The ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of criminal defendants in Orleans Parish who are unable to afford an attorney. The suit attacks Louisiana’s chronic underfunding of its public defender system.

In March 2014 the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled in favor of Zander Welton, finding that his parents and physicians could resume treating his seizure disorder with a marijuana extract. Sadly, Zander passed away in September 2015. During the trial, Judge Katherine Cooper found that the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act (AMMA), approved by voters in 2010, allows patients to use marijuana extracts without fear of prosecution. In October of 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arizona sued the county on behalf of Zander and his parents, Jennifer and Jacob Welton, because Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and other Arizona law enforcement agents had asserted that the AMMA does not sanction the use of marijuana extracts and threatened criminal charges for patients who used extracts.

Whether the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling prohibiting mandatory sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders applies retroactively.

Three Indian parents, the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe filed a class-action lawsuit to challenge the continued removal of Indian children in Pennington County, South Dakota from their homes based on insufficient evidence and without proper hearings, in violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and the constitutional right to due process.

For more than a decade, Joseph Casias of Battle Creek, Mich. has endured the painful symptoms of an inoperable brain tumor and cancer.