COVID-19 Summary: This putative class action was filed on June 16, 2020 by medically vulnerable prisoners in New York's Adirondack Correctional Facility. The plaintiffs sought extra protections from COVID-19. A magistrate judge denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction on March 1, 2021.
This is a case about COVID-19 precautions for older and vulnerable prisoners in New York State prisons. Three incarcerated plaintiffs and the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign (RAPP) filed this class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York on January 8, 2021. They sued the governor of New York, the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) and its commissioner and chief medical officer, and the superintendent of the Adirondack Correctional Facility under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA ) (42 U.S.C. § 12101), and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. § 794). Represented by lawyers from Relman Colfax PLLC and the Legal Aid Society's Prisoners' Rights Project, the plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief, attorneys' fees and a preliminary injunction. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants violated their Eighth Amendment rights by acting with deliberate indifference towards the serious risk posed by COVID-19, as well as violating several statutes.
In April 2020, during the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, New York began implementing a policy of moving some of its elderly and vulnerable prisoners to the Adirondack Correctional Facility in Ray Brook, New York. Adirondack is an aging facility that had most recently been used to incarcerate about a dozen teenagers. The plaintiffs alleged that DOCCS put them at risk by transferring them from other facilities throughout the state, some of which had COVID-19 outbreaks at the time, without proper testing and quarantine protocols. The plaintiffs also claimed that the conditions at Adirondack, like cells without doors and a communal dining hall, placed prisoners there at risk of contracting COVID-19. Additionally, the plaintiffs alleged that the defendants violated the ADA and the Rehabilitation act by discriminating against them based on their disabilities. The plaintiffs asked the court to certify a class of all prisoners incarcerated at Adirondack during the governor's declaration of a COVID-19 emergency and a subclass of those prisoners with disabilities that put them at a higher risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19.
The case was assigned to United States District Judge Lawrence E. Kahn, sitting in Albany, New York. The plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction on January 11, 2021. On January 21, 2021, Judge Kahn referred the preliminary injunction motion to United States Magistrate Judge Miroslav Lovric.
Between February 8 and 16, 2021, Judge Lovric presided over a six-day evidentiary hearing on the preliminary injunction motion at which twelve witnesses testified. On March 1, 2021 he issued a report and recommendation recommending that the preliminary injunction be denied. Judge Lovric found that the plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on the merits as they did not show that they faced a substantial risk of harm while incarcerated at Adirondack.
Objections to the report and recommendation are due on March, 15, 2021, while the defendants' answer to the complaint is due March 11, 2021. The case is ongoing.
Jonah Hudson-Erdman - 03/09/2021
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