Section 1983 work

Sidley’s Section 1983 practice — suits for violations of citizens’ civil rights — has been a fixture of our pro bono practice for many years in trial courts in New York, California, and Illinois; in the appellate courts; and at the United States Supreme Court. The firm represents numerous clients seeking redress for violations of their constitutional rights, including victims of police misconduct and violence, individuals whose rights have been violated while detained in jails, and prisoners deprived of medical care, held in inhumane conditions, or subjected to prison violence. The firm litigated more than 20 active Section 1983 matters in 2020, amounting to approximately 11,300 pro bono hours on behalf of our clients.

Sidley Represents Black College Athlete Unlawfully Arrested and Detained Outside Team Bus

Along with co-counsel ACLU of Illinois, Sidley filed suit in January 2020 seeking justice on behalf of Jaylan Butler, a black college swimmer for Eastern Illinois University, who was held at gunpoint and arrested without justification by multiple law enforcement officers alongside his team’s charter bus in 2019. After reaching a settlement with two of the officers who directly interacted with Mr. Butler on that fateful evening, he filed a stipulation to dismiss the remaining claims.

When his swim team’s charter bus stopped near a rest area in Illinois on the way home from a conference championship, Mr. Butler stepped off the bus to stretch his legs. As he was walking back to the bus, several law enforcement officers raced up in front of him with weapons drawn. Surprised and confused, Mr. Butler instantly followed his father’s advice provided at a young age: he stopped, put his hands up, dropped his cellphone, and dropped to his knees. Mr. Butler was taken to the snowy ground, handcuffed, and held facedown in the snow for several minutes. One officer held a gun against Mr. Butler’s forehead, and threatened to “blow his [expletive] head off” if he moved. Mr. Butler had no idea why the officers were treating him like this, but he never resisted and fully complied with their demands.

The officers quickly realized they had made a mistake and that Mr. Butler was not the suspect they were looking for, but they nevertheless searched his pockets, continued to hold him in the back of a law enforcement vehicle, and required him to reenter the bus and produce his identification before they released him. After experiencing this frightening ordeal — and the lasting trauma it caused — Mr. Butler sought accountability and to raise awareness of the harm caused by traumatic police interactions, even when the person harmed can walk away.

“The end of this lawsuit is not the end of the fight for police accountability,” Mr. Butler said. “We must ensure that officers are held to account when they violate someone’s constitutional rights. This is an effort that I will continue to support for the rest of my life.”

Successful Resolution of COVID-19 Religious Liberty Dispute

In May 2020, Sidley secured a major policy change from Minnesota officials to allow houses of worship to reopen on the same terms as businesses as the state relaxed its COVID-19 shutdown orders. Working together with co-counsel at The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Sidley team represented Minnesota Catholic and Lutheran leaders whose churches could not hold services with more than 10 people, even though businesses including restaurants, bars, and shopping malls were permitted to reopen. The policy change allowed Minnesotans to attend public worship services as long as they observed the same physical-distance and hygiene requirements that applied in other public places. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed an executive order reflecting the terms of the settlement.

The victory came just three days after Sidley and Becket wrote a letter to Governor Walz on behalf of the churches, urging him to reconsider the state’s unconstitutional restrictions on religious gatherings, which were far harsher than the restrictions imposed on commercial activity. “This unequal and unfair treatment violates the Churches’ cherished constitutional freedoms,” the letter said, “and, more importantly, hobbles unconscionably their pastoral mission.” A Wall Street Journal editorial about the letter observed that “[i]t’s hard to see how under any reading of the First Amendment the Mall of America can be allowed to reopen while churches must keep their doors closed to all but a handful.”

Disability Rights Victory

After three years of intense litigation, Sidley obtained a major victory in the field of disability rights when a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio granted final approval to a settlement agreement between the State of Ohio and firm client Disability Rights Ohio. The class action was brought on behalf of thousands of disabled persons in Ohio who continue to live and work in segregated institutions, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and contrary to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Olmstead decision. The agreement obligates the state to offer more vigorous “options counseling” for individuals currently housed in, or heading toward, medium and large residential institutions; funding for community housing and employment placements; and $24 million in capital housing assistance over the next two years. The agreement also establishes criteria by which future funding and placement levels are to be determined.

Clemency Petition Milestone

In June 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he was granting clemency to 61-year-old inmate Freddie Harris pursuant to a petition submitted by Sidley in October 2018. The matter was primarily handled by Yasir Latifi, now a Sidley alumnus, who said of his representation of Mr. Harris: “From our first conversations, it was clear that Mr. Harris had turned his life around during his incarceration, including mentoring others. It was an honor to assist with his clemency application.” This development was a huge milestone for the firm’s pro bono program in New York, as this is the first decision on any of the firm’s clemency applications in the state and one of the first for a nationwide state-focused clemency initiative, the NACDL/FAMM State Clemency Project. The project has submitted approximately 120 petitions from New York lawyers, nearly all of which remain under consideration.

Groundbreaking Forensic Evidence Case

A team of Sidley lawyers helped secure a groundbreaking ruling from a New Jersey appellate court protecting the rights of criminal defendants to understand and challenge the state’s evidence against them. In a case of “first impression” in New Jersey, the Appellate Division in State v. Pickett held that an expert witness presenting evidence produced by TrueAllele, a black-box probabilistic genotyping program, must disclose the source code and other proprietary materials to the defendant for scrutiny.

Sidley represented computer science professors Jeanna Matthews and Mats Heimdahl as amici curiae in the case, and filed a brief explaining that TrueAllele — like any other complex software program — almost certainly contains undiscovered flaws that can only be identified by a thorough review of its source code. The court’s opinion relied heavily on Sidley’s brief and oral argument. As the court noted, Drs. Matthews and Heimdahl argued that the “reliability of the TrueAllele software cannot be evaluated without full access to ‘executable source code and related documentation,’ something that no one to date has seen. They contend that doing so is not only prudent, but essential to determining whether TrueAllele operates as Cybergenetics claims, which is fundamental to any fair, legitimate, and impartial assessment of reliability.” Agreeing with this reasoning, the court concluded that, without access to the source code, a defendant “is relegated to blindly accepting” the developer’s claims regarding TrueAllele’s reliability. “Hiding the source code is not the answer,” the court continued. “Intellectual property law ... was never meant to justify concealing relevant information from parties to a criminal prosecution.”

Success on Behalf of D.C. Family

A Sidley team in D.C. obtained a successful settlement in a landlord-tenant case that was referred to the firm by the Legal Aid Society of D.C. and the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center. The client was facing eviction for withholding rent after her landlord failed to repair a significant water leak in the ceiling of her apartment. Under the settlement, the landlord agreed to hire a contractor to remediate the water and mold damage, waive several months of rent, repair other housing code violations, and place the client’s family in a hotel until the repairs were completed. The client and her family will be able to remain in their home.