Molar

This appeal involves the constitutionality of the policy and practices pursued by the Sheriff and Board of Supervisors of Orange County of providing minimum security jail facilities with their attendant privileges, including outside work assignments, for male prisoners while denying such facilities and privileges to female inmates. The trial court decided that the practice was violative of the equal protection clauses of the state as well as the federal Constitutions and directed issuance of a peremptory writ of mandate commanding the sheriff and the board of supervisors (defendants) to end the discriminatory treatment of female inmates. Defendants appeal from the judgment.

Plaintiff, a female inmate serving a one-year sentence in the county jail, filed a petition for writ of mandate on behalf of herself and all other women who are now or in the future will be sentenced to the Orange County jail to require defendants (1) to permit female inmates to be housed and detained at minimum security branch jails now used exclusively to house male inmates; (2) to apply the same criteria to female applicants as are applied to male applicants in determining their eligibility for…