On July 16, 2014, a male prisoner in the custody of the California Department of Corrections filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the California government. The plaintiff, represented by private counsel, asked the for declaratory and injunctive relief, claiming that California's blanket exclusion of male prisoners from the Alternative Custody Program (ACP) violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The ACP is a community-based program aimed at reuniting low-level offenders with their families and providing inmates with rehabilitative services within the community. The plaintiff is a male prisoner with two children and an ailing mother with Stage IV colon cancer whom he wished to care for. He filed the lawsuit and requested a preliminary injunction, because he was rejected by CDCR from participating in the program for no other reason than that he is a man.

As originally enacted by the Legislature in 2010, the ACP could have been open to at least some men, although men would still have been required to be "primary caregivers of dependent children ... immediately prior to incarceration" while women applicants faced no such restriction. Nonetheless, when CDCR began offering the ACP in 2011, it limited access to female inmates and excluded all men. The Governor subsequently signed a statutory amendment writing this discrimination into law.

The case is currently ongoing as of August 4, 2014.

Jessica Kincaid - 08/04/2014


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