Brackens v. City and County of San Francisco

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: August 1, 2025
• Docket: 24-4789
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS AUG 1 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

MONTRAIL BRACKENS; JOSE No. 24-4789 POOT; TROY MCALLISTER, on behalf of D.C. No. themselves individually and others similarly 3:19-cv-02724-SK situated, as a class and Subclass,

Plaintiffs - Appellants, MEMORANDUM*

v.

CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO,

Defendant - Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Sallie Kim, Magistrate Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted June 5, 2025 San Francisco, California

Before: CALLAHAN, BADE, and KOH, Circuit Judges. Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge KOH.

Plaintiffs-Appellants (Plaintiffs) are a certified class of pretrial detainees

incarcerated at County Jail 3 (CJ3), a facility run by Defendant-Appellee the City

and County of San Francisco (San Francisco). After a seven-day bench trial, a

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. magistrate judge concluded that San Francisco violated Plaintiffs’ Fourteenth

Amendment right to be free from punishment by denying them any access to direct

sunlight.1 The magistrate judge issued an injunction compelling San Francisco to

grant access to direct sunlight for fifteen minutes daily to all inmates who had been

incarcerated at CJ3 for over one year. On appeal, Plaintiffs challenge the scope of

the injunction, arguing that all inmates at CJ3 should be granted one hour of direct

sunlight daily, regardless of how long they have been incarcerated.2 We have

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

We review the scope of an injunction for abuse of discretion. Galvez v.

Jaddou, 52 F.4th 821, 829 (9th Cir. 2022). Although a lower court “has ‘broad

latitude in fashioning equitable relief when necessary to remedy an established

wrong,’” High Sierra Hikers Ass’n v. Blackwell, 390 F.3d 630, 641 (9th Cir. 2004)

(quoting Nat. Res. Def. Council v. Sw. Marine, Inc., 236 F.3d 985, 999 (9th Cir.

2000)), “[p]rospective relief in any civil action with respect to prison conditions

shall extend no further than necessary to correct the violation of the Federal right

of a particular plaintiff or plaintiffs,” 18 U.S.C. § 3626(a)(1)(A). “A district court

would necessarily abuse its discretion if it based its ruling on an erroneous view of

the law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence.” Cooter & Gell v.

1 San Francisco does not challenge this conclusion on appeal. 2 San Francisco does not challenge the scope of the injunction; to the contrary, it argues that the court should affirm it.

2 24-4789 Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 405 (1990). “It is not an abuse of discretion for a

court to issue an injunction that does not completely prevent the irreparable harm

that it identifies.” Nat’l Wildlife Fed’n v. Nat’l Marine Fisheries Serv., 886 F.3d

803, 823 (9th Cir. 2018).

1. Plaintiffs argue that the magistrate judge abused her discretion by only

ordering San Francisco to provide inmates with fifteen minutes of sunlight per day.

We disagree. There was no evidence in the record that established the amount of

time per day that a human being must receive direct sunlight to avoid adverse

health outcomes. Attempting to establish a community norm, Plaintiffs point to

various standards and reports that recommend jails and prisons provide

incarcerated people with one hour of outdoor exercise time per day. 3 Those

recommendations, however, do not differentiate outdoor time and exercise time,

and they do not provide any insight into how many minutes of direct sunlight per

day the human body must receive to avoid adverse health consequences. And

3 Specifically, these standards include the American Correctional Association’s Performance-Based Standards and Expected Practices for Adult Correctional Institutions, the U.S. Marshals Service’s Federal Performance Based Detention Standards, and the 30th General Report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Detainees also cite the State Building Code promulgated by the California Board of State and Community Corrections. See 24 Cal. Code Regs. § 1231.2.10. The magistrate judge determined that San Francisco failed to comply with the State Building Code because it failed to build an outdoor space at CJ3. San Francisco does not challenge this determination.

3 24-4789 when Plaintiffs tried to elicit expert testimony on this precise question, the

magistrate judge ruled such testimony inadmissible because it was outside the

scope of the expert’s report. Plaintiffs failed to challenge this ruling in either their

opening or reply brief. 4

Because there was no evidence in the record regarding how many minutes of

sunlight per day the human body needs to avoid adverse health outcomes, the

magistrate judge did not abuse her discretion in selecting fifteen minutes, an

amount of time that in the magistrate judge’s view was “more than de minimis but

less intrusive on” San Francisco than the one hour sought by Detainees. See Doe v.

Kelly, 878 F.3d 710, 721–22 (9th Cir. 2017) (holding that, given various “practical

considerations,” a district court did not abuse its discretion by crafting injunctive

relief to provide detainees at U.S. Customs and Border Protection Facilities with

wet wipes for sanitation purposes instead of showers); 18 U.S.C. § 3626(a)(1)(A).

