Civil Rights Clinic 2024 Highlights

Generations of CRC students and faculty after January 2024 Tenth Circuit argument: (l-r) Ciara Anderson, CRC ’18-’20; Danielle DeSantis, CRC ’22-’23; Lasch Clinical Teaching Fellow Miriam Kerler, CRC ’19-’21; Caleigh McGilchrist, CRC ’23-’24; Robert Vanneste, CRC ’22-’23; Professor Laura Rovner, CRC Director; Kaity Tuohy, CRC ’22-’24; Serena Phillips, CRC ’23-’25; Kevin Whitfield, CRC ’20-’22; and Visiting Assistant Professor Nick Lutz, CRC ’15-’17.

In January 2024, Civil Rights Clinic (CRC) Student Attorney Kaity Tuohy argued a case to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of a CRC client who has an intellectual disability and serious mental illness. Despite policies meant to exclude people with such conditions from being placed in solitary confinement at the federal supermax prison (United States Penitentiary-Administrative Maximum (ADX)), the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) confined the client at the ADX for more than a decade, without providing him sufficient accommodations for his disability. While the CRC secured the client’s transfer out of ADX through the litigation in the district court, the lower court dismissed most of the client’s claims and entered judgment in favor of the BOP. CRC Student Attorneys appealed the lower court’s decisions, still seeking to enjoin the BOP from confining the client in solitary at his new facility and to require the BOP to provide him necessary accommodations for his disabilities.

CRC Student Attorneys Caleigh McGilchrist and Serena Phillips helped prepare Tuohy for the argument, and all three student attorneys worked tirelessly on a Petition for Rehearing or Rehearing En Banc (PFR) after the Tenth Circuit issued a brief, perfunctory opinion dismissing the appeal on prudential mootness grounds. The decision failed to vacate the lower court decision in accordance with standard appellate practice, and it failed to address one of the central issues of the appeal. On October 15, 2024, the Tenth Circuit partially granted the PFR to vacate the district court’s judgment.

CRC Student Attorneys Caitlin McGilchrist, Kaity Tuohy, and Serena Phillips after argument at the Tenth Circuit.

In April 2024, CRC student attorneys settled a case brought on behalf of a Muslim man incarcerated in the BOP, concluding nearly nine years of hard-fought litigation. The case challenged the BOP’s refusal to allow the CRC’s client to practice certain aspects of his faith, including refusing to provide him accommodations for religious fasts, denying him access to halal meals and an imam, and prohibiting him from engaging in congregate prayer. The client sought injunctive relief against the BOP and damages against several BOP officers.

The district court judge dismissed the damages claims, finding no monetary remedy available under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). In 2018, after years of discovery on the injunctive claims, a team of CRC student attorneys went to trial on those aspects of the RFRA claim seeking access to a halal diet and an imam. The team secured an injunction against the BOP on the halal meals claim, but the district judge found that the BOP’s hiring of an imam days before trial alleviated the burden on that aspect of the client’s religious exercise. Just before trial, the district judge also dismissed the congregate prayer issue of the RFRA claim as moot because of the BOP’s transfer of the client to different prison.

In 2019, CRC student attorneys appealed the district court’s decisions on the lack of a damages remedy under RFRA and the mootness finding on the request for group prayer. A CRC student attorney argued the case to the Tenth Circuit in 2021, and, in early 2022, the Tenth Circuit reversed the district court on both issues, remanding the claims. From 2022-24, CRC student attorneys zealously litigated the remanded claims by taking and defending over twenty depositions, defeating a renewed motion to dismiss and a motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, and negotiating several discovery disputes.

As the 2023-24 student team (Nick Carpenter, Samantha Kroner, Dana Lindenberg, Audrey Oliver, and Molly Parris) prepared for a second trial set for May 2024, they continued to brief multiple complex motions and take additional depositions due to late government disclosures. Just weeks before trial, the student attorneys settled the case, obtaining only the second monetary settlement secured by an incarcerated person under RFRA and expanding the rights of people incarcerated in federal prisons to pray in congregation. In addition, the settlement has allowed their client to see and pray with his family — all of whom live in Palestine — via video, something he had not been able to do for the past thirty years.

Generations of CRC students and faculty celebrating reaching a settlement agreement in Ajaj v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons: (l-r) Lasch Clinical Teaching Fellow Miriam Kerler, CRC ’19-’21; Professor Laura Rovner, CRC Director; Visiting Assistant Professor Nick Lutz, CRC ’15-’17; Former Visiting Assistant Professor and Lasch Clinical Teaching Fellow Aurora Randolph, CRC ’15-’17; Audrey Oliver, CRC ’22-’24; Dana Lindenberg, CRC ’22-’24; Nick Carpenter, CRC ’23-’24; Molly Parris, CRC ’23-’24; and Samantha Kroner, CRC ’23-‘24.

