King Hall Civil Rights Clinic Represents Yuba County Detainees
The UC Davis School of Law Civil Rights Clinic is representing Yuba County jail detainees in an effort to enforce a consent decree requiring the county to uphold inmates' constitutional rights. The case drew coverage from the Appeal-Democrat.
Professor Carter "Cappy" White, supervising attorney with the clinic, cited the exercise facility, medical care, and other areas as subjects of concern. "We're trying to improve and enforce the constitutional minimum requirements for a jail that is overcrowded because the county is packing all these [immigration] detainees in there and not providing adequate conditions in several of these areas from what we've learned in the last several months," he said.
During the past academic year, White has supervised Cody Berne '14, Anisa Jassawalla '14, and Mitchell Suliman '14 in their work on the case, which the Civil Rights Clinic has taken over from California Rural Legal Assistance. CRLA filed suit in 1976 over constitutional issues at the jail but has said it can no longer participate in enforcing the resulting consent decree. A federal district court found in April that the county had failed to demonstrate that constitutional issues had been resolved, a ruling that the county is appealing.