Litigation

The MacArthur Justice Center formed a coalition of attorneys, community organizations and individuals to file a historic class action lawsuit seeking federal court oversight of the Chicago Police Department's (CPD) operations on behalf of thousands of individuals, predominately Blacks and Latinx, who have been subjected to the CPD's policy and practice of using excessive force, sometimes in racially discriminatory and brutal ways.

The MacArthur Justice Center is pursuing a federal class action lawsuit against Orleans Magistrate Judge Harry E. Cantrell challenging his practice of setting high bail amounts without any consideration of the person’s ability to pay or alternative no-cost conditions of release. Judge Cantrell also insists on using commercial bond companies (rather than cash), which require a non-reimbursable fee, a portion of which goes to the court’s General Fund – revenue Cantrell and other judges’ control.

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...

The MacArthur Justice Center represents the Chicagoans for an End to the Gang Database, a coalition of individuals and community organizations, in a federal class action lawsuit against the City of Chicago and Chicago Police Department (CPD) targeting the widespread use of an inaccurate, racially discriminatory Gang Database.