Finally, a team of CRC student attorneys (Kristiana Camacho-Miles, McKenna Milton, and Cynthia Mouzis) spent the 2023-24 academic year monitoring, enforcing, and renegotiating a settlement agreement entered in 2022 that sought to ensure effective communication for deaf and hard of hearing people, while another team (Casey Dinaro, Teagan Foti, and MaKenna Zoglmann) briefed an appeal to the Tenth Circuit from a grant of summary judgment in case involving the wrongful killing of a Black man by police officers in Salt Lake City.

CRC student attorneys and supervisors after negotiations: (l-r) Visiting Assistant Professor Nick Lutz, CRC ’15-’17; Professor Laura Rovner, CRC Director; McKenna Milton, CRC ’23-’24; Lasch Clinical Teaching Fellow Miriam Kerler, CRC ’19-’21; Cynthia Mouzis, CRC ’23-’25.

The CRC is also excited to welcome back Nicole Godfrey as an assistant professor of law. For the past two years, Nicole has been an associate clinical professor of law, directing the Housing Justice Clinic at Michigan State University College of Law. Prior to her time at MSU, Nicole spent seven years teaching in the CRC as a clinical teaching fellow and visiting assistant professor.

CRC Faculty Highlights

Professor Laura Rovner

Publications

Solitary Confinement, Human Dignity, and the Eighth Amendment, 111. VA. L. REV. (forthcoming 2025).

Presentations

Moderator, “Strategies for Attacking Solitary Confinement,” Prison Law & Advocacy Conference, Atlanta, Georgia (October 19, 2024).

Moderator, “Decarceration through Disability Litigation by Protection and Advocacy Agencies,” Prison Law & Advocacy Conference, Atlanta,
Georgia (October 18, 2024).

Presenter, Solitary Confinement, the Eighth Amendment, and the Dignity of Human and Non-Human Animals, Work-in-Progress, Clinical Law Review Writer’s Workshop, New York University School of Law, New York, New York (September 28, 2024).

“The Effects of Solitary Confinement,” 2024 Capital Habeas Unit National Conference, Denver, Colorado (April 9, 2024).

Panelist, “Conditions Panel,” Federal Incarceration and Advancing Justice, Nebraska Law Review Symposium, Lincoln, Nebraska (October 12, 2023).

Media

Prison Chronicles: ADX, THE HISTORY CHANNEL (Jul. 29, 2024).

Professor Nicole B. Godfrey

Publications

Decades of Indifference: Failures in Accountability and Oversight in the Provision of Medical Care in Federal Prisons, 24 NEV. L.J. (forthcoming 2025).

Group Prayer in Federal Prison, 103 NEB. L. REV. 19 (2024).

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Federal Prison Officials, and the Doctrinal Dinosaur of Qualified Immunity, 98 N.Y.U. L. REV. 1045 (2023).

“How the COVID-19 Pandemic Has Hurt Incarcerated People” (with Danielle C. Jefferis), in THE LEGAL AND SOCIAL RAMIFICATIONS OF PANDEMICS ON CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES (Claire L. Parins, ed., 2023).

Presentations

Moderator, “Advocating for People in Federal Custody: A Discussion on the Litigation and Advocacy for the Survivors from FCI Dublin,” Prison Law & Advocacy Conference, Atlanta, Georgia (October 18, 2024). 

Presenter, Decades of Indifference: Failures in Accountability and Oversight in the Provision of Medical Care in Federal Prisons, Work-in-Progress, Clinical Law Review Writer’s Workshop, New York University School of Law, New York, New York (September 28, 2024). 

Presenter, “Down with SDP: Delving into Substantive vs. Procedural Due Process,” Using Substantive Due Process to Support and Fight for Families, Colorado Office of Respondent Parents’ Counsel CLE, Denver, Colorado (August 2, 2024).

Panelist, “If I was Your Clinical Fellow: Challenges, Equity, and What We Want Clinicians to Know (inspired by ‘If I Was Your Girlfriend’ by Prince),” Midwest Clinical Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota (October 21, 2023).

Panelist, “‘Dancing in the Purple Rain’: Lessons in Professionalism for Gen Z Students Navigating Community and Personal Crises,” Midwest Clinical Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota (October 20, 2023).

Presenter, Operating in the Shadows: Unaccountability and Indifference in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Work-in-Progress, Clinical Law Review Writer’s Workshop, New York University School of Law, New York, New York (October 15, 2023).

Panelist, “Conditions Panel,” Federal Incarceration and Advancing Justice, Nebraska Law Review Symposium, Lincoln, Nebraska (October 12, 2023).

Other Service

Association of American Law Schools, Section on Clinical Legal Education, 2024 Clinical Legal Conference Planning Committee Member (2023-24).

Association of American Law Schools, Section on Litigation, Treasurer (2022-present).

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice, