News & Commentary

Today, the ACLU and ACLU-WV filed public records requests with the West Virginia Department of Corrections and the Trump administration that seek information on what the Bureau of Prisons and Governors and Department of Corrections knew about the potentially catastrophic impacts of COVID-19 on their prisons and the communities surrounding them. The records request follows the release of a first-of-its-kind epidemiological model that shows that as many as 200,000 people could die from COVID-19 — double the government estimate — if the federal government and states fail to release people from jails as part of the public health efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. To date there has been one infection and no deaths in West Virginia correctional facilities, according to officials. In response to the ACLU model, a Trump administration spokesperson refused to comment. The ACLU is now filing these FOIA requests to find out what the administration knew and when it knew it, as COVID-19 has begun to infect and kill people incarcerated in and working in federal and state prisons and jails as well as the surrounding communities. We are seeking records that will:  

Technology provides us an opportunity to help students overcome the closure of their schools, but remote learning is not a sufficient remedy unless all students have access to the tools they need to participate fully and equally.

With the confirmation of COVID-19 in our corrections system, it is time for the state to begin offering universal testing to all who are incarcerated or work within this system.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of West Virginia, and the law firm of WilmerHale took emergency legal action today on behalf of the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia and its patients to prevent the state from using the guise of the COVID-19 crisis to prevent people from obtaining abortion care.

A Court has agreed with ACLU-WV’s arguments that a number of documents relating to the state’s COVID-19 plan in correctional facilities be made publicly available.

Although the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals granted a motion to dismiss in a petition filed by  ACLU-WV to free 39 incarcerated individuals, the Court in its ruling also stated that Petitioners are permitted to file the action in circuit court. 

COVID19 could claim the lives of approximately 100,000 more people nationwide than current projections stipulate if jail populations are not dramatically and immediately reduced, according to a new epidemiological model released today by the ACLU and academic research partners.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced so many people out of their jobs, more than 40 percent of West Virginians already had a debt that was in collections. Most of those debts were due to medical expenses.

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