Mays v. Dart
| Decision Date | 09 April 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 20 C 2134 |
| Parties | Anthony MAYS, individually and on behalf of a class of similarly situated persons; and Judia Jackson, as next friend of Kenneth Foster, individually and on behalf of a class of similarly situated persons, Plaintiffs-Petitioners, v. Thomas DART, Defendant-Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
Alexa Van Brunt, Locke E. Bowman, III, MacArthur Justice Center, Sarah Copeland Grady, Stephen H. Weil, Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, Alec Karakatsanis, Pro Hac Vice, Next Charles Lewis Gerstein, Pro Hac Vice, Civil Rights Corps, Washington, DC, for Plaintiffs-Petitioners.
James Matthias Lydon, Robert Thomas Shannon, Adam Robert Vaught, Gretchen Harris Sperry, Lari Ann Dierks, Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, Chicago, IL, Defendant-Respondent.
Anthony Mays and Kenneth Foster2 are pretrial detainees at Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois. On behalf of themselves and a putative class, they have sued the Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, who operates the Jail, alleging that he has violated their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment by failing to provide them with reasonably safe living conditions in the face of the current coronavirus pandemic. The plaintiffs assert claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and for writs of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. They have moved for entry of a temporary restraining order requiring the Sheriff to take additional precautions to stem the spread of coronavirus into and within the Jail. Ultimately, plaintiffs contend, they cannot be held at the Jail in a way that is consistent with their constitutional rights—though they do not seek outright release from custody as part of their motion for a temporary restraining order. Rather, they seek changes in the Sheriff's policies, including in how they are carried out, as well as, for one proposed subclass, a change in the locations where they are kept in custody. See Emerg. Mot. for Temp. Restraining Order of Prelim. Inj., dkt. no. 2, at 15-16, 17–19 ().
The Court begins by acknowledging the importance of the issues presented by the parties. The Sheriff is responsible for operating and administering a very large physical facility—actually a campus of separate physical facilities—whose population, if one considers including both detainees and staff, is the size of a small (but not all that small) town. This is an extraordinarily difficult task. The detainee population runs the gamut from persons with lengthy criminal records who are accused of committing violent crimes to non-violent offenders in custody for the first time who, perhaps, remain in custody only because they and their families were unable to post bond money. And it also runs the gamut from young, healthy persons to older detainees with serious medical or mental health issues. Operating the Jail, even under normal circumstances, is a very challenging task that occupies a large, full-time staff of policymakers, subject matter experts, and front-line correctional officers, medical and mental health workers, counselors, and others. And these are not normal circumstances. Fashioning a public policy and public health response to the coronavirus pandemic has challenged government officials across our country and throughout the world, who are facing a crisis unlike any we have faced for decades, and perhaps generations. The task is no less difficult, and no less unfamiliar, for administrators of jails.
This does not mean, however, that constitutional protections fall by the wayside. Government officials in our country are bound by constitutional requirements even when they are dealing with difficult and unfamiliar challenges to public health and safety. Persons accused of crimes who are detained pending trial do not shed their constitutional rights at the jailhouse door. The government has determined to lock them up pending determination of their guilt or innocence, and by doing so the government takes on an obligation to protect their health and safety. And it cannot be forgotten that by requiring this, we safeguard the health and safety of the community at large—from which the detainees have come and to which they and the officers guarding them will return.
In light of these considerations, and for the reasons stated below, the Court issues a temporary restraining order, though considerably narrower than the order the plaintiffs have requested. In particular, the Court declines the plaintiffs' request to require the Sheriff to move certain of them to other forms of custodial arrangements such as home incarceration.
