Resource: Civil Rights Groups File Lawsuit Against Clayton County Sheriff for Failure to Protect People in Jain from Escalating COVID-19 Outbreak

ATLANTA –Last night, the Southern Center for Human Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ACLU of Georgia filed a lawsuit in federal district court on behalf of four people incarcerated at the Clayton County Jail. The named defendants include the Clayton County Sheriff and several subordinates in his office.

The lawsuit asserts that defendants’ disregard of the known risks of COVID-19 and its attendant illness and death exposes people who are incarcerated at the county jail to a highly fatal, infectious disease in violation of their rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments as well as federal disability rights laws.