Hampton v. California

83 F.4th 754

Michael HAMPTON; Jacqueline Hampton, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. State of CALIFORNIA; California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation;San Quentin State Prison; Ralph Diaz; Ronald Davis, Warden; Ronald Broomfield;Clarence Cryer; Alison Pachynski; Shannon Garrigan; Louie Escobell;Muhammad Farooq; Kirk a Torres; Estate of Robert S. Tharratt, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 22-15481

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

Argued and Submitted May 10, 2023 San Francisco, California

Filed October 3, 2023

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Laurel D. Beeler, Magistrate Judge, Presiding, D.C. No. 3:21-cv-03058-LB

Cassandra J. Shryock (argued) and Robert M. Perkins III, Deputy Attorneys General; Jeffrey T. Fisher, Supervising Deputy Attorney General; Monica N. Anderson, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Rob Bonta, California Attorney General; Office of the California Attorney General, San Francisco, California; for Defendants-Appellants.

Michael J. Haddad (argued), Julia Sherwin, and Teresa Allen, Haddad & Sherwin LLP, Oakland, California; Brian Hawkinson, Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, San Francisco, California; for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Adam R. Pulver, Allison M. Zieve, and Scott L. Nelson, Public Citizen Litigation Group, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae Public Citizen.

Before: Michelle T. Friedland and Mark J. Bennett, Circuit Judges, and Richard D. Bennett,^* District Judge.

OPINION

FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judge:

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the California Institution for Men ("CIM") suffered a severe COVID-19 outbreak. In an attempt to protect CIM inmates, high-level officials in the California prison system transferred 122 inmates from CIM to San Quentin State Prison, where there were no known cases of the virus. The transfer sparked an outbreak of COVID-19 at San Quentin that infected over two-thousand inmates and ultimately killed over twenty-five inmates and one prison guard.

The wife of one of the deceased inmates sued, claiming that the prison officials had violated her husband's constitutional and statutory rights. The officials moved to dismiss, asserting that the claims were barred by various federal and state immunities, including immunity under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act and qualified immunity. The district court held that the officials were not entitled to immunity at this stage of the proceedings, and the officials filed this interlocutory appeal. We affirm the district court's conclusion that the officials are not entitled to immunity under federal law for the claimed violations of her husband's rights,¹ and we lack jurisdiction to consider whether the officials are entitled to immunity under state law.

I.

We recently considered an appeal arising out of virtually identical allegations, but in a case alleging a violation of the deceased prison guard's due process rights. See Polanco v. Diaz, 76 F.4th 918 (9th Cir. 2023). We redescribe the allegations here, taking all of them as true at this stage of the proceedings. See Padilla v. Yoo, 678 F.3d 748, 757 (9th Cir. 2012).

A.

On March 4, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency due to COVID-19. The declaration was quickly followed by other emergency measures at the state and local levels, including shelter-in-place orders and mask mandates. Later that month, Governor Newsom issued an executive order suspending the intake of inmates into all state correctional facilities. Around the same time, California Correctional Health Care Services adopted a policy opposing the transfer of inmates between prisons, reasoning that transfers could "carr[y] [a] significant risk of spreading transmission of the disease between institutions."

Defendants—a group of high-level officials at CIM, San Quentin, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ("CDCR")—were aware of the risks that COVID-19 posed in a prison setting. All had been briefed on the dangers of COVID-19, the highly transmissible nature of the disease, and the necessity of taking precautions (such as social distancing, mask-wearing, and testing) to prevent its spread. Defendants were also aware that containing an outbreak at San Quentin would be particularly difficult due to its tight quarters, antiquated design, and poor ventilation. As of late May 2020, though, San Quentin appeared to be weathering the storm with no known cases of COVID-19. Other prisons were not so fortunate. CIM suffered a severe outbreak, which by late May had killed at least nine inmates and infected over six hundred.