2. Plaintiffs also argue that the magistrate judge abused her discretion by

only granting relief to inmates incarcerated for over one year. Plaintiffs first

contend that the magistrate judge’s determination that adverse health consequences

do not manifest until an individual goes without sunlight for approximately one

4 At oral argument, Plaintiffs suggested that they wished to challenge this ruling. We decline to consider this argument because it was not raised in Plaintiffs’ opening brief. See Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8); Montana Pole & Treating Plant v. I.F. Laucks & Co., 993 F.2d 676, 679 (9th Cir. 1993) (declining to consider an issue raised for the first time at oral argument).

4 24-4789 year is unsupported by the record. Because this challenged determination is a

factual finding, clear error is the appropriate standard of review. Galvez, 52 F.4th

at 829 (9th Cir. 2022) (citing United States v. Washington, 853 F.3d 946, 962 (9th

Cir. 2017)). Plaintiffs next argue that the magistrate judge ignored evidence that

human beings need daily access to sunlight. We disagree with both contentions.

The magistrate judge did not clearly err in determining that medical

consequences from a lack of sunlight did not manifest until approximately one year

after incarceration. Under the clear error standard, “a reviewing court must ask

whether, ‘on the entire evidence,’ it is ‘left with the definite and firm conviction

that a mistake has been committed.’” Easley v. Cromartie, 532 U.S. 234, 242

(2001) (quoting United States v. U.S. Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395 (1948)).

Here, the magistrate judge conducted a seven-day bench trial and reviewed

voluminous medical records. She considered a range of medical conditions across

multiple individuals that were linked to a lack of exposure to direct sunlight,

including bowel problems, diabetes, myopia, increased blood pressure,

inflammation, headaches, and weight gain. While Plaintiffs point to isolated

conditions that may have manifested slightly earlier, on our review of the entire

body of evidence, we are not “left with the definite and firm conviction” that the

magistrate judge’s finding of an approximate one-year delay between incarceration

and the start of adverse health conditions is clearly erroneous when viewed in the

5 24-4789 aggregate. Easley, 532 U.S. at 242 (quoting U.S. Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. at 395).

Further, the magistrate judge did not ignore evidence that human beings

need daily access to sunlight. Plaintiffs point to expert testimony that humans need

daily exposure to direct sunlight. That testimony, however, does not address how

long a human being can go without access to direct sunlight before suffering

adverse health effects. At most, Plaintiffs’ expert established that an ethical

scientific experiment would not deprive individuals of sunlight for months or

years. Such testimony is insufficient to establish that the magistrate judge abused

her discretion, especially in light of her factual finding that the named plaintiffs did

not suffer adverse health consequences until they had been detained for one year.

Plaintiffs also point to the aforementioned standards and reports as support for

their argument that individuals require daily access to sunlight without a one-year

delay. But again, these reports fail to address how long a human being can go

without access to direct sunlight before suffering adverse health effects. On this

record, we cannot hold that the magistrate judge abused her discretion.

AFFIRMED.5

5 Plaintiffs also introduced various motions in their reply brief. See Dkt. 40 at 17–23. Their request to seal the Supplemental Excerpts of Record is GRANTED. The clerk shall immediately seal San Francisco’s originally filed Supplemental Excerpts of Record (Dkt. 30). San Francisco is ORDERED to file a redacted version of the Supplemental Excerpts of Record within five days that redacts the named plaintiffs’ medical records. Plaintiffs’ other motions are DENIED. See Fed. R. App. P. 10(a).

6 24-4789 FILED Brackens v. City and County of San Francisco, No. 24-4789 AUG 1 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK KOH, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part: U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

I respectfully dissent in part.1 The magistrate judge ordered the City and

County of San Francisco (“Defendant”) to provide daily access to direct sunlight to

“each inmate who has been incarcerated for longer than a year.” The magistrate

judge based the one-year requirement on “the fact that Plaintiffs began suffering

from medical problems approximately a year after they were incarcerated.” That

core justification for the injunction’s scope was incorrect. The magistrate judge’s

own findings of fact indicated that two of the three named Plaintiffs suffered from

medical problems within six to eight months of their incarceration. That

contradiction between the magistrate judge’s factual findings and the scope of the

injunction constitutes clear error.

The majority excuses this inconsistency because each named Plaintiff

manifested other medical problems after more than a year of incarceration. But the

magistrate judge explicitly justified the ruling below on the timing of when

Plaintiffs’ “began suffering from medical problems[.]” Because the record

establishes that two of the three named Plaintiffs’ medical problems began prior to

a year of incarceration, I would reverse the magistrate judge’s decision to limit

1 Based on the specific factual record presented in this case, I concur that the magistrate judge’s decision to order that Defendant must provide inmates with just fifteen minutes of sunlight per day was not an abuse of discretion. 1 relief to persons incarcerated for longer than a year and remand to the magistrate

judge to determine how long a person may be incarcerated before daily access to

sunlight is required.