Coleman v. Newsom, a class-action case challenging inadequate mental health care for California state prisoners, has been ongoing for the past 35 years. Over the course of that litigation, a bench trial was held where a federal district court “found overwhelming evidence of significant and chronic understaffing among mental health care service providers in California’s prison system, rising to the level of a violation of the Eighth Amendment.”

A Special Master was appointed, required mental health staffing levels implemented, suicide prevention measures ordered, and daily fines imposed against prison officials. Yet the California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has repeatedly failed to comply with the court mandated requirements. On June 25, 2024, the district court overseeing the case decided to take more drastic steps, holding the CDCR in civil contempt and assessing $112 million in accrued fines for its recalcitrance in effecting long-delayed reforms.

While the class-action suit has remained pending, the number of CDCR prisoners with mental health needs has doubled and mental health staffing in state prisons has actually grown worse. There are presently around 34,000 class members who have “been waiting for nearly three decades for the state to meet its constitutional obligations when it comes to the delivery of mental health care,” the court wrote.

While designated staffing levels for mental health workers were established by the court, the CDCR has failed to meet those requirements—even after a formal staffing plan was implemented in 2009. As of April 2024, the vacancy rate among mental health workers in state prisons was almost 30% for “psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, recreation therapists and medical assistants, collectively, exclusive of mental health staff in CDCR’ s Psychiatric Inpatient Programs (PIPs).”

Prison officials reported 664 unfilled mental health positions systemwide. “The ongoing harm to the plaintiff class caused by these high vacancy rates is as clear today as it was thirty years ago and the harm persists despite multiple court orders requiring defendants to reduce those rates,” the contempt order stated.

Enforcement proceedings by the court began in 2023 with the assessment of fines if required mental health staffing ratios were not met. The fines were based on double the monthly salary for each vacant position, plus $1,000 per day for each suicide prevention recommendation not implemented. [See: PLN, Nov. 2023, p.54]. The fines were held in abeyance with the district court reserving the option to hold a contempt hearing if needed.

The fines were intended to incentivize the CDCR to comply with the staffing requirements to avoid substantial monetary penalties. However, the court’s enforcement efforts proved ineffective, resulting in $111,939,244 in accrued fines since April 1, 2023 (not including another $13.6 million assessed before that date).

It was those fines that the district court imposed on the CDCR after holding it in civil contempt in its June 25, 2024 ruling. “Defendants cannot meet their Eighth Amendment obligations to the plaintiff class until adequate mental health staffing levels are achieved and durably maintained,” the court wrote.

The defendants argued they had made efforts to substantially comply with the staffing requirements; they claimed ‘”actual and substantial compliance” with the district court’s prior order to achieve 90% staffing levels across all mental health job classifications, because substantial compliance for “various classifications” had been achieved “at various points in time.’’

The district court disagreed, noting that filled positions for mental health staff from April 2023 to April 2024 ranged from as low as 59% of psychologists and 68% of medical assistants to 85% of psychiatrists. “Some compliance with some requirements contained in the … order is not actual compliance with that order,” the court wrote.

Nor had the defendants taken ‘’all reasonable steps” to obtain compliance. Although an expansion of the CDCR’s tele-mental health program was planned, full implementation would take two years and the number of tele-mental health positions “currently planned will not come close to filling” existing vacancies in staff positions. Further, the CDCR had not “taken all steps to raise salary levels, benefit structures, and recruitment and retention bonuses to the levels necessary to exhaust all efforts to fill mental health staffing vacancies.”

The defendants also argued impossibility as a defense, claiming “that statewide and nationwide shortages of mental health care providers make it impossible for them to comply across all categories’’ of such job positions with respect to mandated staffing levels. However, the court held they had not met their burden, as while it “ may be more difficult or expensive” to achieve the required staffing levels, none of the evidence indicated compliance by the CDCR was impossible.

Accordingly, the district court found the defendants had “violated and continue to violate” its order related to mental health staffing levels, and imposed the almost $112 million in accrued fines. The fines will be “used exclusively for steps necessary to come into compliance with the court’s staffing orders.” See: Coleman v. Newsom, USDC. (E.D. Cal.), Case no. 2:90-cv-00520.

The defendants appealed and on March 19, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the contempt ruling—not on the merits but due to how the fines had been calculated. The Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s findings that the defendants had failed to establish substantial compliance and impossibility. Yet the district court did not provide sufficient “explanation or fact finding regarding the size of its fines,” specifically as to basing them on double the monthly salaries of vacant mental health positions. The case was remanded “for additional findings and analysis as to the exact amount of fines that should be imposed.” See: Coleman v. Newsom, 131 F.4th 948 (9th Cir. 2025).

Following remand, on April 2, 2025, the district court appointed former U.S. Bureau of Prisons director Colette S. Peters as Receiver-nominee, “to develop a plan to implement the court-ordered remedy in this case.” See: Coleman v. Newsom, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 66385 (E.D. Cal.). The class-action lawsuit remains pending, with the CDCR continuing to accrue fines for non-compliance with mental health staffing levels. The Coleman class members are represented by the San Francisco law firm of Rosen, Bien, Galvan & Grunfeld, LLP. 

Subscribe today

Already a subscriber? Login

Related legal case