In Weldeyohannes v. State of Washington, published December 19, 2025, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment granted to the state and prison officials. The plaintiff inmate had a documented history of medical accommodation, including use of a wheelchair because of his mobility problems. Medical providers assign inmates transportation codes, ranging from T-1 (meaning a medical provider believes an inmate can get themself onto a regular transport bus without incident) to T-5 (meaning the inmate requires a wheelchair van or other special transport vehicle). The plaintiff was being transferred to another prison. He arrived at the loading area for the bus in his wheelchair. He told at least one official involved in the transport that he was unable to board the regular transport bus and needed special transportation to accommodate his wheelchair. The officials treated the incident as a refusal of transport. They called in a crisis negotiator. After negotiations failed, they received authorization from a supervisor to use physical force to move the plaintiff onto the normal transport bus. The parties dispute the amount of force. The plaintiff alleges that he was dropped and dragged onto the bus floor, suffering injuries. An internal prison investigation after the incident revealed that the plaintiff had a T-5 code on the incident date, but that the code was incorrectly entered into prison records as a T-1 code. The plaintiff sued the state for violating his rights under Title II of the ADA and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and sued the officials for violating his 8th Amendment rights. The district court concluded that although the plaintiff presented in a wheelchair, that did not mean he was unable to self-ambulate for a short distance, and thus the officials’ conclusions were not deliberate indifference, entitling the state to summary judgment on the ADA/RA claim and the officials to summary judgment on the 8th Amendment deliberate indifference claim. The district court granted the officials qualified immunity on the 8th Amendment excessive force claim.
The 9th Circuit concluded that genuine issues of material fact precluded summary judgment on the claims. Regarding the ADA/RA claim, precedent establishes that disputes of fact over the amount of notice the prison officials had of the plaintiff’s disabilities, and how much they investigated his need for accommodation, are sufficient for this claim to survive summary judgment. They also raise genuine issues of fact material to whether the officials were deliberately indifferent for purposes of the 8th Amendment claim, and whether they used excessive force. Because the qualified immunity ruling was based on a finding that the officials did not violate the plaintiff’s rights, summary judgment on that ground had to be reversed.
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