Coleman v. Newsom

In 1990, Prison Law Office and others filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of every person incarcerated in CDCR who has a serious mental health condition. The lawsuit alleged that CDCR provided inadequate care, in violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. After a trial, the court in 1995 ordered CDCR to improve mental health care, and appointed a Special Master who monitors and submits periodic report about that care. The court then ordered CDCR to follow its mental health Program Guide, and in the decades since has entered dozens of orders. In 2009, a federal three-judge court determined that CDCR would be unable to provide constitutionally adequate health care so long as the prisons were grossly overcrowded, and ordered CDCR to reduce crowding statewide; the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that order in 2011.  

CDCR has been unable to provide mental health care fully consistent with its Program Guide. In June 2024, the federal court ordered CDCR to pay money fines after finding a failure to comply with an order requiring certain levels of mental health clinical staffing in the prisons. In 2025, the Ninth Circuit affirmed much of that order. It was then agreed that the accumulated fines, totaling more than $100 million, would be used to: (1) pay bonuses to CDCR mental health clinicians, which hopefully would increase the number of clinicians hired and decrease the number who leave, and (2) provide supplies to improve mental health care. In April 2025, the federal court appointed a Receiver-nominee, ordering that the nominee present by August 2025 a plan to improve mental health care. That order is on appeal.