The Ninth Circuit ruled unanimously on January 29, 2020 to uphold a lower court’s contempt order fining the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) more than $1.4 million for failing to improve the health care provided to people in Arizona prisons in Parsons v. Ryan (now known as Parsons v. Shinn).  The Prison Law Office, ACLU National Prison Project, ACLU of Arizona, Arizona Center for Disability Law, and Perkins Coie represent incarcerated people in the case.

OKLAHOMA CITY – Attorneys from the ACLU of Oklahoma,  Prison Law Office, ACLU National Prison Project, ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, and Sidley Austin, LLP, sent a demand letter on July 29, 2019 to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections calling on the department to address the inhumane treatment of people condemned to death at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, OK.

The H-Unit is an underground bunker at the maximum-security prison facility, where people sentenced to death are incarcerated indefinitely in solitary confinement and restricted to their concrete tombs, no bigger than a parking space, for 22 to 24 hours per day. Underground, with no outside exposure or human contact, one prisoner made the comparison of the environment to being buried alive.

On June 20, 2019, on behalf of the nearly 4,000 people incarcerated in Sacramento County’s jails, the Prison Law Office, Disability Rights California, and Cooley LLP reached a proposed settlement with the County to address the dangerous and unconstitutional conditions in the jails.

In the wake of a scathing report by the Los Angeles Inspector General regarding the rampant misuse of pepper spray against incarcerated children, the Prison Law Office joined dozens of juvenile justice and civil rights organizations to urge the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to phase out the use of pepper spray in all juvenile facilities.  The measure passed unanimously on February 19, 2019.

On February 12, 2019, attorneys for people housed in Sacramento County Jails, filed a motion to challenge the  unconstitutional use of solitary confinement for people with serious mental illness and the ongoing lack of access to mental health care.

“This harm is too serious and too urgent to wait for the normal course of business,” said Margot Mendelson, an attorney with the Prison Law Office, in an interview with The Sacramento Bee.