DOVER, Del. (AP) - The Delaware Supreme Court says the hoosegow is not like a hotel, upholding a judge’s ruling that prisons are not subject to Delaware’s equal accommodations law because they do not offer public accommodations.
This week’s ruling upholds a Superior Court judge’s February decision that overturned a 2014 finding by the state human relations commission.
The commission found that officials violated the law in not providing interpreters and making other accommodations for a deaf inmate who had been incarcerated three times in Sussex County between 2010 and 2013.
The commission awarded Robert Ovens damages, attorney fees and other costs, even after a judge had ruled in a non-related case in 2014 that prisons were not places of public accommodation because they’re designed to exclude access by people on the outside.
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