High Court Hears California Prison Case

The U.S. Supreme Court, hearing arguments in an unusual segregation case, challenged California state lawyers Tuesday over a prison policy that separates inmates by race for their first 60 days behind bars.

The case puts in conflict two principles of law. One is that the government may not practice racial segregation. The other is that judges should defer to prison wardens on how to manage their inmates.

Last year, state prison officials said, they processed 110,000 new inmates at seven “reception centers.” Because California has a history of violent, race-based gangs -- inside and outside the prisons -- the officials said they housed new inmates with people of the same race as a precaution.

This is “simply the officials’ first cut at separating potentially dangerous enemies from one another,” lawyers for California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer told the court. Once the new inmates are evaluated, they are housed in permanent cells without regard to race, the lawyers said.

Prison officials stressed that integration is the rule when it comes to jobs, meals and recreation within the facilities.

But several justices questioned the need for initial segregation. Housing a black inmate with another black inmate might cause the two to ally themselves with a black prison gang, rather than prevent it, said Justice John Paul Stevens.

Garrison Johnson, an African American inmate convicted of murder and assault in 1987, sued to challenge the segregation policy after he had been moved to several prisons. At each one -- Chino, Folsom and Calipatria -- he was initially put in a cell with another black inmate.

Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his claim that this policy was unconstitutional and said it was deferring to the judgment of prison managers.

Los Angeles lawyer Bert H. Deixler, representing Johnson, urged the justices to strike down the state’s policy. The nation has turned away from “the road of segregation, and there should be no turning back,” he said.

He noted that the high court has said on many occasions that race-based decision making by the government nearly always violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of the “equal protection of the laws.” Bush administration lawyers joined the case on Johnson’s side. They said racial discrimination was prohibited in the federal prisons, and they said the same rule should apply in the states.

Acting Solicitor Gen. Paul Clement reminded the court that the nation has a “pernicious history” of racial discrimination, including black chain gangs.

In recent years, justices have been divided on the issue of race, but sometimes in contradictory ways.

The court’s conservatives, led by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, have insisted that the states may not use race as a decision-making factor, including in college affirmative-action programs.

But Tuesday, Scalia spoke in defense of California’s policy, arguing that prisoners do not have the same rights as others. Thomas said nothing during the argument.

The liberal justices, including Stevens and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter, have said states may use race as a factor in drawing electoral districts or in college admissions. During Tuesday’s argument, they sounded as though they would vote to strike down the state’s prison policy.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer and was not at the argument. However, he has reserved the right to participate in the decision in the case of Johnson vs. California.