John Armstrong v. Edmund Brown, Jr.

For more than two decades, disabled prisoners have been mired in litigation aimed at bringing California’s prison facilities into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), the Rehabilitation Act (“RA”), and the U.S. Constitution. In this appeal, Defendants, officials responsible for the state’s corrections system (collectively, the “State”), challenge a 2012 order in which the district court modified the accountability provisions of an earlier injunction ordering the State to take specified steps to ensure that disabled inmates were provided with needed accommodations. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm in part and vacate in part the district court’s order.

I.

In 1994, Plaintiffs, a class of disabled state prisoners and parolees, filed an action against officials responsible for California’s corrections system and parole proceedings, seeking disability accommodations required by the ADA and the RA. After a series of orders in which the district court and this court found the State to be in violation of these federal statutes, the State produced a remedial plan intended to ensure that disabled inmates had access to programs and facilities in…