California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and two of his aides were ordered to take part in a lawsuit that seeks to reduce in size the state’s prison population.

Governor Schwarzenegger, Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy and Deputy Chief of Staff Robert Gore will have to answer under oath questions linked to the highly debated issue of prison overcrowding - a fact which seems to be the main cause that harms the medical and mental healthcare of the inmates.

The trial was scheduled for November, when a special panel of three judges will decide whether the state of California should diminish its prison population. The administration argued that the Governor and his top aides have limited immunity from questioning, but Magistrate Judge John Moulds of U.S. District Court in Sacramento rejected it. Instead, the judge wrote in his order that the three top officials are aware of many facts and decisions regarding the class-action lawsuit.

"The governor has been personally involved in meetings and strategy sessions with state legislative leaders and others concerning prison overcrowding," Moulds wrote.

California has 33 adult prisons which have the capacity of about 100,000 inmates, but are currently holding 159,000. Measures like sending inmates to private prisons in other states and a program to build 53,000 prison and county jail cells that wasn’t implemented weren’t enough to ease the crowding.

Meanwhile, the state’s prison health care receiver J. Clark Kelso asked the state in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco to pay $8 billion over the next 5 years for prison medical centers. This comes on the background of a $15.2 billion state budget deficit.