Legal Docket

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1 - 10 of 443 resultsReset
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.

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.
Economic Justice

In re Torres on H.C.

California Supreme Court •
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.
Youth Interrogations & Access to Counsel

In re K.R.C.

Wisconsin Supreme Court •
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.
Youth Tried as Adults

Castaner v. State

Wyoming Supreme Court •
We argue that a lengthy term of years sentence of 42-to-75 years imposed on a 15-year-old violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. We further argued that Mr. Castaner’s 42-year minimum sentence not only exceeds other Wyoming sentences but also exceeds the maximum sentence allowed for second-degree murder in most jurisdictions across the country and exceeds the maximum term of imprisonment permitted before parole eligibility – 25 years – under Wyoming law for a life sentence for first-degree murder, making his 42-year minimum sentence for second-degree murder disproportionate and arbitrary in violation of the Eighth Amendment.