2023 Grantees Submit First Quarter Case Reports
In accordance with the Foundation’s requirements for grant reporting, the five 2023 grantees submitted their first quarter case updates and timesheets of the grant year. Their case updates appear below.
All grantees are meeting the requirements of their grant. The average amount of hours of attorney time spent by each grantee on their respective case was 256.07 hours with an average dollar value of $134,332.14. In addition, the Foundation has expanded its grantmaking to include coverage for expenses related to the case. This quarter, $1,116 was spent in expenses by grantees.
In A-J- v. Garland, a Ninth Circuit case, the petitioner is challenging federal administrative precedents that discriminate against noncitizens by refusing to give effect to certain post-conviction relief and criminal justice reform laws for noncitizens. In June 2022, IDP supported the filing of opening briefs and coordinated amicus briefs. Counsel for A-J- and for amici negotiated with government counsel to identify all related cases in the Ninth Circuit and to have them held in abeyance pending the resolution of A-J-. In November 2022, government counsel moved to submit A-J- for mediation before the Ninth Circuit and mediation is ongoing. Meanwhile, IDP and co-counsel for amici and A-J- have been continuing to monitor and litigate related cases under the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction to ensure that the rights of noncitizens to benefit from criminal justice reform and post-conviction relief measures are protected. In December 2022, we filed an amicus brief in support of a motion to reopen a case related to A-J- with the potential to influence the core legal issue at issue in A-J-.
P-V- v. Garland is a Second Circuit challenge to a federal administrative precedent decided under former Attorney General Sessions that declines to give effect to a New York state sentencing reform law. Two of the most prominent legal issues in the case are the scope of the immigration agency’s discretion under the Immigration and Nationality Act and the powers of the States to enact sentencing and post-conviction reform laws that will be respected by federal immigration law. The Second Circuit heard oral argument in September 2022, and IDP led amicus briefing and supported P-V- 's counsel in their briefing and preparation for oral argument. Since argument, IDP has been monitoring legal developments, including several prominent issues that are pending on the Supreme Court’s docket this term, to see if there are impending decisions that might give rise to supplemental briefing or other post-argument activity in both cases.
Finally, in connection with both A-J- and P-V-, in November 2022 we trained 150 lawyers and advocates nationally (with a significant majority from California and New York) in litigation to protect the rights of immigrants to benefit from criminal justice reform measures. We have also engaged the media over these issues and provided important context for a long-form piece published in The Guardian about the federal government’s push to continue deportations despite convictions being overturned in State courts: Her murder conviction was overturned. U.S. immigration still wants to deport her, by Sam T. Levin.
Judge David Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
M.J. v. District of Columbia
In 2018, the Bazelon Center, along with co-counsel Disability Rights DC at University Legal Services, the National Center for Youth Law, and the law firm Schulte, Roth & Zabel, filed a class action on behalf of hundreds of District of Columbia children who are unnecessarily institutionalized or at serious risk of unnecessary institutionalization.
As mentioned in an August 2018 Washington Post article, the complaint alleges widespread failures by the District of Columbia’s mental health system to provide federally required intensive community-based services for children in their own homes, schools, and elsewhere in the community. As a result, the District’s children suffer drastically curtailed life opportunities, as a result of cycling in and out of psychiatric hospitals, psychiatric residential treatment facilities, other residential treatment centers, juvenile detention facilities, and group homes. All of these facilities are often many miles from the child’s home.
The complaint also alleges violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Medicaid Act. The ADA requires the District to serve its children with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate. For virtually all children, this setting is their own home or another family or foster home. The Medicaid Act requires the District to provide intensive community-based services to all children with mental health disabilities who need them, to help them live in their own homes and communities, and to participate fully in family and community life.
Plaintiffs filed their motion for class certification in July 2021. The Washington Post reported on plaintiffs “overwhelming” evidence that the District’s public mental health system falls short of its legal obligations to children and youth and that judicial intervention is needed.
The District’s opposition to the motion for class certification was filed on October 27, 2021, and the plaintiffs’ reply was filed on December 24, 2021. In the last quarter of 2022, we completed supplemental briefing supporting plaintiffs’ class certification motion and added an additional named plaintiff and class representative who meets the proposed class definition. We expect a decision on class certification in 2023 and hope a favorable decision will advance resolution of plaintiffs’ claims.
