Posts in 'Amicus Curiae'

Juvenile Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan filed an amicus brief in the Michigan Court of Appeals arguing that Kenneth Malone’s registration under the state’s Sex Offender Registration Act violated the Michigan constitution’s prohibition against “cruel or unusual” punishment, which has been found to be stronger than the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

We argued that a 50-to-75-year term of years sentence for 2nd degree murder imposed on a youthful offender constitutes cruel or unusual punishment in violation of the Michigan Constitution. We further argued that lengthy sentences for adolescents are rare in Michigan, almost exclusively imposed on Black and Brown youth, out of step with the practices of other states, in stark contrast to other nations’ sentencing laws, and do not serve Michigan’s special sentencing goal of rehabilitation.

We challenged the constitutionality of imposing life without parole on an 18-year-old. Our brief argued that Nevada's constitutional protections against cruel or unusual punishments is broader than the Eighth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.

We challenged the constitutionality of imposing mandatory life without parole on a 19-year-old. Our brief argued that based on the text and the history of Section 6 and Nevada’s general history of protecting individual rights, Nevada’s protections against cruel or unusual punishments is broader than the Eighth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.

The amicus brief explains how garnishing funds from small deposits made to inmates accounts by loved ones imposes unnecessary, and wide-reaching, harms on incarcerated people and their families, prohibits rehabilitation, and creates more unsafe prison conditions.

The brief was filed in the appeal of a ruling which found a father neglected his child by failing to prevent the child’s mother from using drugs. The brief emphasizes how rulings like this violate non-birthing parents’ and children’s fundamental right to family integrity and causes tremendous psychological and emotional harm to children. Finally, the brief outlines how this ruling will likely discourage non-birthing parents from being involved in the pregnancy because the ruling ultimately punishes the involvement.

Our brief focused on the impact of pretrial detention on parents and their children. We explained how charging parents unaffordable bail can lead to the state placing their children in the foster system and can even lead to permanent termination of parental rights. We focused on the harms of foster system involvement and the disparate impacts of unaffordable money bail on California’s Black, Latine and Indigenous children and children in poverty due to the deep racial and economic disparities in both the foster care and carceral systems.

Our brief highlighted the unique and devastating harms that youth in the foster system suffer when they are banned from visiting their incarcerated parents in person, including the perspectives of Juvenile Law Center’s youth advocates with experience navigating these harms. Our brief further argued that in-person visits with incarcerated parents are critical to the wellbeing of children in the foster system, especially because visitation is crucial to the goal of family reunification. Finally, we discussed the ways in which Genesee County Jail’s ban on in-person family visits entrenches racial and economic disparities. Our brief details the foster system’s disproportionate separation of Black, Latine, and Indigenous families.

The brief emphasized that children have the right to meaningfully participate in immigration proceedings and dedicated legal counsel is necessary to facilitate that participation. Moreover, the brief argued that legal counsel is vital to protect children from the well-documented, severe physical and emotional mistreatment children suffer while in custody and to mitigate the detrimental impact of ongoing separation from their families. Finally, the brief highlighted research that shows appointing counsel saves the government money because lawyers expedite case resolution, shorten the time children spend in care, and reduce more costly case outcomes.

Our brief emphasized that when determining whether an individual is in custody, courts must assess every custody factor from a reasonable child’s perspective. The reasonable child standard is required by the Supreme Court in J.D.B., which recognized children’s vulnerability in interrogation settings. We argued that properly applying the reasonable child standard shows Kevin was in custody and that interrogations in schools should be presumptively custodial due to students' restricted movement and heightened susceptibility to pressure.