that requires the state to provide three months’ warning before seeking to end federal oversight of California’s prison system.

Medical care within California prisons has been under federal receivership since 2006, run by a court-appointed official. Brown last year said he would seek to regain control of the $2.2-billion healthcare system.

Federal law favors states in such prison litigation, requiring courts to issue a ruling within 30 days of a motion being filed to terminate receivership, or that receivership is automatically halted.

Lawyers for the governor in early 2013 told federal judges to expect such a motion within months. Before Brown could act, however, one of those judges sided with prisoners’ lawyers and ordered California to disclose its intentions and reveal much of its case 120 days in advance.

In making that decision, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson cited Brown’s surprise move in January 2013 to end supervision of prison mental health programs. That motion caught both the court and prisoners’ lawyers off guard, and the lack of time to investigate was one of the reasons a federal judge gave in rejecting it.

A panel of judges for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Henderson’s advance warning decision “was a sensible scheduling order designed to provide the court and plaintiffs with adequate notice of the evidence the State intended to rely upon in a motion to terminate.”

Prisoners’ lawyers said that without such notice, they would have little time to build their own case in favor of continued oversight.

However, not all of the judges on the appellate panel agreed. Judge Jay Bybee in Las Vegas contended Henderson’s order was “flatly inconsistent” with the federal law giving courts just 30 days to decide whether prison conditions continue to warrant federal control.