The Legal Aid Society, in conjunction with the New York City’s defender organizations, has sent a letter to the Office of Court Administration calling for immediate implementation of safety protocols to protect both clients and staff from COVID-19 as the city experiences a surge in the highly transmittable Delta variant of the virus, as reported by the New York Daily News.

Specifically, the letter calls for OCA to take the following steps to ensure the safety of everyone in the city’s courthouses:

• Provide an N95 or KN95 mask to anyone who arrives in a courthouse without a mask or who requests one and ensure that everyone complies with the mask mandate.
• Conduct all non-dispositive appearances virtually, unless a client requests an in-person appearance. 
• Schedule and locate arraignments on appearance tickets in such a way that crowds do not gather in the hallways outside courtrooms. 
• Reinstitute screening and separation of symptomatic people in custody. 
• Provide documentation to confirm that all detention areas of all courthouses now have air filtration systems rated MERV 13 or higher or place air purifiers with HEPA filters in areas with poor air circulation.

“As disturbing data about the delta variant and the rate of courtroom-linked infections continues to emerge, OCA must take swift and meaningful steps to protect all who enter its courthouses in order to avoid a scenario in which greater limitations must be placed again on in-person appearances,” the letter reads in part.