Jane E. Kahn (1954-2018)

Lauded civil rights attorney and mental health specialist Jane Kahn passed away on December 26, 2018.  Ms. Kahn was for many years of counsel at Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, where her practice focused on constitutional and civil rights law.  She played a key role in some of the most significant decisions of the past 25 years affecting the rights of the mentally ill in prison, including Coleman v. Brown (a case brought on behalf of California prisoners with serious mental illness) and Armstrong v. Brown (a case brought on behalf of California prisoners with mobility, vision, hearing and learning disabilities).  

See RBGG mourns the passing of Jane Kahn,  December 27, 2018.

RBGG Contributes to Jane Kahn Prison Law Fellowship, April 15, 2019.

Ms. Kahn was also a member of the legal team who proved at trial that overcrowding in California’s prisons is the primary cause of the constitutionally deficient medical and mental health care. A panel of three federal judges in August 2009 imposed a population cap on the California prison system, which was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in its historic prison overcrowding decision, Brown v. Plata, 131 S. Ct. 1910 (2011). In late 2013, the Supreme Court declined the State’s effort to re-open the overcrowding case, handing Bien and his team another historic victory.  

Ms. Kahn lectured concerning prisoner rights, mental health care in prisons, the effect of segregation and other topics at conferences at USC and Yale Law Schools, Brandeis University and at the annual Capital Case Defense Seminar in Monterey, California. She also mentored numerous law students, attorneys and paralegals engaged in prisoner rights litigation and published and spoken on the issue of secondary trauma in the legal profession.

Prior to joining Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld, Ms. Kahn was a staff attorney at the Prison Law Office and the Legal Aid Society of Marin County, as well as a family law mediator.  Ms. Kahn received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brandeis University, a Masters degree in sociology from Northwestern University and a law degree from University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

She has been active volunteer for numerous community organizations, including the Prison University Project, the Disability Task Force of Jewish Family and Children’s Services, Camp Tawonga, Brandeis Hillel Day School, and Congregation Beth Shalom. Ms. Kahn is the 2012 Recipient of the California Women Lawyers’ Fay Stender Award.

REPRESENTATIVE CASES

• Coleman v. Brown/Plata v. Brown: In a landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding in California’s prisons resulted in cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Court affirmed a January 2010 order issued by a three-judge federal court after an extensive trial directing California officials to reduce the State’s severe prison overcrowding down to 137.5% of design capacity. The order was issued after the judges found that overcrowding is the primary cause of ongoing unconstitutional conditions in California’s prisons, such as the system’s inability to provide minimally adequate medical and mental health care for prisoners.  See Brown v. Plata, 131 S. Ct. 1910 (2011).
• Coleman v. Brown: RBGG represents a class of the more than 30,000 men and women in California’s prison system with serious mental illness. After a contested trial, the district court held that the prison mental health delivery system violates the Eighth Amendment and ordered systemwide injunctive relief. See Coleman v. Wilson, 912 F. Supp. 1282 (E.D. Cal. 1995). The court determined that the constitutional violations remain ongoing in 2013 after the State attempted to terminate the injunction.       See Coleman v. Brown, 938 F. Supp. 2d 955 (E.D. Cal. 2013). Through hard-fought litigation over the last two decades, RBGG has secured a number of significant systemic changes on behalf of the class, including, most recently, reforms to policies and practices regarding the use of force against prisoners with mental illness, as well as the overuse and misuse of solitary confinement. See Coleman v. Brown, 28 F. Supp. 3d 1068 (E.D. Cal. 2014). RBGG also recently secured an order requiring the State to provide emergency access to inpatient psychiatric hospitalization, which was affirmed on appeal by the Ninth Circuit in an unpublished decision.  For more information see Coleman v. Brown: Court Orders, Reports, Photos, Expert Declarations and Media Coverage.
• Armstrong v. Brown: RBGG proved in federal court that California’s prison and parole systems violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 by discriminating against prisoners and parolees with mobility, sight, hearing, learning, mental and kidney disabilities. We secured systemwide injunctive relief to end the discrimination, which was upheld on appeal.  See Armstrong v. Wilson, 942 F. Supp. 1252 (N.D. Cal. 1996), aff’d 124 F.3d 1019 (9th Cir. 1997). We also established that the State is responsible for taking steps to ensure the rights of prisoners and parolees with disabilities are accommodated when it chooses to house them in third-party county jail facilities. See Armstrong v. Brown, 857 F. Supp. 2d 919 (N.D. Cal. 2012), aff’d 732 F.3d 955 (9th Cir. 2013), cert denied, 134 S. Ct. 2725 (2014); and 622 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2010).
• Hecker v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: RBGG brought this disability discrimination class action on behalf of all California prisoners with serious mental illness.  On March 2, 2015, the court approved a final settlement in the case, which includes several statewide policy changes to end discriminatory practices and gives the federal court the power to enforce implementation of the changes as necessary.