Prison staffing levels will be issue on DOJ lawsuit
A federal judge said prison staffing levels can remain an issue in the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Alabama but said federal officials must provide more details behind some of their allegations. U.S. District Judge David Proctor, in a mixed ruling for the state Friday, agreed with state lawyers that the Justice Department’s allegations of unsafe and unsanitary conditions were overly broad. But the judge refused Alabama’s request to dismiss staffing issues from the litigation. The U.S. Department of Justice last year sued Alabama, saying state prisons violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment because of high levels of inmate-on-inmate violence, excessive use of force by correctional staff, and unsafe and unsanitary conditions. The Friday ruling came after lawyers for Alabama sought to dismiss the claims related to “unsafe and unsanitary conditions and correctional staffing.” Alabama had sought to dismiss the staffing issue because the state faces a separate court order in another lawsuit to increase the number of guards working in state prisons. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, in an ongoing lawsuit over inmate mental health care, ordered Alabama to increase prison staffing. “These correctional staffing concerns duplicate issues that the Braggs Court (mental health case) already addressed and will soon fully and finally address in its final remedial order,” lawyers for the state wrote in a court filing. Proctor wrote the mental health case does not have a “preclusive effect.” He said the Justice Department can continue to allege that understaffing is a “contributing factor” to the problems in state prisons. However, the judge ruled the Justice Department’s earlier filing was an overly broad “shotgun pleading” and asked federal officials to provide additional details within 45 days. He directed the Justice Department to separate allegations by facility, such as asserting which facilities “fail to provide safe and sanitary conditions,” such as having defective locks or inadequate camera surveillance. He said the Justice Department must file the amended complaint within 45 days. The state is embarking on a massive prison construction project. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and lawmakers recently approved a plan to build two new 4,000-bed prisons and a new women’s prison and renovate other facilities. Six current facilities would close. The $1.3 billion plan will use $400 million of state funds from the federal COVID-19 relief bill called the American Rescue Plan. The Justice Department noted in an earlier report that dilapidated facilities were a contributing factor to the unconstitutional conditions but wrote “new facilities alone will not resolve” the matter because of problems in culture, management deficiencies, corruption, violence, and other problems. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
In U-turn, feds defend including undocumented in House count
In a reversal of policy under then-President Donald Trump, Biden administration attorneys are arguing that the state of Alabama has no standing in trying to stop the U.S. Census Bureau from including people in the country illegally from the numbers used for divvying up congressional seats. A federal judge should dismiss a lawsuit from Alabama and Republican U.S. Rep. Morris “Mo” Brooks seeking the exclusion of people in the country illegally from the apportionment numbers, attorneys for President Joe Biden’s administration said in court papers Wednesday. At the very least, the judge should put the court case on hold until the Census Bureau releases apportionment figures by the end of April that will show whether Alabama keeps seven congressional seats or drops to six, they said. “The possibility that Alabama might receive only six House seats is, by definition, contingent and speculative,” Biden administration attorneys said. “After all, Alabama might well retain seven House seats regardless of whether undocumented immigrants are included in the apportionment base.” A lot has happened since Alabama first filed the lawsuit in 2018 in a preemptive move to save the state from losing a congressional seat during the process in which the House of Representatives’ 435 voting seats are divided up among the states based on a population count conducted during the once-a-decade census. Last year, Trump issued a memorandum that aligned his administration’s position with Alabama’s efforts to exclude people in the country illegally from the apportionment count. After the memorandum was challenged in multiple lawsuits, the Supreme Court ruled it was premature to decide on its legality because it wasn’t yet clear how many people would be excluded and whether the division of House seats would be affected. Finally, on his first day in office last month, Biden rescinded Trump’s memorandum, as well as a Trump order directing the Census Bureau to produce citizenship data. With all that going on, the judge in the Alabama case wanted an update this week on how to proceed from all sides, including several states and civil rights groups that are fighting Alabama’s efforts and say any harm to the Cotton State is too speculative at this point. The Alabama case is the last one pending over whether people in the U.S. illegally can be excluded from the apportionment count. The Justice Department asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit two years ago. But it was well before Trump issued his memorandum on apportionment, putting Department of Justice attorneys in the awkward spot of defending a position in opposition to administration policy. But U.S. District Judge David Proctor allowed the case to proceed. After Trump issued his memo last July, the Alabama case was placed on hold until the Supreme Court could rule on the memo’s challenges in other lawsuits. Biden’s order has nullified Alabama’s challenge to a Census Bureau rule that says people should be counted where they live and sleep most of the time since the new president’s directive requires the apportionment count to include the total number of people living in each state regardless of immigration status, Biden administration attorneys said. If Alabama wants to continue the case, a three-judge panel needs to be appointed since it will present a challenge to the constitutionality of the apportionment process, they said. Alabama said in court papers this month that Biden’s order puts the state at risk of losing political representation. Rather than challenging the apportionment process, Alabama is merely challenging Census Bureau operations, so it’s unlike the earlier case in which the Supreme Court ruled a challenge was premature, attorneys for Alabama said. “What is more, the States holding disproportionately more illegal aliens than Alabama are the very states threatening Alabama’s representation,” attorneys for Alabama said. Any ruling would only affect the numbers used for dividing up congressional seats among the seats and not affect other ways the 2020 census figures are used, such as the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
