Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Page 1
Ninth Circuit: Lawsuit Alleging Pollution by Stockton-Area Penal Facilities Rightly Axed
Opinion Says Party Wrongly Sued Head of Corrections Department, Others Over Claims That Centers Are Leaking Laundry Chemicals Without Showing That Officials Controlled Waste, Drawing Dissent
By a MetNews Staff Writer
A divided Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday that sovereign immunity bars a lawsuit filed against the heads of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and another agency over purported contamination of groundwater by laundry chemicals at a cluster of youth detention and other state-run facilities, saying that the plaintiff had failed to show that sufficient control by the named officials to warrant liability.
At issue is the so-called Ex parte Young rule, named after the 1908 U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that, while the Eleventh Amendment shields states from lawsuits brought by citizens in federal court, an exception exists for those wishing to sue state officers in their official capacities for declaratory or injunction relief relating to asserted violations of U.S. law so long as the defendant has “some connection with the enforcement” of the statute at issue.
Circuit Judge John B. Owens authored yesterday’s decision, joined in by Circuit Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, affirming the dismissal of the action by Senior District Court Judge John A. Mendez of the Eastern District of California. Owens wrote:
“Plaintiff’s Complaint…fails to identify any direct actions by the Defendants that resulted in the alleged federal law violations. As the district court recognized, ‘[t]he Complaint contains no specific factual allegations’ of Defendants’ connection with enforcing [the federal law at stake]; responsibility to plan or administrate solid waste management; or actual disposal of hazardous waste at the State Facilities.”
Dissenting, Circuit Judge Ronald M. Gould accused the majority of misconstruing precedent, remarking:
“The majority does not acknowledge any distinction between enforcement and violation cases. Under the Ninth Circuit’s violation case precedent, supervision of the agency in alleged violation of federal law is ordinarily a sufficient connection to an ongoing violation to satisfy the…requirement of Ex parte Young.”
Allegations in Complaint
The question arose after Forward Inc., the owner of a California landfill, filed a complaint against Secretary Jeff Macomber of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and Director Anna M. Lasso of the Department of General Services in February 2024, asserting that state facilities located in the vicinity of 7707 Austin Road and 7650 South Newcastle Road in Stockton were leaching hazardous waste into the groundwater.
Forward is itself subject to clean-up orders from a local water quality board regarding groundwater contamination in the area, and the plaintiff said that the youth correctional and other facilities were interfering with the remediation efforts due to the operation of a dry-cleaning and laundry facility that is leaking industrial chemicals.
Asserting claims under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”), found at 42 U.S.C. §6901, the plaintiff sought declaratory as well as injunctive relief and alleged:
“The laboratory samples and other data obtained by Forward’s consultants in 2022 and 2023 show that there is a separate and localized source of carbon tetrachloride and chloroform contamination at the State Facilities, evidencing a release of these hazardous wastes that have occurred within and at the State Facilities while the State Facilities were under the control of and operated by Defendants. Furthermore, Forward’s investigation indicates that carbon tetrachloride and chloroform levels in groundwater at the State Facilities are increasing.”
After the defendants moved to dismiss the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), Mendez granted the request in July 2024, saying that “[t]he Complaint fails to establish Defendants’ requisite connection to the alleged violating acts” and the plaintiff has “fail[ed] to overcome…Eleventh Amendment immunity.”
‘Fairly Direct’ Connection
Owens cited Ninth Circuit jurisprudence interpreting Ex parte Young as requiring a “fairly direct” connection between the named officials and the enforcement of the federal law at issue, saying that a general supervisory power over those responsible for enforcing the challenged provision is not enough to overcome sovereign immunity. He wrote:
“Here, Forward has not established the requisite ‘fairly direct’ connection between Defendants and the alleged RCRA violations. As the district court correctly observed, ‘Defendant Macomber is an official for California’s penal law enforcement agency and Defendant Lasso is an official for California’s general services agency.’ Neither Defendants’ roles nor their particular actions subject them to this suit.”
Declaring that “Forward’s action—at least against these Defendants—fails,” he took issue with, as he put it, the dissent’s assertion that “there is yet another pathway in which ‘supervision’ alone is enough to satisfy Ex parte Young” in cases seeking to enjoin ongoing violations as opposed to those seeking to direct proper enforcement. He commented:
“We decline to disturb the careful balance on which Ex parte Young rests by crafting a new test….[M]any, many Ex parte Young suits have been successfully pursued, and these suits will continue. They just need to be against the right people. This one is not.”
Gould’s View
Saying that “I would have held that Forward adequately showed [the required] connection by alleging that the State Defendants had control over the agencies and their operations alleged to be causing pollution,” Gould argued:
“[T]he majority misconstrues existing law with respect to Ex parte Young by misapplying the connection requirement in this case. That requirement is often seen in cases involving the enforcement of a state law. But in this case, Forward alleges a violation of RCRA.”
Asserting that “[t]he State Defendants’ control over the waste disposal derives from their respective statutory duties,” he noted that Macomber is charged with the “supervision, management and control of the state prisons” and that Lasso oversees “planning, acquisition, construction, and maintenance of state buildings and property.” Based on these obligations, he opined:
“These duties show…managerial control over the…operations at the site of the pollution. By requiring Forward to plead more to survive a motion to dismiss, the majority fashions an unworkable, unprecedented, and unfair standard that is an overly burdensome test to show a fairly direct connection to the waste disposal. Nothing in Ex parte Young or the Ninth Circuit cases following it suggests that the state official(s)…cannot be sued for declaratory or injunctive relief as a result of allegedly violating a federal statute unless the officials have themselves taken affirmative steps to violate the [law].”
Pointing out that “Forward has not sued the Governor” and “instead…has only sued the very officials most likely to have the legal authority to remedy the ongoing violation of federal law,” he wrote:
“Under the majority’s ill-considered approach, plaintiffs will be unable to sue the head of a state agency for the agency’s actions in violation of federal statutes presumably because under the majority’s view, duties concerning control and oversight will be too tenuous to establish a connection to the illegal actions. That reasoning does not protect the public from state agencies that violate federal law to the detriment of the public.”
The case is Forward Inc. v. Macomber, 24-4983.
Copyright 2026, Metropolitan News Company