Victory v. County of Berks

The Women’s Law Project authored and filed an amicus curiae (“friend-of-the-court”) brief in Victory v. County of Berks. Our brief, which you can review or download here, supports women seeking equal treatment and housing practices while incarcerated at Berks County Jail.

Several women have initiated successful lawsuits against Berks County by alleging discriminatory, unequal treatment and housing practices based on solely on gender. Now, Berks County has appealed to the Third Circuit, arguing that it treats the women fairly.

Victory v. County of Berks is important because it may decide to what extent prisons and jails need to provide equal housing and treatment to incarcerated women. Women are the most rapidly expanding population in the U.S. prison system yet historically, prisons and jails have often provided inadequate and subpar housing facilities, medical care, and other necessities for incarcerated women.

In Pennsylvania, state prisons experienced a 44% increase over the last decade in women entering those facilities, compared to a 12% increase in men. (Our brief refers to correctional facilities as either “women’s” or “men’s” facilities because state law separates facilities this way, but amici noted that women’s and men’s facilities may also house transgender and non-binary people.)

“The rapid increase in the incarceration of women, and disproportionately Black women, arises from a justice system that has been applied with sexist and racist biases, and the discriminatory and unfair treatment of these women doesn’t stop once they are incarcerated,” says WLP staff attorney Margaret Zhang, who filed the brief. “Here in Berks County, we have a clear example of sex discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.”

“This unfair and unequal treatment shows how the needs of incarcerated women are often ignored,” says WLP staff attorney Amal M. Bass, who co-authored the brief. “Women incarcerated in Berks County are given less physical and psychological freedom than their male counterparts, and are even at times forced to eat meals while locked in a cell with toilets that won’t flush. Despite county officials’ arguments about cutting costs, unequal treatment based solely on sex is unconstitutional.”

Case Background

The Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Theresa A. Victory in U.S. Eastern District Court in Philadelphia against Berks County in December 2018. Victory alleged that, among other discriminatory treatment, women on work release—inmates classified as having the lowest security risk–are unfairly confined to their prison cells for more hours a day than their male counterparts for no other reason other than their sex and gender.

In January, U.S. District Judge Mark A. Kearney ruled in Victory’s favor and ordered the county to provide her the same freedoms, opportunities, and liberties enjoyed by her male counterparts held at the Berks County Community Reentry Center. Those liberties include 13 hours outside her cell when she is at the prison, no lock on her cell in the evening, and direct access to rehabilitative programs she wishes to attend at the re-entry center.

“Berks County does not adequately justify its reasons for this substantially different treatment of lowest risk trusty inmates working in our community on work release based on their chromosomes,” Kearney wrote in the ruling.

This May, in response to similar claims brought by Alice Velazquez-Diaz, Kearney issued another opinion in favor of women incarcerated at Berks County Jail and censured county officials to enabling discrimination.

Now, Berks County is appealing the ruling.

Fellow Amici

Thank you to fellow amici: ACLU of Pennsylvania, Atlanta Women for Equality, California Women’s Law Center, Center for Constitutional Rights, Community Legal Services, Equal Rights Advocates, Gender Justice, Legal Voice, Maternity Care Coalition, National Crittenton, National Girls Health and Justice Institute, National Organization for Women Foundation, National Women’s Law Center, New Voices for Reproductive Justice, Pennsylvania Prison Society, People’s Paper Co-op, Reentry Think Tank, Sisters Returning Home, Southwest Women’s Law Center, and Women’s Law Center of Maryland, Inc.