Ahlman v. Barnes, No. 20-55568 (9th Cir. 2021)
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Orange County jail inmates brought 42 U.S.C. 1983 and other federal claims based on alleged failure to combat COVID-19. The district court granted provisional class certification and issued a preliminary injunction under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), which automatically expired 90 days after being issued.
The Ninth Circuit dismissed an appeal as moot because the injunction and provisional class certification are no longer in effect. While the Supreme Court’s emergency stay of the preliminary injunction may have prevented the injunction from having any further effect, it did not toll the 90-day limit unambiguously detailed in the PLRA. The court rejected the County’s assertion that the appeal fell within an exception to mootness because the issue was capable of repetition but evading review, noting that circumstances had changed since the original injunction issued, Given the Supreme Court’s stay of the injunction, the chance that plaintiffs would successfully acquire another preliminary injunction, at least without significantly worse conditions than previously existed, is remote. The provisional class certification expired along with the preliminary injunction.
Court Description: Prisoner Civil Rights. The panel dismissed as moot an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by several inmates in Orange County jails against the County and the sheriff for alleged failure to combat COVID-19. The district court granted Plaintiffs’ provisional class certification and issued a preliminary injunction under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”), which required the County to implement increased protective measures. The district court denied a stay pending appeal, as did this court, in a split disposition. See Ahlman v. Barnes, No. 20-55568, 2020 WL 3547960, at *5 (9th Cir. June 17, 2020). This court remanded the case to the district court to determine in the first instance whether changed circumstances warranted modification or dissolution of the preliminary injunction. On remand, the district court did not dissolve the preliminary injunction, but granted plaintiffs’ motion for expedited discovery. The County then filed a new notice of appeal of the district court’s orders on remand. In the meantime, the United States Supreme Court granted the County’s emergency application, staying the preliminary injunction AHLMAN V. BARNES 3 pending disposition of the appeal in the Ninth Circuit and, as appropriate, at the Supreme Court. Barnes v. Ahlman, 140 §S. Ct. 2620, 2620 (2020). The panel held that because the PLRA provides that any preliminary injunction automatically expires 90 days after being issued (absent further finalization), the injunction and provisional class certification were no longer in effect and the appeal was moot. The panel rejected the County’s contention that the Supreme Court’s emergency stay of the preliminary injunction saved this appeal from mootness. The panel stated that while the Supreme Court’s stay may have prevented the injunction from having any further effect, it did not toll the 90-day limit unambiguously detailed in the PLRA. Indeed, the court’s traditional equitable power is expressly proscribed by the PLRA’s plain statutory limitations, as the Supreme Court has held in a similar PLRA provision in Miller v. French, 530 U.S. 327 (2000). The panel rejected the County’s assertion that the appeal fell within an exception to mootness because the issue was capable of repetition but evading review. The County argued that if this appeal was dismissed, plaintiffs would likely request another injunction, thus satisfying the second factor of the capable-of-repetition test, a reasonable likelihood that the same party will be subject to the action again. The panel noted that circumstances had changed since the original injunction issued and given the Supreme Court’s stay of the injunction, any subsequent injunction would have to be analyzed under the correct Constitutional framework. Thus, the chance that plaintiffs would successfully acquire another preliminary injunction, at least without significantly worse conditions than previously existed, was remote. Certainly, any subsequent injunction would be based on an entirely new set of factual 4 AHLMAN V. BARNES circumstances. Because the second factor of the capable-of- repetition test was not satisfied, no exception to mootness applied. The panel held that to the extent the provisional class certification was proper under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, it depended on, and was in service of, its preliminary injunction. If the preliminary injunction is infirm, the class certification necessarily fails as well, regardless of whether class certification was otherwise proper under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Thus, the provisional class certification expired along with the preliminary injunction.
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