Celebrating 50 Years Leading the Fight for Children's Rights

Building the Future
Celebrate a Legacy
Paving the Way
Recent Headlines
A Fond Farewell

PLEASE JOIN US as we celebrate half a century as America’s first nonprofit public interest law firm for children and one of the most influential voices for children’s rights nationwide. We seek your investment in our mission and vision, and in our ongoing fight for children’s rights. For 50 years, we have worked toward a world in which all kids can thrive. Help us continue the fight!

Building the Future

Children in the legal system face a critical moment. We need you to stand with us. It's time to fight for better futures for them. Together.

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Celebrate a Legacy

RSVP for our 50th Anniversary Gala! On May 2nd, 2025 we will honor the legacy of Marsha Levick as we look ahead to the next fifty years.

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Paving the Way

Over the last 50 years, Juvenile Law Center has lead the way in the fight for children's rights. Curated here is a small sample of our groundbreaking efforts.

Debtors Prison for Kids: The High Cost of Fines and Fees in the Juvenile Justice System

In 2016, Juvenile Law Center issued a groundbreaking national report and accompanying interactive website analyzing state laws and practices that imposed financial obligations on children in the juvenile legal system and their families. The report set the stage for legislative victories eliminating fees and fines across the country. Together with our partners, we have relieved over $700 million in debt imposed on children and their families and changed laws in over 20 states.

Kids for Cash

In 2007, a call from an alarmed parent prompted Juvenile Law Center to investigate irregularities in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County juvenile court. Our investigation showed that children were routinely appearing in juvenile court without counsel and then being sent to detention. Law enforcement investigations later showed that two county judges had received millions of dollars from the private detention centers holding the children. Juvenile Law Center brought state and federal litigation, successfully vacating thousands of adjudications, expunging thousands of children’s records, and obtaining damages to compensate children and families for their emotional trauma and financial loss. The scandal was memorialized in a documentary film produced and directed by Robert May.

Montgomery v. Louisiana

Juvenile Law Center co-counseled the fourth in a series of seminal United States Supreme Court cases beginning in 2005 holding that children couldn’t receive the harshest sentences. Montgomery clarified that the ban on juvenile life without parole in non-homicide cases was retroactive, leading to the release of thousands of individuals across the country previously condemned to die in prison.

Youth Advocacy Programs

In 2007, Juvenile Law Center launched a youth advocacy program, one of the first to incorporate youth expertise in legal and policy advocacy. The Youth Advocates have led many critical policy changes, from improving access to record expungement to empowering youth in foster care to make change to the family regulation system. They speak directly to lawmakers and make national media appearances; their resources and tool kits have been used across the country. They have testified at Congressional briefings and met with White House staff.

Operation Education

Youth advocates and staff created an action kit for judges, policymakers, and other stakeholders to address education issues for youth in foster care and the juvenile legal system. Operation Education, combined with advocacy from Juvenile Law Center and partners, led to the passage of the Fostering Independence Through Education Act, which created a tuition waiver for youth in foster care in undergraduate degree programs and provided supports to students, and then to Act 1 of 2022, a bill that creates school stability and support for court-involved students.

Kinship Care – Anderson v. Houstoun

In a suit alleging discrimination against relatives who sought to become foster parents, Juvenile Law Center sued the state child welfare agency for failing to provide financial support to kin as it did to non-relative foster parents. The suit settled requiring eligible relatives to be licensed as foster parents and to receive financial support to care for youth in their extended families. In the years that followed, federal law has radically shifted to recognize and support the importance of a child’s extended family.

Santiago v. Philadelphia

Shortly after opening its doors in 1975, Juvenile Law Center joined a class action lawsuit as lead counsel to end overcrowding and abusive conditions at Philadelphia’s Youth Study Center, the city’s secure pre-trial juvenile detention center. Juvenile Law Center spent more than three decades enforcing and monitoring the settlement agreements, improving conditions, education, medical care, and sanitation at the facility, and placing a cap on the number of youth who could be held at the facility. The federal court decisions in the case contributed to the early development of a body of law addressing conditions of confinement in juvenile detention centers.

Records Scorecard

In 2014, Juvenile Law Center issued the first-ever scorecard analyzing how states across the country keep records of juvenile court involvement confidential and whether children can easily access expungement of their records. The second edition, published in 2020, showed that the majority of states still fail to protect juvenile records and therefore impose numerous barriers on children as they grow into adulthood.

MacArthur Models for Change

As an inaugural member of the MacArthur Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Law Center became the lead entity for the MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change Initiative, an effort to create successful and replicable models of juvenile justice system reform through targeted investments in key states. Juvenile Law Center directed the initiative in Pennsylvania from 2004 through 2010, focusing on three areas: 1) Coordination with the Mental Health System; 2) The System of Aftercare Services and Supports; and 3) Disproportionate Minority Contact.

“After having spent nearly thirty years in prison, I remember first being in shock, then overcome by an incredible sense of relief…  ‘The United States Supreme Court has declared the imposition of a mandatory life sentence upon a child less than 18 years of age violates the ban against cruel and unusual punishment.’ As the gravity of the decision began to sink in, I heard and saw several incarcerated persons - juvenile lifers and others - in a state of utter jubilation. I couldn't restrain the tears from streaming down my cheeks as I allowed myself to consider the implications: the possibility that my now illegal sentence would be reversed.” 

- ABD’ALLAH LATEEF Juvenile Law Center Board Member, Deputy Director, Campaign for Fair Sentencing and Youth

Abd'allah Lateef at LP23
Bob close up 2

A Fond Farewell

On October 10th 2024 co-founder and dear friend Bob Schwartz passed away. It is hard to overstate the seismic impact that Bob's work had on the field of children's rights and youth justice. Please, take a moment to read fellow co-founder Marsha Levick's touching letter in honor of Bob.

Read Marsha's Letter Founders Legacy Fund