A federal judge declined Friday the state’s request to dismiss a lawsuit brought by West Virginia’s largest overdose prevention group, Solutions Oriented Addiction Response of West Virginia (SOAR.)
The group is suing to overturn the state’s nearly 20-year-old moratorium on new methadone clinics. The ruling allows the case to proceed.
Access to methadone is critical for people living with opioid use disorder, allowing people who use drugs like fentanyl to begin recovery treatment without dangerous withdrawal, a statement from SOAR said.
More than 12,000 people have died from an opioid overdose in West Virginia over the last two decades. But there are only nine methadone clinics across the state. Many people have to travel long distances to get to a clinic.
“[A]s SOAR-WV has alleged the lack of methadone treatment centers has made it more difficult and time consuming to connect individual users to treatment, it necessarily follows that it is spending more of its resources on each individual referral. Therefore, the Court has little difficulty finding that SOAR-WV has sufficiently alleged a direct connection between the moratorium and zoning restrictions and injury to its mission,” wrote U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers in his order.
The lawsuit is being brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of West Virginia, and Kaplan & Grady. It argues that the moratorium violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, because people with opioid use disorder – a recognized disability under federal law – are unable to receive the essential rehabilitation services they need.
“West Virginia’s moratorium is denying people with opioid use disorder the ability to receive lifesaving healthcare. This isn’t just dangerous and inhumane, it’s discriminatory and illegal,” Joseph Longley, staff attorney with the ACLU Disability Rights Program, said. “We look forward to proving that in court.”
“This ruling is a critical step toward ending West Virginia’s discriminatory barriers to addiction treatment,” David Howard Sinkman of Kaplan & Grady, said. “Methadone is essential for treating opioid use disorder and particularly important in the fentanyl era. People need access to treatment, not government restrictions that put their lives at risk.”
Read the court’s ruling allowing the case to proceed here.
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