In an attempt to prevent further harm to CIM inmates, on May 30, Defendants transferred 122 CIM inmates with high-risk medical conditions to San Quentin. The transfer did not go well. Most of the men who were transferred had not been tested for COVID-19 for over three weeks, and none of the transferred inmates were properly screened for symptoms before being "packed" onto buses to San Quentin "in numbers far exceeding" the COVID-capacity limits that CDCR had established for inmate safety. Although some inmates began experiencing symptoms while on the buses, the buses did not turn back. And instead of quarantining the inmates upon their arrival at San Quentin, Defendants placed them in a housing unit with grated doors (allowing air to flow in and out of the cells) and had them use the same showers and eat in the same mess hall as other inmates.

Two days later, the Marin County Public Health Officer learned of the transfer and scheduled an immediate conference call with some Defendants. On the call, he recommended that the transferred inmates be completely sequestered from the original San Quentin population, that all exposed inmates and staff be required to wear masks, and that staff movement be restricted between different housing units to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Despite being timely informed of the Public Health Officer's recommendations, Defendants did not heed his advice. Rather, they ordered that the Public Health Officer be informed that he lacked the authority to mandate measures in a state-run prison.

COVID-19 soon began to sweep through San Quentin. Within days of the transfer, twenty-five of the transferred inmates had tested positive. Over a three-week period, San Quentin went from zero confirmed cases of COVID-19 to nearly five hundred.

In mid-June, a court-appointed medical monitor of California prisons (the "Receiver")² requested that a group of health experts investigate the outbreak at San Quentin. The health experts wrote an "urgent memo" warning that the COVID-19 outbreak at San Quentin could escalate into a "full-blown local epidemic and health care crisis in the prison and surrounding communities" if not contained. The memo criticized many practices at San Quentin, noting, for instance, that personal protective equipment and masks were not provided to staff or inmates. Even when inmates and staff had masks, many wore them improperly or failed to wear them at all. The prison's testing protocol, too, was inadequate, suffering from what the memo considered "completely unacceptable" delays. The memo also warned that quarantining inmates with COVID-19 in cells usually used for punishment could backfire by making inmates reluctant to report their symptoms.

Defendants were informed of the memo but did not adopt its recommendations. For one, Defendants placed sick inmates in solitary confinement, which discouraged inmates from reporting their symptoms—just as the experts had warned would occur. Prison staff were not regularly tested for COVID-19 or trained on COVID-19 safety protocols. And when two research labs offered to provide COVID-19 testing at the prison, Defendants refused the offers, even though one lab offered the testing for free.

The outbreak continued to spread. By July, more than 1,300 inmates had tested positive. In August, the infection count exceeded 2,000—approximately two-thirds of the San Quentin inmate population. By early September, twenty-six inmates and one correctional officer had died of COVID-19.

B.

At the time of the transfer, Michael Hampton was a sixty-two-year-old inmate at San Quentin. Hampton had multiple health conditions, including obesity, hypertension, and pre-diabetes, that put him at high risk of death if he were to contract COVID-19. In early June, he started experiencing symptoms consistent with COVID-19, including a persistent cough. His condition worsened, and he was transferred to the hospital in late June.

At the hospital, Hampton was diagnosed with "COVID-19 pneumonia." He was placed on a ventilator in early August. In mid-September, he was moved to "comfort care." He died on September 25, 2020.

C.

Hampton's wife ("Plaintiff") initiated this lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, asserting an Eighth Amendment claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 as Hampton's successor in interest, as well as various federal and state statutory claims and a state law negligence claim. Defendants moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim, asserting that all of Plaintiff's claims were barred by Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act immunity. In the alternative, Defendants argued that they were entitled to qualified immunity on Plaintiff's Eighth Amendment claim and that Plaintiff's state law claims were barred by various state law immunities. The district court rejected all of Defendants' claims to immunity. Defendants timely appealed.

II.

"We review de novo a district court's decision to deny a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6)." Dunn v. Castro, 621 F.3d 1196, 1198 (9th Cir. 2010). When engaging in such review, we "accept[ ] as true all well-pleaded allegations" and "construe[ ] them in the light most favorable to the non-moving party." Hernandez v. City of San Jose, 897 F.3d 1125, 1132 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting Padilla v. Yoo, 678 F.3d 748, 757 (9th Cir. 2012)).

III.

Defendants assert that...