Mays and Foster have serious medical conditions that make them highly vulnerable to complications arising from what has been termed COVID-19, a novel form of coronavirus that is causing a global pandemic. (The Court will use the term coronavirus.) As of this morning, 432,550 Americans and over 1,502,610 people around the world have been diagnosed with the virus—figures that understate its spread, as they include only those who have managed to get tested. See Coronavirus Resource Center, Johns Hopkins Univ. & Med., https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/ (last updated April 9, 2020, 8:38 A.M.). Over 89,910 have died, including over 14,800 Americans. Id. At present, there is no known cure and no known vaccine.
People over the age of 65 and people of all ages with serious underlying medical conditions face an elevated risk of suffering from severe illness if they contract coronavirus. Because the virus spreads more rapidly when people are in close contact with each other, government officials have drastically reduced activity involving person-to-person contact in cities, nations, and economies around the world, including Chicago and Illinois.
Reducing the spread of the virus is, however, especially challenging in jails and prisons. The Cook County Jail is a complex where, at any given time, thousands of detainees live in either barracks-style dormitories, shared cells, or individual cells as they await trial on the crimes of which they have been accused. As of April 8, 2020, 251 detainees and 150 employees at the Jail have tested positive for coronavirus, and one detainee has died of apparent complications from it. See COVID-19 Cases at CCDOC, Cook County Sheriff's Office, https://www.cookcountysheriff.org/covid-19-cases-at-ccdoc/ (last updated April 8, 2020, 5:00 P.M.). While the Court was drafting this opinion, the news broke that the Jail is the largest single known source of infections in the nation. See Timothy Williams and Danielle Ivory, "Chicago's Jail is Top U.S. Hot Spot as Virus Spreads Behind Bars" (April 8, 2020), N.Y. Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/us/coronavirus-cook-county-jail-chicago.html (last updated April 9, 2020, 8:47 A.M.). The plaintiffs allege that conditions at the Jail—including, for example, the very close proximity in which detainees are held in the Jail's housing divisions and intake areas, inadequate distribution of soap and sanitation supplies for detainees, and a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for detainees who have been exposed to others with symptoms of the virus—violate constitutional requirements.
On April 3, 2020, the plaintiffs filed this lawsuit. In Count 1, they allege, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, that the Sheriff has violated their Fourteenth Amendment right to constitutionally adequate living conditions by failing to implement appropriate measures to control the spread of the virus. In Count 2, they petition for writs of habeas corpus through 28 U.S.C. § 2241 because, they contend, they cannot constitutionally be detained at the Jail during the pandemic.
At the same time the plaintiffs filed suit, they moved to certify a class consisting of "all people who are currently or who will in the future be housed in the Cook County Jail for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic." Compl., dkt. no. 1, ¶ 60. They also requested certification of two subclasses. "Subclass A consists of all people who, because of age or previous medical conditions, are at particularly grave risk of harm from COVID-19." Id. ¶ 61. "Subclass B consists of all people who are currently housed on a tier where someone has already tested positive for the coronavirus." Id. ¶ 62.
The plaintiffs also immediately moved for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction requiring implementation of specified preventive and protective measures at the Jail. See Emerg. Mot. for Temp. Restraining Order of Prelim. Inj., dkt. no. 2, at 15-16. The measures that the plaintiffs seek to implement would require the Sheriff to triage medically vulnerable detainees, enable social distancing, provide detainees with adequate supplies for sanitation and handwashing, distribute PPE to detainees, and take additional steps when quarantining and isolating symptomatic of coronavirus positive detainees, among other things. And, as indicated, their motion seeks relocation of certain class members to other custodial locations. On April 7, 2020, the Court held a hearing on the motion, at which counsel appeared and argued via telephone.
The plaintiffs seek classwide relief in the form of a temporary restraining order, but because the lawsuit was just filed there has not yet been a class certification ruling. This does not foreclose the possibility of relief for the plaintiffs at this stage, because a district court has general equity powers allowing it to grant temporary or preliminary injunctive relief to a conditional class. Lee v. Orr , No. 13 CV 8719, 2013 WL 6490577, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 10, 2013) (); see also Al Otro Lado v. Wolf , 952 F.3d...
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