On January 29, 2010, prisoners in the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) who were deaf or hard of hearing filed this class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, and Virginia state law against Virginia state agencies, departments, and employees thereof. The plaintiffs, represented by the Washington Lawyers Committee and private counsel, asked the court for declaratory and injunctive relief and damages, claiming that the defendants refused to comply with state and federal laws protecting the rights of the plaintiffs. Specifically, the plaintiffs claimed that the defendants failed to provide adequate access to qualified sign language interpreters, adequate notification of daily events and safety announcements, and adequate means to communicate with individuals outside of prison.
On April 13, 2010, the plaintiffs filed the first amended class action complaint.
On May 11, 2010, Judge Ellis allowed the plaintiffs to voluntarily dismiss several counts of their plaintiffs' first complaint. On June 21, 2010, the plaintiffs entered a stipulation for voluntary dismissal of three of the individual defendants.
On September 14, 2010, the plaintiffs and the medical provider defendants reached a private settlement agreement in which the defendants agreed to pay a total of $37,500 to the plaintiffs and to the plaintiffs' attorneys and to amend policies to ensure protection of the rights of the plaintiffs.
On November 15, 2010, the parties entered a stipulation of voluntary conditional dismissal for all claims. The defendants agreed to ensure that deaf inmates would no longer be discriminated against and the plaintiffs agreed to dismiss all remaining claims. The settlement covered a wide variety of issues, including general policies, initial classification, assessment and assignment, housing, provision of auxiliary aids and services, qualifications and use of sign language interpreters, additional communications, disciplinary matters, visual alert notifications, telecommunication devices, training, and monitoring and compliance.
The settlement permitted the Virginia Department of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing to have access to each prison that housed a deaf/HOH prisoner, twice a year for five years. In addition, Plaintiffs' counsel got similar access, annually, for two years.
If the defendants failed to comply, the agreement allowed plaintiffs to move for reinstatement of the lawsuit, or to proceed in state court and seek specific performance of the agreement. The agreement remained in effect, according to the order entering it, through October 18, 2015.
On October 27, 2014, about a year before the settlement term ended, the plaintiffs filed a motion to reinstate the action, alleging systemic noncompliance with the agreement. The instigating event was when nearly all the deaf prisoners were moved from Powhatan Correction Center, which had been fairly well equipped for them, to the Greensville Correctional Center, which was not. Over the next several months, the plaintiffs' counsel did several prison visits and negotiated further, and then withdrew the motion to reinstate. (One plaintiff disagreed, and there was some litigation over his role and status, where he was separately represented and his lawyer did some prison visits/negotiation. This ended up in him withdrawing his disagreement in March 2016.)
There was no extension of the agreement term, and the last substantive item on the docket is the March 2016 withdrawal, so presumably the case is closed.
Jessica Kincaid - 05/16/2019
compress summary
