Case Database
Created 06/04/2025
Last update 06/04/2025
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...
Created 03/26/2025
Last update 03/26/2025
What’s at stake: Whether people who are incarcerated can bring lawsuits without fear of retaliation. If sheriffs are allowed to charge pay-to-stay fees as retaliation for filing a lawsuit, sheriffs may be able to persuade others from bringing those claims. Summary: When Michael Wappler brought...
Created 07/31/2024
Last update 03/24/2025
All over the country, there are statutes authorizing local governments to impose fees on individuals for the supposed costs of their incarceration. Generally, these fees are referred to as ‘pay-to-stay’ because they require individuals to pay for time spent detained against their will. These laws...
Created 03/25/2024
Last update 01/07/2025
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...
Created 03/25/2024
Last update 01/07/2025
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...
Created 01/19/2024
Last update 10/30/2024
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,...
Created 04/27/2023
Last update 05/10/2023
In this lawsuit against Webb County, Texas and jailers at Webb County Jail, we represented Nelda Nuncio, the mother of Luis Alberto “Albert” Barrientos, a 22-year-old who died of a treatable infection while in pre-trial detention at Webb County Jail after his medical needs were...
Created 02/14/2023
Last update 05/17/2023
This is a class action lawsuit against the County and City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD), the Sheriff of Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and the Chief of the LAPD, challenging the defendants’ policy of jailing arrested...
Created 06/16/2021
Last update 10/17/2024
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...
Created 05/22/2020
Last update 02/07/2023
Public Justice was co‐counsel in this Third Circuit appeal, which raises issues related to qualified immunity and on punitive damages in the civil rights context. A repossession company tried to take Angela Hyman’s car from her driveway while her wife was sitting in it. It...
Created 01/09/2019
Last update 02/07/2023
We are litigating several pending constitutional class actions on behalf of thousands of people in Alabama whose constitutional rights were violated by for-profit probation company Judicial Correction Services (JCS) and municipal government actors. The Evans Law Firm of Birmingham, Alabama filed these cases in federal...
Created 12/01/2017
Last update 02/07/2023
This is a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the family of Rafael Edgardo Solis, Sr., a pretrial detainee at the Webb County Jail in Texas who died of asphyxiation allegedly caused by the jailers’ use of excessive force against him. Mr. Solis was taken...