Thomas Nolan

Thomas Nolan is of counsel at Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, where his practice primarily has focused on constitutional and civil rights law since he arrived at the firm in 1993. Mr. Nolan’s practice has included consumer class actions, disability rights, freedom of association claims, civil rights actions, attorney’s fees and employment discrimination actions, and appellate work at all levels, including briefing and arguing cases before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and preparing amicus and certiorari briefs in the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Nolan has played a lead role in several complex class action lawsuits, 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 and parolees with mobility, vision, hearing and learning disabilities). Mr. Nolan was also a member of the legal team that successfully defended against an effort by the State of California to terminate ongoing proceedings and injunctive relief in the Coleman case in 2013.

While working at RBGG, Mr. Nolan was awarded a Master’s Degree in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in September of 2014, where he focused his research on issues related to prison policy and mass incarceration, including the excessive use of isolation in California’s prisons and the harsh impact of California’s three-strikes law. Mr. Nolan has lectured recently about prison conditions and civil rights law at the annual Capital Case Defense Seminar in Monterey, California and at seminars for mental health professionals run by disability rights groups. He has mentored numerous law students, attorneys, and paralegals engaged in prisoner rights litigation.

Mr. Nolan has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University, a Master’s degree in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a law degree from Stanford University School of Law.

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. Plata v. Brown, 131 S. Ct. 1910 (2011).
• Coleman v. Newsom: RBGG represents a class of the more than 38,000 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 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). On November 28, 2018, the Ninth Circuit issued two unanimous rulings affirming lower court decisions on behalf of the class.  The Court dismissed the State’s appeal of an April 2017 order because the district court had not granted or modified an injunction under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) in requiring the State to comply with prior orders to transfer class members to inpatient care in a timely fashion, nor had it issued a final order pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 because contempt proceedings remained ongoing.  See Coleman v. Brown, 743 Fed. Appx. 875 (9th Cir. 2018).  The Court separately upheld a  October 2017 order on the merits, ruling that district court complied with the Constitution and the Prison Litigation Reform Act in holding the State to its twenty-four hour timeframe to transfer patients in mental health crisis to licensed hospital settings, as longer waits “create ‘a substantial risk of serious harm’” in violation of the Eighth Amendment.  Coleman v. Brown, 756 Fed. Appx. 677 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 828 (1994)).  These appellate victories ensure timely access to critically needed psychiatric inpatient hospitalization for the members of the Coleman class, and the State’s compliance with the inpatient transfer timelines has dramatically improved in the wake of the rulings.  For more information see Coleman v. Brown: Court Orders, Reports, Photos, Expert Declarations and Media Coverage.
• Armstrong v. Newsom: 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).   The Armstrong litigation has resulted in a series of ground-breaking precedents, including rulings that the ADA does not permit state government agencies to avoid compliance by delegating responsibilities to local governments, and that prisoners cannot be held in solitary confinement solely on account of disability. We are currently working to stop staff misconduct targeting people with disabilities at CDCR.  On September 8, 2020 and March 11, 2021 respectively, Judge Claudia Wilken granted in part our February 2020 and June 2020 motions to stop staff misconduct at six prisons in CDCR.  The Court found that the systemic abuses against incarcerated people with disabilities at—R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility (San Diego, CA)), CSP – Los Angeles County (Lancaster, CA), CSP -Corcoran (Corcoran, CA), Kern Valley State Prison (Delano, CA), Substance Abuse Treatment Facility (Corcoran, CA), and California Institution for Women (Corona, CA) —violate the ADA and prior court orders.  As a remedy, the Court required Defendants to develop plans to install security cameras and use body worn-cameras (BWCs) throughout the six prisons, reform the staff investigation and disciplinary process, and increase supervisory staffing on all yards at the six prisons.  Currently, BWCs and fixed security cameras are in use at all six prisons.  