Practices
Related Practices
In this appeal, the Pepperdine University School of Law Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic and Horvitz & Levy LLP represented plaintiff Ricky Gonzales, a prisoner at Pelican Bay State Prison. Gonzales brought a civil rights lawsuit in federal district court against the California Department of Corrections, challenging the conditions of his solitary confinement. The district court dismissed all of Gonzales’s claims and also denied him leave to file an amended complaint. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed in part, holding that the district court erred in dismissing Gonzales’s claim challenging the constitutionality of the debriefing process, the process by which a prisoner can earn release back into the prison’s general population. The Ninth Circuit also reversed the district court’s denial of Gonzales’s motion to amend his complaint.