The lawsuit in the state centers case against defendants Gov. Tom Wolf and the state Department of Human Services continues with a motion for preliminary injunction, filed Thursday by attorney Tom York on behalf of the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs cite, among other things, evolving staffing issues since the closure announcement of Polk and White Haven state centers have caused the needs of the centers’ residents to not be satisfactorily met.
The suit was filed with the Pennsylvania Middle District Court on Jan. 29, 2020, about four months after the state announced — in August 2019 — that Polk and White Haven state centers will close in August 2022.
The manipulation, the motion claims, involves the state’s announcement of the closures back in the fall of 2019 caused an exodus of staff members trying to find new employment before the centers closed.
Furthermore, the motion alleges, the state has encouraged current staff to leave, willfully neglected to hire new staff to replace those leaving, and has been providing inadequate training to new staff members to help them safely and properly care for the needs of the most medically and cognitively needy remaining residents.
It has also created a “hostile” work environment at the centers by failing to provide remaining staff with legally required breaks, and by “dictating excessive overtime” and “placing staff where they lack adequate support” to manage the residents under their care, and ensure everyone’s safety and well-being.
“The residents, their families, their guardians, and their authorized representatives are being forced to make decisions as to the most integrated environment that can meet their needs in a purposefully fabricated and manipulated environment that is intended to make them believe that the Centers are not a viable option,” York wrote.
The lawsuit has been held up by the COVID-19 pandemic but, York alleges in Thursday’s motion, also by defendants “not allowing this case to develop in a timely fashion.”
A motion filed by defendants to dismiss the case this past summer was denied by Pennsylvania Middle District Court Judge Malachy Mannion, who has been handling the case since its original filing.
By not briefing their opposition to a previously-filed Motion to Certify Class — limited in scope to include any Polk or White Haven residents who don’t want to go into placement — York alleges the state is intentionally stalling the legal process.
York bolsters that speculation with the fact that the state has yet to file their opposition to a motion to certify class.
Defense counsel, York writes in a footnote to Thursday’s motion, has put off filing that opposition while they await ruling on a separate motion, to intervene, filed by community-based care advocacy organization Disability Rights Pennsylvania (DRPA).
However, York goes on, while there was a delay in the lawsuit as both parties awaited rulings on the motion to intervene and to certify class, a motion to dismiss the case — filed by defendants last summer — was denied.
Furthermore, he goes on, plaintiffs attempted to address what York calls the state’s “wait out the clock mentality” by filing a motion to expedite.
“The Plaintiffs tried to address this matter in a Motion to Expedite, including requesting that Defendants be directed to file their opposition to a class action, and the Defendants’ counsel has indicated that she would oppose further motions to force their response before a ruling on the Motion to Intervene,” York writes.
Ultimately, York’s motion states with an attached proposed order, plaintiffs in the case want a number of things that, to them, represent temporary relief until the staffing crisis at community-based placement facilities caused by the pandemic can be remediated.
The proposed order would require the state to immediately work toward restoring staffing levels to what they were before the closure announcement.
It calls for immediate training for all staff that is both consistent with professional standards and in compliance with regulations governing the appropriate care of intellectually disabled and developmentally disabled individuals.
The proposed order would require the state to develop a plan to retain the staff it has, immediately stop dictating “coercive and excessive” overtime, and begin investigating and reporting rates of injury, abuse, and increases in behavioral problems since the August 2019 closure announcements.
Furthermore, it requires the state “immediately stop referring to an arbitrary and unrealistic” closure date of August 2022.
