Tag: federal lawsuit

Monongalia County Pedestrian And Vehicle Safety Ordinance Challenged In Federal Court 

The suit claims the ordinance “violates their First Amendment right to freedom of speech because it prohibits them and others like them from asking for donations…”

In October of 2023, the Monongalia County Commission passed an ordinance titled “Pedestrian and Vehicle Safety Ordinance,” that prohibited occupants of vehicles from interacting with pedestrians. The ordinance also prohibits “any person to stand, sit or otherwise physically remaining within the roadway for any reason apart from the lawful crossing of a road or highway,” among other restrictions.

Mountain State Justice, which offers legal services to low income citizens, filed suit in the Northern District of West Virginia Wednesday on behalf of two plaintiffs. The suit claims the ordinance “violates their First Amendment right to freedom of speech because it prohibits them and others like them from asking for donations or giving donations in public areas where those protected activities were common before its passage.”

Lesley Nash, a staff attorney for Mountain State Justice, said the ordinance developed out of a panhandling ban. U.S. courts have ruled panhandling is protected speech and its ban or restriction is unconstitutional..

“This is now the pedestrian and vehicle safety ordinance. However, just because a law doesn’t explicitly say it bans panhandling doesn’t mean that it’s constitutional,” Nash said. “Laws can be impermissible restrictions, content based restrictions on free speech, even if they don’t explicitly say so. If there is clear animus, like if there is a clear intention to only restrict and ban specific protected speech, that can still be sort of a straight up and down constitutional issue.”

The suit names all three Monongalia County commissioners as defendants, as well as the county sheriff. The filing specifically points to public comments made by commissioner Tom Bloom to outlaw panhandling and donations to panhandlers as evidence of the ordinance’s true intentions. 

Nash said in preparing the suit, her team did not find any instances of anyone other than panhandlers being cited under the new ordinance. 

“We have not found anyone who was in a car donating or anyone who is passing out political leaflets, or standing there with a protest sign, or anything of that nature,” she said. “The only people we have found who have been affected by this ordinance are people who are panhandling.”

Other municipalities in West Virginia, including Wheeling and Charleston, have moved to enact ordinances restricting standing or soliciting at intersections and roadways. 

“If it was the only county in West Virginia that had an ordinance like this, we would still have challenged it,” she said. “It is our hope that the filing of this lawsuit will cause other cities and municipalities in West Virginia to at least pause and maybe be a little more mindful about moving forward with ordinances that infringe on folks’ constitutional rights.”

Mountain State Justice filed a different class action lawsuit against the City of Morgantown earlier this year challenging a similar city ordinance which criminalized the solicitation and giving of donations on city streets. After that filing, Morgantown City Council repealed that ordinance.

Justice: Any State Employee Derelict Or Purposeful In Withholding Corrections Lawsuit Evidence Should Be Terminated Or Jailed

Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia,said nothing was intentional. He said there were administrative failures in preserving that evidence and some people were disciplined.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Omar J. Aboulhosn ruled Monday that state employees intentionally destroyed emails and documents relating to a lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions at the Southern Regional Jail in Raleigh County.

In his weekly media briefing, Justice said if that happened, the guilty parties should be terminated or jailed. 

“When people are directed to not destroy something, or to supply something, and then they just don’t,” Justice said. “I think that it will be a very long and difficult day for those folks.”

In the briefing, Justice referred to his Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia, who said nothing was intentional. He said there were administrative failures in preserving that evidence and some people were disciplined.

“At this time, we have no evidence that any individual or individuals intentionally destroyed evidence or took affirmative action to make sure that evidence was hidden from disclosure,” Sorsaia said. 

Sorsaia did not say any employee was terminated and gave no details on the “administrative failures.” He said he disagreed with the judge on that issue. 

“We will agree that there were some mistakes in that process by individuals and those individuals no longer have any responsibility for future discovery,” Sorsaia said.

In producing discovery evidence regarding the civil suit, the state was ordered to put a legal hold on the emails and documents that were later deleted. Sorsaia blamed an automatic email deletion policy regarding outgoing state employees.    

“We discovered that the emails that they wanted belonged to people that had been gone more than five months,” Sorsaia said. “The IT department just routinely deleted them.”

Aboulhosn recommended a default judgment, holding the state liable for the charges in the lawsuit. Aboulhosn’s judgment will now go before District Judge Frank W. Volk to be confirmed. The defendants in the case have 14 days to object to the judgment and “modify or set aside any portion of the Order found clearly to be erroneous or contrary to law.”

The judge also ordered the court clerk to send a copy of the order to the United States Attorney to consider an investigation of the West Virginia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations.

West Virginia City Sues for $20 Million Hydro Plant Insurance Claim

A West Virginia city has filed a federal lawsuit seeking a $20 million insurance claim to cover damages at its hydroelectric plant.

The Intelligencer reports that the lawsuit was filed this month in U.S. District Court in Wheeling.

The city’s lawsuit claims Liberty Mutual Insurance Company wouldn’t cover losses at the plant located at the Hannibal Locks and Dam.

The lawsuit says one of the plant’s units was not operational for two and a half years, costing the city money from electricity it could have been producing.

It says bolts and nuts connecting a rubber hub to the turbine shaft were broken or disengaged, among other damages.

The lawsuit says Liberty denied the claim by concluding that the loss fell within an exclusion of coverage.

State Accused of Wasting Funding on Unused Fiber

West Virginia officials and a Frontier Communications have been accused of wasting government funding on unused fiber for internet connection.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that internet company Citynet recently filed a federal lawsuit accusing Frontier and state officials of defrauding the U.S. government by paying the company to install fiber that didn’t meet federal grant guidelines.

The newspaper reports that at least $1.1 million in unused fiber was either built to closing schools or county education buildings that already received internet service through a different connection. Some of that fiber was used for less than a year, and much of it was never used at all.

The funding came from a $126 million federal grant from the U.S. government.

State officials didn’t comment on the lawsuit.

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