Disabilities Act Applies to Inmates, High Court Says

State prisons must make reasonable accommodations for inmates who are in wheelchairs or are blind, deaf or otherwise disabled, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday.

The “plain language” of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 makes clear that its anti-discrimination rules apply to all state institutions, including prisons and jails, the court said.

The decision comes as no surprise to California officials, who were ordered two years ago to comply with the federal law.

“We already are complying with the ADA and have made great strides,” said Kati Corsaut, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections in Sacramento.

The state’s penal system, the nation’s largest, has 33 prison facilities. Of its population of 157,000 inmates, the state says that about 1,000 are disabled, the majority of whom are unable to walk.

To comply with the federal law, the state decided two years ago to upgrade or redesign 11 of its prisons to serve the disabled.

“The bulk of the retrofitting has been done,” Corsaut said, and the $15-million cost proved to be less than estimated.

When the Prison Law Office first sued the state seeking compliance, state officials said that it would cost the department at least $50 million to comply.

Nonetheless, lawyers for California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, along with those from 33 other states, continued to insist that the federal law does not apply to their prison facilities.

The high court agreed to hear an appeal from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, but the justices had no trouble concluding that Congress meant to apply the 1990 law to all state and local agencies and institutions.

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“This was not a close case,” said Donald Specter, director of the Prison Law Office near San Quentin, who argued the case on behalf of the Pennsylvania inmates. “I think everyone has assumed the law covered prisons.”

Future disputes may arise, however, over how far a prison must go to accommodate the needs of an inmate with an unusual disability.

Specter noted that the law demands only a “reasonable accommodation” to an inmate’s disability. “What is reasonable in a prison may be different from what is reasonable in a school or a workplace,” he said. “It is context specific.”

California’s lawyers have a separate appeal pending in the Supreme Court, insisting that it is unconstitutional to force the state to comply with the federal mandate. Within a week or two, the court will take up the appeal and in all likelihood, deny it.

Last fall, the justices chose to hear the Pennsylvania case that focused on the meaning of the 1990 law.

Meanwhile, the court took no action on the pending appeal from San Bernardino County concerning the Delhi Sands Flower-Loving Fly and the Endangered Species Act. The justices meet later this week, but will not issue further decisions until next week.