2025 Grantees Submit Second Quarter Case Reports
All of the Barbara McDowell Social Justice Center’s 2025 grantees were contacted in April in accordance with the Center’s requirements and reported with respect to the progress of their case through the second quarter of their grant cycle. Each grantee’s report can be found below.
In addition to reporting on their progress, each grantee submitted second 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 second quarter was $182,062.33. For the first two quarters combined, the average dollar value in attorney time was $213,725.67.
In Jeremiah M. vs. Crum, A Better Childhood (ABC), and Perkins Coie, Disability Law Center Alaska (DLCAK), and Northern Justice Project (NJP) 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, federal judge Amy 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 Medicaid-eligible 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.
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 but instead waits until the applications are ready for full merits adjudications before even considering granting work authorization. This denial of interim work authorization creates significant hardship to as most TPS applicants who wait for nearly a year, and sometimes longer, before USCIS approves their applications.
In Sagoonick v. State of Alaska II, eight young Alaskans already experiencing devasting harms from climate change are suing 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. Because the colossal levels of climate pollution resulting from the project will cause substantial harm to their lives, health, safety, and their cultural traditions and identities, and substantially limit their access to the vital natural resources that they depend on for survival, 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.
In October and November, the parties in Montana Conservation Voters v. Jacobsen filed cross-motions for summary judgment. On December 4, the Court granted partial summary judgment to Plaintiffs on standing and the application of strict scrutiny but ruled that there is a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether the legislature intended to discriminate against voters on the basis of their political beliefs. The Court denied Defendant’s summary judgment motion, and the case proceeded to trial.
Trial took place from December 10–13. Earlier in the year, the Court decided that it would empanel an advisory jury. Plaintiffs objected, noting that no jury has ever before been empaneled in a constitutional redistricting case. Following the trial, the jury advised in a 9-3 vote that it did not believe that political discrimination was the legislature’s primary purpose in redistricting the Public Service Commission map. Because the jury was advisory, both parties submitted post-trial briefing to the judge. Plaintiffs urged the Court to disregard the advisory jury’s findings because the evidence shows that the legislature intended to discriminate and because the jury was instructed to assume the legislature acted in good faith, even though the Court allowed the bill sponsor to assert legislative privilege, which precluded Plaintiffs from cross-examining him as to the legislative motive at trial.