Blind prisoner can sue under ADA for denial of services.

Prison inmates can't claim many perks. But the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that some privileges of citizenship apply even behind bars.

"Rights against discrimination are among the few rights that prisoners do not park at the prison gates," Chief Judge Richard Posner wrote in a June decision holding that federal law protects prisoners from discrimination based on disability. (Crawford v. Indiana Department of Corrections, 115 F.3d 481 (7th Cir. 1997).)

The three-judge panel reinstated a lawsuit filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by a blind former inmate of the Westville Correctional Center, an Indiana state prison. Ricky Crawford sued the state for damages after being denied access to the dining hall, library, educational programs, and other facilities and activities routinely available to prisoners.

Crawford's lawyer, John Emry of Franklin, Indiana, said Crawford had been confined to the infirmary as a permanent patient because of his blindness. He has since completed his sentence and has been released.

A federal district court dismissed Crawford's case, saying the ADA does not apply to prisoners. But the appeals court cited a lack of evidence that Congress meant to exclude prisoners from ADA coverage.

"Although the special conditions of the prison setting license a degree of discrimination that would not be tolerated in a free environment, there is no general right of prison officials to discriminate against prisoners on the grounds of race, sex, religion, and so forth," Posner wrote.

"If a prison may not exclude blacks from the prison dining hall and force them to eat in their cells, and if Congress thinks that discriminating against a blind person is like discriminating against a black person, it is not obvious that the prison may exclude the blind person from the dining hall, unless allowing him to use the dining hall would place an undue burden on prison management."

ADA coverage

The state agreed that the ADA covers prisons and applies to guards and other prison employees, as well as visitors. It argued, however, that the law does not cover inmates. "The language of the ADA was only meant to reach people who voluntarily seek government services," said Richard Schneider, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general's office.

But the appeals court was not convinced. "The statute furnishes us with no implement for drawing the line" at prisoners, the court said. "The only criterion of eligibility is that the individual be 'qualified' in a sense unrelated to jural status. Nothing in the legislative history indicates a desire to except prisons or prisoners."

The court stressed that its ruling merely recognized Crawford's claim under the ADA. "It might not be a good claim," Posner wrote. He said the state might be able to show that accommodating Crawford was too burdensome on the prison system. Schneider said officials in the attorney general's office were considering whether to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.