2025 Grantees Submit Fourth Quarter Case Reports
All of the Barbara McDowell Social Justice Center’s 2025 grantees were contacted in October in accordance with the Center’s requirements and reported with respect to the progress of their case through the fourth quarter of their grant cycle. A summary of each grantee’s report can be found below, along with a link to each grantee’s full report.
In addition to reporting on their progress, each grantee submitted fourth quarter timesheets for their case work and met with the Center team to discuss their cases. The average dollar value in attorney time spent by each grantee on their respective case for the fourth quarter was $247,724.64. For the four quarters combined, the average dollar value in attorney time was $218,191.42.
In Jeremiah M. vs. Crum, A Better Childhood (ABC), and Perkins Coie, and the Disability Law Center Alaska (DLCAK), are challenging Alaska’s Governor, Alaska’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), and Alaska’s Office of Children’s Services (OCS) for violations of foster children’s constitutional and statutory rights.
Claims are brought on behalf of a general class of children in foster care of over 3000 children; and two subclasses: children in kinship placements that are unnecessarily disrupted and children who have disabilities whose needs for services are unmet. The general class includes many native children, who are disproportionately represented in the foster care system. Plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief to enforce Alaska foster children’s constitutional and federal statutory rights. Issues in the system include children being shuffled across many placements, high child maltreatment rates, high caseloads for caseworkers, frequent inappropriate placements (including native children placed in non-native homes), lack of placements, lack of permanency plans, and the failure to meet the needs of children with disabilities.
Center for Public Representation
On March 25, 2025, Judge Totenberg issued an opinion denying the Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss in Isaac A. vs. Carlson, a lawsuit filed by CPR and co-counsel on behalf of Medicaideligible children with Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED) in Georgia. As described in the Plaintiffs’ complaint, these children and youth are being denied access to intensive mental health services in the community, leading to a worsening of their conditions and causing them to be repeatedly admitted to emergency departments, institutionalized in psychiatric facilities, and separated from their families.
In a 95-page decision, the Court set out in detail the bases for Plaintiffs’ allegations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Early Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment and Reasonable Promptness provisions of the Medicaid Act. The Court concluded that the Individual Plaintiffs had adequately stated a claim for relief under these statutes and had standing to pursue those claims. The Georgia Advocacy Office, the Protection and Advocacy agency for the State of Georgia, was also found to have associational standing. Additionally, the Court considered and rejected Defendants’ arguments that: 1) they were immune from suit under the Eleventh Amendment; 2) relevant provisions of the Medicaid statute were not privately enforceable; and 3) the Plaintiffs’ requested relief violated anticommandeering principles.
Read Full Report Here
National Immigration Litigation Alliance
Mansor v. USCIS is a certified nationwide class action in which Temporary Protected Status (TPS) applicants seek to enforce their statutory right to a work permit while they wait for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to adjudicate their TPS applications. Congress enacted the TPS statute in 1991 as a form of humanitarian relief that provides temporary lawful immigration status to eligible immigrants from war-ravaged or disaster- stricken countries. Federal law requires that USCIS grant eligible TPS applicants interim work authorization while their TPS applications are pending so they can support themselves and their families. Despite this statutory guarantee, USCIS does not issue temporary work permits upon receipt of TPS applications. Instead, USCIS waits until the applications are ready for full merits adjudications before adjudicating work authorization applications. This denial of interim work authorization creates significant hardship for TPS applicants, most of whom wait for nearly a year, and sometimes longer, before USCIS approves their applications.
In Sagoonick v. State of Alaska II, eight young Alaskans sued to halt the Alaska LNG Project, a fossil fuel megaproject that would more than triple the state’s greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come. The youth are challenging the state laws that require Alaska’s government to advance and develop the project as violating their due process and public trust rights under Alaska’s constitution. Plaintiffs ask the court to declare these laws unconstitutional and prohibit the State from moving forward with the project. Defendants include the State of Alaska, the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC), and Frank Richards, in his official capacity as President of AGDC.
Defendants moved to dismiss, claiming state resource development related laws and actions present "political questions" immune from constitutional review and mischaracterizing the case as identical to previously dismissed climate litigation that challenged the State’s overarching approach to climate change. Plaintiffs countered with three arguments: (1) their challenge targets a discrete project as recommended by the Alaska Supreme Court in previous rulings, wherein the Court instructed that they may challenge “specific actions by Alaska’s legislative and executive branches;” (2) their claims di er fundamentally from earlier dismissed cases; and (3) established precedent clearly confirms courts' duty to review natural resource policies for constitutional violations. Thus, plaintiffs asked the court to deny the defendants’ motion and allow the youth to continue to trial.
Read Full Report Here
On March 12, 2025, Upper Seven Law filed a notice of appeal to the Montana Supreme Court in Montana Conservation Voters v. Jacobsen. On May 23, 2025, Senator Regier moved to intervene to defend his assertion of absolute legislative privilege to avoid discovery into the drawing of SB 109 during the trial proceedings.
Between June 6 and September 18, 2025, the parties briefed the appeal before the Montana Supreme Court.
Upper Seven Law represents Montana Conservation Voters and eight individual voters, who were the plaintiffs below and are appellants in the Montana Supreme Court. On appeal, they argue that the District Court erred in denying summary judgment on the appellants’ right-to-suffrage claim. They also argue that the court erred in finding that SB 109 is not a partisan gerrymander. In addition, the appellants challenged the District Court’s ruling granting Senator Regier absolute legislative privilege from discovery in the case. Finally, they argued that the claims are justiciable and do not present political questions.