Legal Docket

Use the filters on the left to browse our legal docket.  For more information on race equity arguments, use this tool.

Date
1 - 10 of 446 resultsReset
Keeping Kids in the Community

In re M.H.

Ohio District Courts of Appeal •
The trial court found M.H., an eleven-year-old girl, incompetent to stand trial yet ordered her detained in the local juvenile detention center for competency restoration. Juvenile Law Center, The Gault Center, and Professor Gia Elise Barboza-Salerno, represented by pro bono counsel Adam VanHo, submitted an amicus brief arguing that detaining M.H. was dangerous and counter-productive.
Decriminalization

ELIZABETH MIRABELLI, et al. v. ROB BONTA, et al.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit •
Juvenile Law Center joined the National Center for Youth Law and 16 other human rights advocacy organizations in signing this amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reverse a district court ruling that would require California teachers to disclose their students’ gender-identity information to parents without the students’ consent.
Keeping Kids in the Community

J.T. et al. v. City and County of San Francisco

United States District Court Northern District of California •
J.T. et al. v. City and County of San Francisco is a class-action lawsuit arising out of the San Francisco Police Department's roundup arrest of over 100 young people at an informal skateboarding event in San Francisco, where youth who were skateboarding, observing, and merely passing through the area were kettled into an intersection and arrested without individualized probable cause.
Youth Tried as Adults

People v. Malone

Michigan Court of Appeals •

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.

Keeping Kids in the Community

E.L. et al. v. Adams County Sheriff Gene Claps, et al.

Colorado Supreme Court •
Juvenile Law Center, National Association of Counsel for Children and other amici partners have submitted two briefs in support of Plaintiffs in E.L. et al. v. Adams County Sheriff Gene Claps, et al. in support of Plaintiffs' appeal of the lower court’s decision to deny their motion for a preliminary injunction.
Youth Tried as Adults

People v. Eads

Michigan Supreme Court •
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.
Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP)

Feazell v. Bean

Nevada District Courts •
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.
Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP)

Baggett v. Bean

Nevada District Courts •
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.
Economic Justice

United States v. Myers

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit •
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.
Extended Foster Care

S.L. v. Swanson

Michigan Court of Appeals •
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.