Litigation

Lawsuit against Illinois Department of Corrections on behalf of Anthony Gay who was held in solitary for almost 20 years. The state's action not only compounded his torture, but prolonged it and caused him to take erratic and irrational actions, which included cutting himself hundreds of times and lashing out at guards.

Joey Chandler committed murder in 2003, when he was 17. He is currently in prison in Mississippi, serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole. If any juvenile offender can demonstrate rehabilitation, it is Joey Chandler. His disciplinary record over more than a decade of his incarceration has been virtually spotless. He has availed...

The MacArthur Justice Center and the ACLU of Missouri jointly a federal class action lawsuit challenging the Missouri Department of Corrections' (MDOC) systematic denial of potential life-saving medication to inmates with chronic Hepatitis C (HCV).

The MacArthur Justice Center represented the prisoners at the Orleans Parish Prison against Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin N. Gusman. The suit described the inhumane conditions where prisoners often were subjected to violence, sexual assaults, neglect and the denial of needed mental health services. Litigation began in April 2012; the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in September 2012; and an agreement was reached to address the conditions in December 2012. The MacArthur Justice Center remains involved in the implementation of the consent decree, monitoring reform and progress within the prison.

In this case, the en banc Seventh held, over the dissent of three judges, that a mere parking infraction justifies a pretextual search. The dissenting judges warned that the decision gives police the power to seize people for “parking while black” and that “the police tactics here would never be tolerated in more affluent neighborhoods.” The MacArthur Justice Center is challenging the decision in the United States Supreme Court.

Jacques Rivera spent 21 years in prison for a crime he did not commit after Chicago Police, led by Reynaldo Guevara, framed him for murder. The MacArthur Justice Center and Loevy & Loevy represented Mr. Rivera in a civil rights suit against Guevara, the City of Chicago and other Chicago Police officers who worked with Guevara. On June 29, 2018, a jury awarded him $17 million.

At every stage in the litigation against that ban (which the President had often characterized as the “Muslim Ban”) the MacArthur Justice Center ensured that judges had before them a full record of President Trump’s hatred of people of the Muslim faith, his open desire to curtail their rights, and his specific, sustained promise to inhibit their entry to the United States.

In Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, the MacArthur Justice Center stood up for the rights of protesters in an amicus brief, showing that the mere existence of probably cause does not justify an arrest in retaliation for speech. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed, holding 8-1 that at least in some circumstances, probable cause does not excuse a retaliatory arrest.

The MacArthur Justice Center partnered with Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd. and Civil Rights Corps to file a federal class action targeting Cook County’s unconstitutional pay-for-release cash bail system, which results in the pre-trial detention of legally innocent men and women who cannot afford to pay the court-imposed bail amount in their cases. The case, recently dismissed on technical, procedural grounds, helped to catalyze important reforms in Cook County.

For more than two decades, the Colorado State Penitentiary (“CSP”) denied outdoor exercise to all prisoners subjected to solitary confinement, a practice that Justice Kennedy condemned in 1979 when he was a judge on the Ninth Circuit. As Justice Kennedy appeared to recognize long ago, the deprivation piles barbarity upon barbarity. In these cases, outdoor...