U.S. Supreme Court delays final ruling on California prison case

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The U.S. Supreme this morning delayed a final ruling on a landmark case on California prison overcrowding. In a brief order, the high court said it didn’t have jurisdiction to hear Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appeal. But the court noted that the state’s appeal, filed months ago, had not focused on a lower court order issued last week to reduce state prison overcrowding. And the justices suggested the state could come back to them with another appeal of that order, which is on hold pending Supreme Court review. The panel of three federal judges based in San Francisco that ordered the state to house 40,000 fewer inmates within two years is overseeing two lawsuits launched by inmates contending that overcrowding hampered their right to adequate medical and mental healthcare in prison. Judges have ordered jail and prison populations capped before. But this would be the first time, according to lawyers involved, in which judges had done so over a state’s objection under a 1996 federal law designed to make it harder for such prisoner lawsuits to succeed.

Schwarzenegger’s aides had appealed the lower court’s order last year for the governor to come up with a plan to reduce overcrowding, and the court’s finding that overcrowding had violated prisoners’ rights to adequate healthcare.

They told the Supreme Court in their appeal that the three-judge federal panel exceeded its authority and illegally interfered in the state’s affairs. But they apparently need to appeal the actual order to reduce overcrowding, so the case is likely to continue.

-- Michael Rothfeld in Sacramento

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Supreme Court puts on hold an order to release 40,000 inmates from California prisons