Litigation

Terry v. United States—a case before the U.S. Supreme Court—sought to correct the unfair and incorrect exclusion of low-level crack offenders from relief clearly provided by the bipartisan First Step Act, passed by Congress in 2018. The United States reversed its position in this case, and filed a brief supporting our position. The Court appointed an amicus...

After Leon Thomas was subjected to despicable conditions of confinement in a non-ADA compliant solitary confinement cell, despite demonstrated and severe physical challenges including a transtibial amputation, he sued officials of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The DOJ asserted failure-to-exhaust when answering Mr. Thomas’ complaint only to disavow it 16 times during the course of...

In June 2021, the Supreme Court denied our petition for certiorari. The Stewart family continues their fight for justice and to hold accountable the officers who killed Luke Stewart. A cartoon of a police officer beating an unarmed civilian (caption: “protecting and serving the poop out of you”); a clip from a Chris Rock sketch...

60 people—including members of Black Lives Matter – Chicago, #LetUsBreathe Collective, GoodKids MadCity, and Brighton Park Neighborhood Council—join together to file an unprecedented lawsuit seeking justice after they were viciously attacked by Chicago Police Officers at the historic protests against racist police violence this summer. Many of the protesters suffered concussions or broken bones after...

In May 2021, Derrick Jones, Jerome Jones, and Darnell Rusan filed a lawsuit alleging the City of St. Louis and the City Justice Center staff violated their constitutional rights by indiscriminately and excessively macing them, and depriving them of water to their cells. The suit details individual abuses that each man survived, and shows how...

In Abraham v. Corizon, the Oregon Supreme Court will decide whether Corizon and other for-profit healthcare providers are bound by the Oregon Public Accommodations Law—an ADA analogue that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. To help the state high court answer that question, MJC filed an amici brief on behalf of Disability Rights Oregon, the ACLU...

Has an individual who committed more than one robbery at the same location, but sequentially in time, committed offenses “on occasions different from one another” for purposes of a sentencing enhancement under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”)? This is the question the Supreme Court will resolve in Wooden v. United States. Wooden robbed a...

The amicus brief supports a motion by the Cook County Public Defender that challenges the scientific validity of the ShotSpotter system’s gunfire reports, which prosecutors have attempted to use as evidence in a criminal prosecution. The basis of the brief comes from a study conducted by the MacArthur Justice Center, in partnership with the Invisible...

Dustin Lance developed a painful and dangerous medical condition while in pretrial detention at the Pittsburg County Jail. He was in severe pain and pleaded with corrections officers for three days to help him. But they did not take him to the nurse or take any steps to provide the emergency medical care that he needed....

Our clients, Brian Ballentine, Catalino Dazo, and Kelly Patterson, are members of the “Sunset Activist Collective,” an activist group in Las Vegas. As part of their activist activities, the group writes protest messages critical of the police in chalk on the sidewalks in front of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police headquarters and the state courthouse....