LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from California corrections officials who sought immunity from lawsuits, claiming they acted with deliberate indifference when they caused a deadly COVID-19 outbreak at one of the world’s most famous prisons four years ago.
The judges dismissed the appeal without comment or dissent.
The lawsuit stemmed from the May 2020 failed transfer of infected inmates from a Southern California prison to San Quentin, which had no infections at the time. The coronavirus then quickly sickened 75% of the inmates at the prison north of San Francisco, leading to the deaths of 28 inmates and a correctional officer.
California now faces four lawsuits from the relatives of those who died, and from inmates and staff who were infected but survived.
“The state had a fair hearing all the way to the Supreme Court. They do not rely on a technicality,” Michael J. Haddad, an attorney for the families, said in a statement after the Supreme Court ruling. “Now it’s time to face the facts. Prison administrators killed 29 people in what the 9th Circuit called a ‘textbook example’ of deliberate indifference.”
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Monday it does not comment on active legal proceedings.
Jail officials “ignored virtually every security measure” in carrying out the transfers, Marin County Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Howard wrote in a 2021 preliminary ruling in the case.
In 2021, California workplace regulators fined San Quentin $421,880, one of the largest pandemic-related fines against an employer.
State Sen. Mike McGuire, who represents the San Quentin region, called the deaths “completely preventable” and said the transmission should never have happened. “I don’t say this lightly, but this is a failure of leadership,” McGuire said during a 2020 Senate hearing.
Attorneys for the state have maintained that prison officials have taken numerous steps to protect inmates from infection, including temporarily reducing the population of the state’s oldest prison by 40%, below the 50% recommended by health experts in June 2020 .
Prison officials said the botched transfer itself was a flawed but well-intentioned attempt to move 121 vulnerable inmates away from an outbreak at the California Institution for Men in Chino.