On November 20, 2019, a group of prisoners at Michigan’s only women’s prison filed a class action lawsuit against the state, claiming they were exposed to toxic black mold for years.
After six years of legal back and forth, a federal judge is now allowing the case to move forward into discovery.
Krystal Clark started serving her time for armed robbery at Women's Huron Valley (WHV) Correctional Facility near Ypsilanti in 2011, when she began to get sick.
“I couldn't breathe. I was breaking out with hives, rashes, headaches, dizziness, swelling. My memories. It's messing with my asthma. I couldn't walk,” Clark said, describing her symptoms.
Clark’s ordeal unfolded as mold infestation allegedly spread throughout the Correctional Facility. The lawsuit describes black mold so pervasive, inmates claim it covered showers, vents, ceilings and filled the air.
Inmates described the mold as fuzzy, brown, and black. The presence of various fungi and molds at WHV are included in court documents, including Ochroconis, Cladosporium, Chaetomium, and Stachybotrys.
“You cannot deny this prison is infested with mold, black mold," Clark says.
The Michigan Department of Corrections says the women who filed the lawsuit didn’t follow the prison’s grievance process properly. But both a magistrate and the district judge found serious problems with that process and agreed the inmates did try to report the issues, but kept getting unfairly denied.
"I filed so many grievances, they never heard me on them. They just denied them, rejected them," Clark says.
The attorneys for the prisoners claim prison officials knew the mold was making people sick but didn’t fix the problem or respond to their complaints.
The lawsuit states that by forcing prisoners to live in unsafe conditions, it violated their Eighth Amendment right, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.
It also points to the Fourteenth Amendment, saying the women were denied fair treatment when their health concerns and official grievances were ignored.
The Department of Corrections invoked qualified immunity, claiming prison officials had no clear legal duty regarding mold remediation.
The court disagreed.
“Qualified immunity is a doctrine that says that when plaintiffs sue the government seeking damages, they should only get those damages if the right that they're saying was violated was clearly established at the time of the violation,” says Margo Schlanger, a professor of law at University of Michigan and also the director of the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.
“So the state said, ‘Well, how were we supposed to know? How were our officials supposed to know in 2019 that mold and dangerous air conditions were a problem?’ And the court said, ‘Are you kidding me? You sent state officials into those spaces with ventilation, and you didn't give that ventilation to the prisoners. Your people knew that it was a problem,’” Schlanger concludes.
In July, District Judge Stephen Joseph Murphy III, denied most of the department's summary judgment and immunity motions, allowing the lawsuit to proceed into discovery which is set to conclude by January.
“Judge Murphy recently ruled in an order denying their motion that, in fact, having the right to be free from toxic environmental substances that pose an unreasonable risk of harm is a clearly established constitutional right,” says Cary McGehee, one of the attorneys representing Clark and two others in the lawsuit against prison officials.
The Michigan Department of Corrections Physical Plant Division checks the condition of its prison buildings every year. These inspections cover things like roofs, plumbing, electrical systems, and safety features like fire alarms and fences. The goal is to figure out what needs fixing now and what can wait.
In the 2018 report, water damage was mentioned 48 times at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility. I reached out to the department to ask if those issues have been fixed, but did not hear back.
In a written statement, the department did say they can’t comment on the case, but “take the health care of incarcerated individuals very seriously and provide a consistent community standard of care which includes access to onsite medical staff, outside specialists when needed, and quality medications and medical equipment.”
But Clark's advocate, Jay Love, says the mold problem isn't being addressed. She says Clark and other inmates described showers with mold hanging like shag carpet, dripping onto them.
“I not only heard that from Crystal, but other women who are also inside of Huron Valley also confirmed the same thing about the mold being in the shower so thick, and that it would drip on them and break off their hair, and cause rashes,” Love says.
As delays mount, Clark says her health is declining further.
“It affects me daily. My heart, my breathing. I have to sleep standing up most of the time. (I'm) begging for breathing treatments cause the mold is affecting my breathing. That's how it affecting me, it's killing me.”
Clark says the lawsuit isn't about getting money, it's a fight for her life and a chance to be healthy when she finally reunites with her family.
