WHEELING – The ACLU has filed an emergency court request against the City of Wheeling to keep it from razing tent camps for the homeless.
The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia filed the request for a temporary restraining order January 18 in federal court less than two days after it had filed a similar lawsuit against the city.
According to the ACLU-WV, residents of tent encampments were awoken early Thursday morning by city officials telling them they need to vacate because the campsites would be destroyed at 10 a.m.
“Throughout this debacle, Wheeling has been a bad-faith actor,” ACLU-WV Legal Director Aubrey Sparks said in a press release. “The city ignored to talk about exemptions to the habitation ban for months, created a new process out of thin air this week, and then destroyed people’s shelters anyway.”
The ACLU filed its lawsuit January 16 in federal court to block Wheeling’s camping ban that the ACLU says criminalizes being homeless in public. The group says many of the people whose sites were being destroyed had just submitted requests for exemptions the day before. The City of Wheeling and City Manager Robert Herron are the named defendants.
The ban was supposed to go into effective January 1. City Council discussed the ban during its January 16 meeting, but no action was taken after the ACLU had asked city officials to reconsider the ban. The ban was set to go into effect at 5 p.m. January 17.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit shortly after Tuesday’s meeting on behalf of Heather Corn, who is homeless, and House of Hagar Catholic Worker House.
“We said we would file a lawsuit against Wheeling if officials failed to stop criminalizing homelessness in public and now we are,” Sparks said. “Wheeling was given time to solve this issue and chose not to.
“If they continue to kick the can down the road, then they will be forced to deal with this issue by a court.”
Kate Marshall, facilitator at House of Hagar, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said the lawsuit was a last resort.
“House of Hagar is only filing this lawsuit after exhausting all other options,” Marshall said. “Even after over two-dozen of the leading social service agencies called on the City of Wheeling to find solutions, the city didn’t respond with action. …
“We and other service providers have made documented requests for campsite exemptions to the city manager’s office, as recently as December 2023. Again, none of our requests have received a response. Unfortunately, this has been a pattern with the city.
“We have been sending proposals and requests to the city every year regarding more efficient ways to manage the crisis of homelessness, and these have also gone unanswered.”
In the latest filing, the ACLU seeks a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction halting the enforcement of Wheeling’s camping ban.
In the original complaint, the ACLU wants the defendants to exempt certain locations from the ban or to ensure there are enough beds in shelters to house the city’s homeless population. It seeks an injunction barring the enforcement of the city’s ban as well as a declaration finding the ban unconstitutional. It also seeks a class certification consisting of homeless people in Wheeling.
The plaintiffs are being represented by Sparks, Nicholas Ward of the ACLU-WV and by Alex Risovich of Risovich Law in Weirton.
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia case number 5:24-cv-00010
