Mills v. Broomfield

Background

This order concerns Mills v. Broomfield and five related cases in which unrepresented plaintiffs alleged that transferring prisoners from CIM to San Quentin State Prison, including the transfer procedures and housing arrangements, caused a COVID-19 outbreak. The order states that Mills and Shabazz alleged testing positive for COVID-19 in July 2020 and that the plaintiffs alleged numerous COVID-19 symptoms.

The cases were assigned to Judge William H. Orrick for limited purposes: determining whether J. Clark Kelso had quasi-judicial immunity; addressing immunity under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act and qualified immunity; and deciding whether the complaints contained enough facts to state a claim for relief.

Kelso’s immunity

The court found that federal receiver J. Clark Kelso had quasi-judicial immunity from suit. The court relied on the order appointing the receiver for California’s prison medical-care system, which gave the receiver and his staff the status of court officers and the same immunities as the court. The court stated that Kelso received the receiver’s powers, privileges, and responsibilities and that courts had consistently found him protected by this immunity.

The court further found that the plaintiffs did not allege, and based on their other allegations could not allege, that Kelso acted outside his appointed capacity or without jurisdiction. The court stated that it intended to dismiss Kelso from the assigned cases with prejudice. This order does not state that the dismissal itself had already been entered.

Other immunity issues

The court had previously concluded in cases with represented plaintiffs that the pleadings adequately showed, at the motion-to-dismiss stage, that neither Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act immunity nor qualified immunity prevented the claims from proceeding. In this order, the court ordered defendants in the listed unrepresented cases to show cause—meaning to explain why the court should not reach the same conclusion in these cases.

The order allowed defendants to incorporate earlier arguments or raise new arguments based on allegations unique to a particular case. If defendants filed a substantive response, the plaintiffs could respond to the issues raised. The court said it would later issue an order intended to resolve these immunity issues and preserve the parties’ ability to appeal.

Failure to state a claim

The defendants had argued that many plaintiffs failed to state a claim because they did not allege specific facts linking the prisoner transfer to their illnesses. The court rejected the arguments made to that point.

The court explained that an Eighth Amendment claim requires allegations that defendants were deliberately indifferent to objectively serious safety, medical, or prison-condition risks, with awareness of the risk. It concluded that contracting COVID-19 meets the objective seriousness requirement. The complaints generally stated a plausible claim when they alleged that each defendant participated in, facilitated, or knew about the transfer or transfer protocols and failed to mitigate the risks.

The court also held that plaintiffs did not need to allege that defendants knew of the risk to each plaintiff individually; alleging awareness of the risk to San Quentin prisoners could be enough. Nor did plaintiffs need to specifically allege that they were housed with or came into contact with transferred prisoners. Allegations that the transfer, testing, protocols, and housing caused an outbreak at a facility with no COVID-19 cases before the transfer were enough to plausibly allege causation at the motion-to-dismiss stage.

The court stated that factual questions about each defendant’s conduct and whether it caused or contributed to the infections were matters for discovery and possibly trial. It therefore ordered defendants to show cause why its conclusion that the plaintiffs adequately stated their claims was mistaken. The court set a deadline of May 12, 2023, for defendants’ responses and June 2, 2023, for any allowed plaintiff responses.

Disposition

This order found Kelso entitled to quasi-judicial immunity and stated an intention to dismiss him with prejudice. It rejected the failure-to-state-a-claim arguments made to date, but ordered further briefing before resolving the remaining assigned immunity and pleading issues. Judge William H. Orrick signed the order on April 25, 2023.