JLC, and the Education Law Center-PA, co-counseled a civil rights class action filed in 1996 on behalf of school-age pre-trial and convicted offenders detained or incarcerated in Pennsylvania's 73 adult county prisons and jails to enforce rights to basic and special education programming under state and federal law. At the time plaintiffs filed their complaint, state law afforded all resident children in Pennsylvania, between the ages of 6 and 21, the right to a free public education—including school-aged youth housed or incarcerated in juvenile or adult correctional facilities. Approximately six months after plaintiffs filed their complaint, the Pennsylvania General Assembly amended state law to radically limit the education rights of one particular group of school aged youth in Pennsylvania—convicted school-aged offenders incarcerated in county adult correctional facilities (county jails). The new law required that convicted school aged youth confined as adults in county prisons and jails be treated as youth who have been expelled from school.

Pursuant to an agreement between the State defendants and plaintiffs, the State issued a policy bulletin which outlined school district obligations to pre-trial youth and youth eligible for special education. While convicted offenders in county jails were effectively barred from school, all other convicted school-aged offenders incarcerated in adult state correctional institutions or, pursuant to an adjudication of delinquency, in juvenile correctional facilities, remained entitled to basic education under the School Code. Likewise, all pre-trial school-age youth in either juvenile or adult facilities remain entitled to basic education under Pennsylvania law.

JLC still sought the to have the district court enjoin the state law, but the federal district court denied plaintiffs’ challenge to the constitutionality of the statute, and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.