On February 4, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted three “male-to-female transgender women” imprisoned by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) a temporary restraining order (TRO). The order prevented BOP from transferring the prisoners to a men’s prison and from discontinuing administration of their prescribed hormone therapy medication. The district court subsequently allowed nine other trans BOP prisoners to join the suit, extending the TRO to protect them until August 2025.
On January 20, 2025, Pres. Donald Trump (R) signed an Executive Order that required government officials to “ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers.” The order further required the BOP to revise its policies to “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” As PLN reported, a trans BOP prisoner identified as “Maria Moe” then succeeded in winning a TRO from the federal court for the District of Massachusetts on January 26, 2025, preventing her transfer to a men’s lockup. [See: PLN, Mar. 2025, p.43.]
The three prisoners who filed their complaint …
On February 12, 2025, attorneys for a former detainee jailed by Minnesota’s Anoka County stipulated to dismissal of his claims for injuries suffered when he was denied withdrawal treatment while incarcerated. In exchange, the County agreed to pay $2.585 million to the injured jail survivor, Deytona Green, on its behalf, as well as for its former medical care contractor, MEnD Correctional Care PLLC.
While Green suffered severe injuries, he is one of the few pretrial detainees to survive and sue jail officials for the failure to provide drug withdrawal treatment. Green, then 25, was booked into the Anoka County Jail (ACJ) on drug charges on February 5, 2022. He informed jailers that he had a valid prescription for Suboxone to treat his opioid addiction. He also admitted to shooting up heroin earlier that day.
But ACJ officials confiscated the prescribed medication that was on Green’s person at the time of his arrest and placed it in a locked box in property storage. Green’s mother and his probation officer both called ACJ, offering to bring more of his prescribed medication to the jail to ensure he suffered no disruption in treatment. But they were denied.
Meanwhile …
Striking a rare blow for fairness, the Supreme Court of Kentucky issued a ruling on February 25, 2025, reversing the imposition of $10,972 in jail fees upon Dillian Ford at his criminal sentencing in Carlisle County Circuit Court. Because there was no evidence in the record that the fees were based upon more than an unofficial agreement between Carlisle County and neighboring McCraken County, where Ford was held, the high Court found error in the lack of an officially adopted policy, as required by state law.
Ford was sentenced on November 17, 2022, to a total of 15 years on his underlying charges and fined $10,972 in jail fees for the 422 days he was held in custody prior to sentencing. During the plea colloquy, Ford stipulated that Carlisle County paid McCracken County $26 per day to imprison him.
On appeal, Ford did not question the agreement between the counties. However, he argued that imposition of the fee was error because there was no evidence that either county had a jail reimbursement policy approved by the county’s governing body.
In Capstraw v. Commonwealth, 641 S.W.3d 148 (Ky. 2022), the Court had held that a trial …
On October 4, 2024, the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) settled the second of two lawsuits brought by prisoners involved in educational programs who claimed that they were subjected to retaliation after classroom debates over political and social issues piqued reactionary prison officials.
Centralia Correctional Center prisoner Anthony McNeal was assigned as a peer educator in the Citizens Civics Education program, which was authorized by state lawmakers with the Re-Entering Citizens Civics Education Act, 730 ILCS 200/1; the primary goal of the law is to teach soon-to-be released prisoners about their voting eligibility and how voting is vital to successful re-entry.
On March 1, 2023, McNeal was performing his assignment, carrying out a lesson plan that discussed poll taxes, literacy tests, and other racist laws from the Jim Crow era. In response to another prisoner’s inquiry, McNeal informed the class how many southern states had used literacy tests and poll taxes to suppress the Black vote.
Nathan Tucker, a prison official assigned to monitor the class, cut McNeal off and instructed him not to discuss racism in class. Tucker further insisted that McNeal present literary tests as having a legitimate nondiscriminatory purpose of ensuring that …
On October 24, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois entered judgment awarding $69,384.73 to a state prisoner in his civil rights action alleging a Department of Corrections (DOC) food service director subjected him to excessive force over a grievance filed against him. The judgment included damages awarded by a trial jury and an additional award for attorney fees and costs.
Prisoner Jeremiah Fallon, then 35, filed a grievance on September 19, 2019, alleging that food service supervisors at Pontiac Correctional Center (PCC) fed prisoners cereal that they knew was contaminated by mice droppings. The next day, Food Service Director Dean Wessels confronted Fallon in the prison’s kitchen, where he “got in (his) face, and screamed and cursed at him,” Fallon’s civil rights complaint recalled. After Fallon admitted filing the grievance, Wessels told Fallon that he was fired and demanded he leave the kitchen immediately.
Fallon walked into the adjoining hallway. But the gate was locked, so he remained there. Wessels saw him, screamed at him, and demanded to know why he had not left. Surveillance video captured what happened next as Wessels violently slammed Fallon into the locked gates, “causing extreme pain …
Texas’ Bexar County agreed on April 22, 2024, to pay $2.4 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of Curtis Raymond Smith, 66, who was killed just hours after his arrest by fellow pretrial detainee Mark Anthony Wong at the county lockup in San Antonio.
Police …
On April 11, 2025, amended judgment was entered in federal court for the Northern District of Illinois, awarding $4,384,216.16 to state prisoner Timothy Kyles, who successfully prosecuted his claim that state Department of Corrections (DOC) officials were guilty of failure to protect him and of intentional infliction of emotional …
On December 17, 2024, the Court of Appeals of the State of Washington, Division II, held that a trial court lacked personal jurisdiction over the state Department of Corrections (DOC) and dismissed a motion to enforce a released prisoner’s community custody condition. The Court concluded with an important warning …
A $2.8 million partial settlement was reached on March 4, 2024, in a national class action lawsuit challenging excessive fees on jail and prison “debit release” cards. The case was filed in 2015 by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of PLN, on behalf of Danica Love …
On December 18, 2024, notice was filed in the federal court for the Central District of Illinois that a $6 million good-faith settlement had been reached resolving a lawsuit seeking compensation for the April 2022 death of pretrial detainee Brian Downs at the Morgan County Detention Facility (MCDF). The …
