ABUKAR ABDULLE V. ROBERT SILLEN ( 2022 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS DEC 20 2022
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
ABUKAR ABDULLE; et al., No. 22-15319
Plaintiffs-Appellants, D.C. No. 4:20-cv-07065-JST
v.
MEMORANDUM*
ROBERT SILLEN, Former Receiver for The
California Prison Systems Medical Care,
Head of California Correctional Health Care
Services; JOHN CLARK KELSO, Receiver
for The California Prison Systems Medical
Care, Head of California Correctional Health
Care Services,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
Jon S. Tigar, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted December 8, 2022
San Francisco, California
Before: GRABER and WATFORD, Circuit Judges, and BATAILLON,** District
Judge.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Joseph F. Bataillon, United States District Judge for
the District of Nebraska, sitting by designation.
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Plaintiffs are 41 current and former inmates in the California prison system
who contracted Valley Fever during their incarceration. They brought this Eighth
Amendment damages action against Robert Sillen and John Clark Kelso,
respectively the former and current federal receivers appointed by the District
Court for the Northern District of California to manage the California Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) health care delivery system. We
conclude that Defendants acted within the authority conferred on them by the court
and are thus entitled to quasi-judicial immunity. Accordingly, we affirm.
1. Plaintiffs argue that the core question before us is whether they have
plausibly alleged that Defendants acted outside their judicially conferred authority.
They contend that the scope of that authority is a factual question and that we must
accept as true their plausible allegations on the matter. We disagree. Because
“absolute immunity . . . protect[s] those who faithfully execute valid court orders,”
we must review the district court’s orders to determine the scope of Defendants’
authority. See Brooks v. Clark County, 828 F.3d 910, 918 n.6 (9th Cir. 2016)
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Our analysis therefore consists of
legal interpretation rather than the weighing of conflicting evidence. We take
Plaintiffs’ plausible allegations regarding Defendants’ actions as true, see Ashcroft
v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678–79 (2009), but we are free to reach our own legal
conclusion about whether those actions were authorized by the court, see New
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Alaska Dev. Corp. v. Guetschow, 869 F.2d 1298, 1304 (9th Cir. 1989) (addressing
the scope of a receiver’s authority as a question of law).
2. Plaintiffs next argue that Defendants exceeded the authority bestowed on
them by the court. In responding to the Valley Fever outbreak, Defendants issued
several reports and studies along with corresponding mitigation recommendations.
These recommendations focused on moving prisoners at risk of serious illness out
of Valley Fever danger zones and on environmental mitigation measures, such as
planting grass to reduce prisoners’ exposure to the spores that cause Valley Fever.
In Plaintiffs’ view, these are the wide-ranging actions of public health officials,
which do not fit within Defendants’ narrower mandate to reform CDCR’s
provision of medical care.
In light of the district court’s orders concerning the scope of Defendants’
authority, we cannot agree that Defendants’ actions overstepped the bounds of
their judicial mandate. In 2006, the district court appointed Sillen as receiver and
authorized him to “provide leadership and executive management of the California
prison medical health care delivery system.” In explaining its decision to appoint a
receiver, the court identified various problems in the existing medical care system,
including its failure to screen for illnesses at intake to manage the “risk of [disease]
transmission.” Plata v. Schwarzenegger, 2005 WL 2932253, at *12–13 (N.D. Cal.
Oct. 3, 2005). Sillen later filed a comprehensive plan of action with the court in
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which he stated his intent to develop a “centralized Public Health Unit . . . to
prevent the spread of infectious diseases.” Neither the parties nor the court took
issue with that aspect of Sillen’s plan. Plata v. Schwarzenegger, 2007 WL
2601391, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 6, 2007). Later, in 2013, after Kelso had replaced
Sillen as receiver, the court ordered CDCR to comply with a modified version of a
policy that Kelso had promulgated regarding the transfer of prisoners at risk of
serious Valley Fever illness. Plata v. Brown, 427 F. Supp. 3d 1211, 1229–30
(N.D. Cal. 2013). The court phrased the question before it as “whether Defendants
should be ordered to follow a policy adopted by the Receiver in the exercise of his
authority as head of inmate medical care.” Id. at 1224. The court answered that
question in the affirmative.1
Taken together, these orders show that the court’s grant of authority to
Defendants did not exclude preventative and epidemic-level health care, including
the Valley Fever outbreak. Accordingly, Defendants’ actions were “intimately
1
Plaintiffs contend the court ordered compliance with Kelso’s Valley Fever policy
only because it found a new Eighth Amendment violation not previously within the
scope of Defendants’ authority to address. Plaintiffs’ reading of the order is
undermined by the fact that the court exhibited no concern that Kelso had
overstepped his authority by issuing the policy. See Plata, 427 F. Supp. 3d at
1224. Additionally, the court undertook an Eighth Amendment analysis of the
Valley Fever issue not because it found such an analysis was necessary, but to give
CDCR the benefit of the doubt by addressing the question under the “most onerous
standard” that might apply. See id.
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connected with [their] receivership duties,” New Alaska, 869 F.2d at 1304, and
Defendants are entitled to quasi-judicial immunity.
3. We acknowledge that Plaintiffs have suffered dire health consequences
and that other prisoners have died, while readily available mitigation measures
were not implemented. We held in Hines v. Youseff, 914 F.3d 1218 (9th Cir.
2019), that the CDCR officials responsible for the State’s response to the Valley
Fever outbreak are entitled to qualified immunity. In so holding, we found it
“especially significant that state officials could have reasonably believed that they
were not violating the inmates’ Eighth Amendment rights because the officials
reported to the federal Receiver.” Id. at 1231. Today we hold that the federal
receivers also are entitled to immunity from a suit for damages, leaving plaintiffs
with no avenue for retrospective relief. Although the district court itself is subject
to mandamus, see 28 U.S.C. § 1651; Pioche Mines Consol., Inc. v. Foley, 410 F.2d
742 (9th Cir. 1969) (issuing a writ of mandamus directing the district court to order
immediate action by a receiver appointed by the court), prospective relief of that
nature is difficult to obtain. Because appointing a receiver may create the
unintended consequence of foreclosing all but the narrowest paths to relief, we
urge district courts to play an active role in managing the receivers who act on the
court’s behalf.
AFFIRMED.