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.

San Jose, CA — After three years of extensive negotiations, the Prison Law Office, Cooley LLP, and the County of Santa Clara, California, have reached a settlement of Chavez v. County of Santa Clara, a class action lawsuit that alleged that some conditions in the County’s jails were unconstitutional.

The Prison Law Office, ACLU, Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, and the law firm of Meyers Nave Riback Silver & Wilson, PLC filed a motion for preliminary injunction on Sept. 5, 2018, in Teneng v. Trump, a federal lawsuit challenging the conditions of confinement for immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a federal prison in Victorville, California. The motion seeks immediate relief from the court, including an order prohibiting ICE from transferring additional immigrants to the prison.