Facts

In 1994, Plaintiffs filed a class action under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) on behalf of all incarcerated persons and parolees with vision, hearing, mobility, kidney, developmental and learning disabilities. In 1996, the Court held that CDCR violated the ADA rights of class members incarcerated in CDCR prisons, and ordered appropriate injunctive relief. In 1999, the district court held that CDCR and other defendants, including the Board of Parole Terms (now the Board of Parole Hearings, a division of CDCR), violated the ADA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. section 794, and the Due Process Clause through their failure to adequately accommodate incarcerated people and parolees with disabilities in the parole process. Since 1999, the Court has entered numerous orders to enforce the ADA and other laws as they apply to Defendants.

On May 4, 2021, Plaintiffs sent a demand letter supported by class member declarations stating that CDCR and its Division of Adult Parole Operations ("DAPO") and Division of Rehabilitative Programs ("DRP") must take immediate steps to address their systemic failure to accommodate parolees with disabilities by providing minimum supports necessary for them to succeed on parole, and by adopting other remedial measures to prevent discrimination against parolees with disabilities. CDCR agreed to negotiate significant changes to their parole and transition to parole processes and to include them in a stipulated revision to the court-ordered Armstrong Remedial Plan.

Result

The parties agreed to a major amendment to the Parole Field Operations section of the Armstrong Remedial Plan, which includes the following new requirements: (1) Defendants must require that benefits applications (e.g., Medi-Cal, Social Security, and veterans' benefits) are filed for all releasing individuals at least 90 days before they are released from prison, to decrease the likelihood of a benefits gap during the critical transition from prison to parole; (2) Defendants must provide a clinical assessment for everyone releasing from prison about their disability, medical and mental health needs, which will be used for transitional housing placements and to facilitate a warm handoff to the community; (3) Defendants must ensure everyone is released with a 60-day supply of their prescription medications and all of their assistive devices (e.g., hearing aids, wheelchairs, walkers, and canes), and will replace wheelchairs, walkers and canes that are lost or damaged during the first 30 days of parole; (4) CDCR-funded transitional housing programs may not reject parolees because of a disability, and CDCR must educate the programs on providing accommodations for people with disabilities, and on resources to help them do so; (5) CDCR must provide accessible transportation from prisons to parole counties, and to mandatory meetings and programs, to parolees whose disabilities make it impractical for them to use public transportation; (6) Parole agents must take into account whether a parolee's disability impacted their ability to understand or comply with a parole condition when determining whether they violated parole and the appropriate penalty for doing so.