Dunsmore v. San Diego County Sheriff's Department
ADA accessibility claims settled August 2025; other claims active. Report jail accessibility violations.
What this case is about
This is a class-action lawsuit against the San Diego County Sheriff's Department over conditions and accessibility in San Diego County jails. Filed in March 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The ADA Title II and Section 504 claims — focused on accessibility for prisoners with mobility, sensory, intellectual, and mental health disabilities — were settled in August 2025. The settlement requires audit and remediation of physical access at all SDCSO-operated jail facilities, accessible programming, qualified ASL interpreters for deaf and hard-of-hearing prisoners, reasonable modifications to disciplinary/classification/programming systems, staff training, and ongoing monitoring. Other claims in the case — including Eighth Amendment claims about medical care, mental health treatment, and overall conditions — remain in active litigation as of mid-2026. If you or a family member is currently in San Diego County jail and isn't getting required accommodations under the settlement, that's a settlement-violation report worth making. Contact Disability Rights California or Disability Rights Advocates.
Who may qualify
The settlement protects people with disabilities who are or were incarcerated in San Diego County jail facilities. You can report a problem if: - You (or someone in your family) is in San Diego County Sheriff's custody. - They have a disability — mobility, sensory, intellectual, mental health. - They aren't getting required accommodations: physical access, interpreters, accessible programs, etc. The settlement covers SDSD-operated facilities. Federal detention (ICE, BOP), state prisons (CDCR), and other California counties have separate obligations.
What helps your case
Documentation: inmate name and booking number; facility identification; specific accommodation requested; nature of refusal or inadequate provision; internal grievance records; medical documentation of qualifying disability; records of any disciplinary, classification, or programming consequences attributable to communication or access failures.
How to document what happened
Documentation strategy: contemporaneous narrative records from the incarcerated person; internal grievance filings (file even when expected to be denied — establishes notice and exhausts administrative remedies); facility-level identification of the specific access barriers; medical-records preservation; coordinate with class counsel for systemic pattern documentation.
What if you don’t have documentation?
Reports may proceed without contemporaneous records. Channels: class counsel (Disability Rights California, DRA); DOJ § 35.170 administrative complaint; CA Civil Rights Department; family-member or advocate-mediated intake.
What this case doesn’t cover
Outside scope: ICE detention; federal BOP; CDCR facilities (separate ongoing matters); other California counties; the in-litigation Eighth Amendment medical/mental-health claims (separate procedural posture); sentencing or release issues.
Legal theory
ADA Title II + Section 504
Named defendants
- San Diego County Sheriff's Department
Case facts
- Type
- Class action
- Affected states
- CA
- Court
- U.S. District Court, Southern District of California
- Docket
- 3:20-cv-00406-AJB-DDL
- Filed
- 2020-03-02
Who to contact
Check who each contact can help before you call — most of them cover one place or one group of people.
Lawyers on this case
Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP
Gay Crosthwait Grunfeld
Phone (415) 433-6830
101 Mission Street, 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105
For people held in a San Diego County jail. Does not cover jails or prisons anywhere else.
Key dates
- Docket
- 3:20-cv-00406-AJB-DDL (S.D. Cal.)
- Status
- ADA compliance phase; remainder in active litigation
- Other claims
- Active litigation, pending
- ADA settlement
- August 2025
- Complaint filed
- 2020-03-02