They denied him a prison job because he has HIV. He sued Delco’s jail — and won.
An inmate at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility won a settlement with the private prisons group that previously operated the facility over the mishandling of his medical records.
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Jailed on drug charges, a man applied for a job in the kitchen of the Delaware County prison. He didn’t get the gig — and later learned that he was turned down because he was HIV-positive.
He sued for discrimination, saying officials at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility violated the Americans With Disabilities Act by denying him the job. He also said prison officials allowed information about his diagnosis to be shared with other inmates, according to the lawsuit he filed in federal court in Philadelphia.
Earlier this month, the man, who was not named in court documents to protect his privacy, settled the suit for an undisclosed sum. His lawyers say the case is an important victory.
“Discrimination against people living with HIV is illegal,” said his attorney, Adrian Lowe of the AIDS Law Project. “What is illegal on the outside doesn’t become legal behind bars.”
Matthew Fry, the attorney representing The GEO Group, the private prison firm that operated the jail at the time of the 2020 incident and until the county took it over in 2022, did not respond to a request for comment.
Fry wrote in court filings that the company and its staff did nothing wrong.
During his intake at the prison, the man told the facility’s medical staff that he had been diagnosed with HIV, but did not authorize them to disclose that information to anyone else, the lawsuit said.
At one point, the suit said, after suffering harassment from other inmates, the man asked to be transferred to another unit. A supervisor at the jail said he could do that if he applied for a job within the prison.
He put in for the kitchen job and was moved to a different cell block. But before he could start work, he was required to take a course on food safety and was rejected from the class by its instructor without explanation.
He later learned from a member of the jail’s medical team that he was denied admittance to the class because he had not been “medically cleared.”
When he asked for more details, prison officials sent him a note that said, “You were not cleared to work in the kitchen because you have HIV.”
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The note, folded in thirds and not sealed to protect this private correspondence, was delivered by another inmate, who easily could have read it, the suit said. In the days and weeks that followed, he suffered harassment from other incarcerated people who had become aware of his diagnosis and began mocking him, according to the suit.
The man later got a job with the jail’s sanitation crew, a position he held for nearly a month before being released on bail in July 2020.
Su Ming Yeh, executive director of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, said federal and state laws aim to protect the privacy of inmates with HIV.
“Most prisons and jails keep medical information private for the thousands of people coming through their walls,” she said. “We do hear, unfortunately, about the inappropriate revealing of private medical information.
“HIV, by now, should be treated like any other medical condition,” she said. “But, unfortunately, it seems that it’s a condition people don’t fully understand, and one people still face discrimination for.”