Rights Behind Bars
Cases
Rights Behind Bars has won more than a hundred cases in the Federal Circuit Courts. Our briefs are linked on their case pages. If they are helpful to you as an attorney or pro se litigator, please feel welcome to use them.
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Washington v. Massachusetts Department of Correction, et al.
RBB represents Derrick Washington in a lawsuit in federal court seeking accountability for brutal assaults that Mr. Washington experienced January through March 2020 at the hands of Souza Baranowski Correctional Complex guards.
Getzen v. Long
Rights Behind Bars and the Legal Defense Fund represented David Getzen in a qualified immunity case after Mr. Getzen was subjected to an unlawful use of force.
Shaw v. Kemper, et al.
Mr. Shaw, a wheelchair user, was unable to access the prison’s only handicapped-accessible toilet on multiple occasions because it was in use. Mr. Shaw’s lawsuit was dismissed by the district court at screening. The court characterized his inability to access a handicapped toilet as a mere "inconvenience" of prison life.
Ahn v. The GEO Group, et al.
“Mr. Ahn’s case underscores a fact we know all too well: immigration detention is dangerous, and deadly,” said Oren Nimni, Litigation Director at Rights Behind Bars. “The physical and mental harms caused by detention cannot be overstated and fundamentally undermine any justification for continuing the practice.”
Edwards v. Hooks, et al.
Tracey Edwards was shackled whilst pregnant, in labor, and post-partum during her incarceration by the North Carolina Department of Public Safety.
Garrett v. Commonwealth of Virginia
Mr. Garrett’s case is an example of the pervasive conduct of using patrol dogs to attack prisoners when there is no legitimate justification for doing so in the Virginia Department of Corrections
Richardson v. Clarke, et al.
Richardson v. Clarke is an appeal brought by Rights Behind Bars in the Fourth Circuit on behalf of a man in the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) system who argues VDOC violated his right to freely exercise his religion and failed to provide him accommodations as a person with a disability.
Jones, et al. v. City of St. Louis, et al.
Our second case challenging conditions at St. Louis City Justice Center, this case seeks damages for our clients who were maced, and also seeks to stop the facility’s punitive practice of shutting off water.
Moderwell v. Cuyahoga County, Ohio
Rights Behind Bars has won an appeal in the Sixth Circuit on behalf of Larry Johnson, a pretrial detainee at Cuyahoga County Correctional Center in Cleveland who died by suicide under the watch of corrections officers.
Seidner v. De Vries
Rights Behind Bars, together with the NAACP, represent a cyclist who was brutally rammed by a police car without warning or provocation, on the basis that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated.
Wheat v. Day
Rights Behind Bars represents Christopher Wheat, a pretrial detainee at Walton County Jail, on appeal for his § 1983 action against Deputy Day, a corrections officer who tasered him from behind as punishment for spilling water in his cell. Day moved for summary judgment following discovery on the basis of qualified immunity, and appealed when his motion was denied.
Tate v. Harmon
Together with MacArthur Justice Center, RBB has filed an amicus brief in a Fourth Circuit case challenging the dismissal of a prisoner’s Eighth Amendment claims against federal prison staff.
Tillman v. City of Saint Louis, et al.
Brought in partnership with ArchCity Defenders, MacArthur Justice, and Saint Louis University Law School Clinic, RBB has filed this ADA action on behalf of Anthony Tillman, a paraplegic man detained in St. Louis's City Justice Center.
Savino, et al. v. Souza
In partnership with Lawyers for Civil Rights, Yale Law School Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, and WilmerHale, Rights Behind Bars acts as counsel for a facility-wide class action seeking release of all people in immigration detention in Bristol County House of Corrections in Massachusetts because of their conditions of confinement and COVID-19.
Johnson v. McCowan
Corey Johnson was the victim of a gruesome canine attack as he was lying motionless and face down on the ground with his arms extended outward. Mr. Johnson’s right wrist and arm were mauled, and he was dragged several feet by the dog. The Virginia Department of Corrections continues to allow the use of unmuzzled canines to terrify and attack people in order to ensure their compliance with prison guard orders.
RBB wins rare Supreme Court qualified immunity reversal
In an extraordinary win for prisoner’s rights and all who oppose qualified immunity, the Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit in Taylor v. Riojas, emphasizing that “no reasonable correctional officer could have concluded that, under the extreme circumstances of this case, it was constitutionally permissible to house Taylor in such deplorably unsanitary conditions for such an extended period of time.”
Shorter v. United States, et al.
Rights Behind Bars represents Chrissy Shorter, a transgender woman who was sexually assaulted while incarcerated at a federal prison in New Jersey. Shorter brought an Eighth Amendment claim pro se against the prison for failing to take preventative actions to protect her from sexual assault even after her request for transfer to a safer institution had been approved.
Melnik v. Dzurenda
Rights Behind Bars, together with O’Melveny & Myers, represent John Melnik, an individual incarcerated at Nevada Desert State Prison who was denied the opportunity to present documentary evidence in his defense for a disciplinary charge. Because he was denied the opportunity to present this evidence, Melnik is currently facing three years in punitive solitary confinement.
Johnson v. Peterson
Chronic hepatitis C disproportionately affects incarcerated individuals—by recent estimates, HCV is 17 to 23 times more prevalent among prisoners than the general population. Less than 1% of the United States population is incarcerated today, but roughly 30% of all Americans with HCV reside in prison. According to a 2017 meta-analysis, Ohio’s prison population has one of the highest reported rates of HCV infection as measured by antibody prevalence, at a rate of 36% compared to the national average of 18%.
Melnik v. Aranas
Chronic hepatitis C (HCV) kills more Americans than every other infectious disease combined, and even though effective treatments that eliminate HCV in 99% of cases have been available for a number of years, some prison systems deny treatment to most or all of their patients with HCV due simply to the cost of the drugs.