What’s at Stake The case raises important questions about the impact prohibitive court filing fees have on the ability of people who are incarcerated to access the civil legal system. We are increasingly seeing court fees and other costs used to suppress people’s constitutional right to petition the courts. Summary This appeal arises from Appellants…
What’s at stake: Whether the court, sheriff, and county can continue to keep people locked in jail in Riverside County based on their nonpayment of bail with no consideration of their ability to pay, a practice multiple other courts in California have already ruled unconstitutional. And whether people arrested in Riverside County must wait up…
What’s at stake In its attempt to shroud its actions in secrecy, the Trump administration has invoked state-secrecy or national-security concerns in many of its ongoing lawsuits. Public Justice is representing Fix the Court as a proposed intervenor in Abrego-Garcia v. Noem to demand that the hearings concerning the administration’s decision-making around ICE’s troubling abductions…
In the Eastern District of Michigan, our Access to Justice team is challenging another aspect of the profit-driven conspiracy between prison telecom company Securus and St. Clair County, Michigan to exploit incarcerated people and their families: restricting access to U.S. mail in favor of expensive messaging products provided by Securus. As in our Right to…
Port Huron, St. Clair County, MI: Right 2 Hug Across the United States, hundreds of jails have eliminated in-person family visits over the last decade. The policy change has devastating consequences for the people who are incarcerated, for their children and loved ones, and for public safety generally. Why has this happened? The answer highlights…
Flint, Genesee County, MI: Right 2 Hug Across the United States, hundreds of jails have eliminated in-person family visits over the last decade. The policy change has devastating consequences for the people who are incarcerated, for their children and loved ones, and for public safety generally. Why has this happened? The answer highlights a profound…
When local businesses and a neighborhood association sued Tucson, AZ, to try to force the city to sweep unhoused people from their neighborhood, the Public Justice Debtors’ Prison Project, alongside the National Homelessness Law Center and local counsel at the Law Office of Paul Gattone, sought to intervene on behalf of community organizations that serve…
Public Justice is appellate co-counsel in Moore v. LaSalle Management, an appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in this action on behalf of the surviving family members of Erie Moore, who was beaten to death by guards at a for-profit prison in Louisiana. The facts of the case are horrific.…
Carter is a putative class action brought on behalf of low-income municipal court defendants in Montgomery who were jailed when they could not pay debt arising from minor misdemeanors and traffic violations. Montgomery contracted with for-profit probation company Judicial Correction Services (JCS) to collect debt. JCS’s system was “offender-funded,” meaning the company didn’t charge the…