The Court also appointed an expert to oversee implementation of the mandated reforms.  Armstrong v. Newsom, 484 F.Supp.3d 808 (N.D. Cal. 2020); Armstrong v. Newsom, 2021 WL 933106 (N.D. Cal. 2021).  On February 2, 2023, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the September 8, 2020 RJD Order in full and the majority of the March 11, 2021 Five Prisons Order (except provisions regarding increased supervisory staffing and pepper-spray policies, which were vacated.)  Armstrong v. Newsom, 58 F.4th 1283 (9th Cir. 2023).  Relatedly, on July 30, 2020, the Court ordered that CDCR transfer  two witnesses from the prison where they had faced assault, threats and other retaliation for their participation in the litigation.  Armstrong v. Newsom, 475 F. Supp. 3d 1038 (N.D. Cal. 2020). 
• Amici Curiae Brief in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 21-476:  In August 2022, RBGG filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of former U.S. Representative Tony Coelho, a principal author of the ADA, and a coalition of ten disability rights organizations.  The question on which the Court granted review is “Whether applying a public accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment.  RBGG’s brief asks the U.S. Supreme Court to decide that the Colorado’s Antidiscrimination law does not violate the First Amendment right to free speech of  website designer who refused to design a wedding website because she disapproves of same sex marriages.  RBGG’s brief urges the Court to hold that the website designer and her company are a public accommodation that should be subject to the anti-discrimination constraints of the Colorado law.  We marshalled examples of cases in which discriminators asserted or could assert the same defense to applying the ADA and similar state and local disability rights laws to a range of arguably artistic and other public accommodations.
• EEOC v. Pan American World Airways, Inc.: After representing a class of Pan Am pilots on age discrimination claims in a two-month jury trial, we secured a $20 million dollar settlement, which was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit. See EEOC v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc., 796 F.2d 314 (9th Cir. 1986), and 897 F.2d 1499 (9th Cir. 1990). Mr. Nolan, along with Sanford Jay Rosen, drafted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Pan Am class in Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Schleier, 515 U.S. 323 (1995), which concerned the taxability of damages awards received under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).
• Gates v. Deukmejian: We secured a consent decree requiring California to improve medical and mental health care, treatment of HIV prisoners, and conditions of confinement for certain California prisoners. Over the course of four appeals (one unreported), we successfully defended the scope of the remedy, our entitlement to fees for litigation and monitoring, and an enforcement order prohibiting the use of certain riot-control guns on mentally ill prisoners confined to their cells. See Gates v. Deukmejian, 987 F.2d 1392 (9th Cir. 1993), Gates v. Rowland, 39 F.3d 1439 (9th Cir. 1994), and Gates v. Gomez, 60 F.3d 525 (9th Cir. 1995).
• Armstrong v. Davis: After a contested trial, RBGG secured a federal court order requiring the Board of Prison Terms to remedy its shocking failure to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act during parole hearings. The court issued the order after RBGG presented testimony from, among others, a prisoner who required the use of a wheelchair was forced to crawl upstairs to attend his hearing, a deaf prisoner who could not communicate with his sign language interpreter during his hearing because he was forced to remain shackled, and a blind inmate who was offered no help with understanding complicated written materials regarding his rights. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the injunction. See Armstrong v. Davis, 275 F.3d 849 (9th Cir. 2001).
• Valdivia v. Davis: RBGG secured a permanent injunction against the State based on a federal court’s finding that delays in its parole revocation process violated due process protections. The State agreed to improve the timeliness of parole revocation proceedings, to provide probable cause hearings, and to appoint attorneys to represent all parolees facing revocation proceedings, among other fundamental due process protections. See Valdivia v. Davis, 206 F. Supp. 2d 1068 (2002). The injunction remained in place until 2013, when parole revocation proceedings were turned over to the county courts by statute.  
• 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.
• Schindler Elevator Corporation v. City and County of San Francisco: RBGG submitted a brief in the California Court of Appeal on behalf of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, minority contractors, and business associations encouraging the court to uphold an affirmative action provision in the San Francisco Administrative Code seeking to increase participation by minority- and women-owned subcontractors in City contracting.