## Facts

- Jonathan Michael Castro was arrested for public drunkenness and booked as a pretrial detainee at a Los Angeles County sheriff’s station.
- Castro was placed in a “fully walled sobering cell” with minimal fixtures, intended for intoxicated detainees.
- Officers later arrested Jonathan Gonzalez for a felony after he punched a glass door; he was described as erratic, combative, intoxicated, and disruptive during intake.
- Despite Gonzalez’s condition, officers placed him in the same sobering cell as Castro.
- The station assigned an unpaid community volunteer, not a trained deputy, to monitor the sobering cell.
- Shortly after Gonzalez was housed with Castro, Castro banged on the door and window seeking help, but no officer responded.
- About twenty minutes later, the volunteer looked in, thought Castro was asleep, and saw Gonzalez touching Castro’s thigh; the volunteer reported it to the supervisor.
- Minutes later, the supervisor entered and found Gonzalez stomping on Castro’s head.
- Castro suffered severe injuries, including a broken jaw, traumatic brain injury, and lasting cognitive impairment.
- Castro sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and a jury found liability against both individual officers and the County; the district court denied judgment as a matter of law.

## Issues

1. What mental-state standard governs a pretrial detainee’s Fourteenth Amendment failure-to-protect claim under § 1983: subjective deliberate indifference or objective deliberate indifference?
2. Whether the individual officers were entitled to qualified immunity because the right at issue was not clearly established.
3. What standard governs “deliberate indifference” for Monell municipal liability, and whether sufficient evidence supported the jury’s finding that a County policy or custom caused Castro’s injuries.

## Decision

- The en banc Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment against the individual officers and the County.
- The court held that a pretrial detainee’s Fourteenth Amendment failure-to-protect claim is governed by an objective deliberate indifference standard.
- The court held the right of a pretrial detainee to reasonable protection from violence by other detainees was clearly established; qualified immunity was denied.
- The court held Monell “deliberate indifference” is an objective inquiry and that substantial evidence supported the jury’s finding that County sobering-cell practices caused Castro’s injuries.

## Legal Principles

- A pretrial detainee asserting a Fourteenth Amendment failure-to-protect claim must prove objective deliberate indifference, including:
  - an intentional decision regarding conditions of confinement;
  - conditions creating a substantial risk of serious harm;
  - failure to take reasonable available measures to reduce the risk, where a reasonable officer would have appreciated the high degree of risk; and
  - causation of injury.
- Qualified immunity is unavailable where existing law clearly establishes a pretrial detainee’s right to protection from known or obvious risks of serious harm by other detainees.
- For Monell liability, municipal “deliberate indifference” is objective: a municipality may be liable when its policies, customs, or omissions create a substantial risk of serious harm that the municipality should have known about and failed to address with reasonable measures.
- A municipal custom or practice can support § 1983 liability when it is a moving force behind the constitutional violation and the plaintiff proves causation and objective deliberate indifference.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that pretrial detainees’ failure-to-protect claims require proof of objective deliberate indifference, rejected qualified immunity on the facts presented, and affirmed that a county may be liable under Monell when its jail practices objectively create and maintain a substantial risk of serious harm that causes injury.


Castro v. County of Los Angeles, 833 F.3d 1060 (9th Cir. 2016) (en banc)