The state of Texas spent over a million dollars fighting a lawsuit that would have required it to provide prison inmates with hand sanitizer and soap to fight the coronavirus pandemic, according to documents published by The Marshall Project’s Keri Blakinger. Two inmates at the Pack Unit, a Texas detention facility for geriatric inmates, sued in March 2020 to force the state to provide them with antibacterial hand soap, hand sanitizer, bleach, and to institute social distancing requirements in prison vehicles and common areas. The Texas attorney general fought the suit, and accounting statements for the legal services related to it from March 2020 to April 2021 amount to $1,146,278.