The National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) and co-counsel filed D.P. et al. v. School Board of Palm Beach County et al. in 2021 to ensure that students in mental health crisis are treated fairly and with the care they need. The case challenges the use of involuntary examinations under Florida’s Baker Act which are often initiated by school police with little mental health training in situations that could be addressed without inpatient psychiatric treatment.
During this reporting period, NCYL has been working to conclude discovery. We have completed document review of productions received from the Defendants and have produced additional third-party records to the Defendants. We have taken over 20 depositions, including three witnesses designated by the Defendants in response to our 30(b)(6) notice, two nonparty witnesses and one of the Defendants’ disclosed experts. We have defended depositions of three of our clients, including the 30(b)(6) designee of the organizational plaintiff Disability Rights Florida. We disclosed five testifying experts and we worked with these experts to ensure that they had all information needed for their reports and that their reports would comply with federal rules. We are working with our testifying experts to prepare them for deposition and to prepare rebuttal reports to the Defendants’ experts.
The Defendants’ motion to dismiss had a pending report and recommendation from Magistrate Judge Reinhart since December 2021. Magistrate Judge Reinhart’s Report and Recommendation was favorable for Plaintiffs. He left no doubt that if Plaintiffs prove the allegations in their complaint, they will prevail on their core claims and obtain the relief they seek. Judge Reinhart found that the Complaint had sufficiently pled that there was no probable cause to detain the Plaintiff Children; the use of handcuffing was not objectively reasonable; parents were denied a fundamental liberty interest in care and control of their children without due process; and that the District failed to provide reasonable accommodations to Plaintiff children with disabilities. Judge Reinhart did recommend that the claims alleging intentional disability discrimination be dismissed. However, overall, the Report and Recommendation affirmed that Plaintiffs have adequately pleaded their essential claims: SDPBC’s policy, practice and custom regarding involuntary examinations of students results in unconstitutional seizures; unconstitutional uses of force through indiscriminate handcuffing; the deprivation of parents’ rights to care for and make medical decisions for their children; and disability discrimination.
Although no party objected to the Report and Recommendation, we are still awaiting Judge Cannon’s ruling on the motion. We have a court-ordered mediation on January 19, 2023, and we have begun to prepare for that mediation as well as preparing for summary judgment briefing which is currently due at the end of January 2023.
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
In Garcia Perez, et al., v. USCIS, et al., 2:22-cv-806 (W.D. Wash., filed June 9, 2022), the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) and the National Immigration Litigation Alliance (NILA) are challenging United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) and the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR) policies and practices that unlawfully deny work authorization for asylum seekers while their claims are pending adjudication beyond the six-month time period prescribed by the Immigration and Nationality Act. Because of SCIS’ and EOIR’s unlawful practices preventing them from qualifying for an employment authorization document (EAD), these individuals seeking protection from persecution are in dire financial straits. A motion for class certification and motion for preliminary injunction were filed by plaintiffs the same day as the complaint.
On June 27, 2022, the court granted a 60-day stay in order for the parties to explore the possibility of settlement. Plaintiffs and defendants held a settlement conference on August 3, 2022, where they discussed the claims for the putative classes. Defendants requested Plaintiffs follow up with a written framework providing general parameters for resolving the claims. Plaintiffs submitted a document with a proposed settlement framework to defendants on August 12, 2022. On August 29, 2022, the parties submitted a joint status report to the court and stipulation detailing their ongoing efforts to reach settlement and requested a 90-day stay to further engage in settlement discussions, which the court granted. On October 14, 2022, defendants provided written responses to plaintiffs’ proposed settlement framework and the parties held a settlement conference on October 26, 2022. Plaintiffs provided written feedback on defendants’ settlement responses on November 29, 2022, after which the parties stipulated to an additional 75-day extension of the stay of the case.
The main activity this quarter was arranging for, accompanying, and following up on tours by our two experts (Dan Pacholke, security, and Craig Haney (impact of solitary on mental health) of most of the solitary units in the Illinois prison system. We are now engaged with the defendants to collect records relating to those tours.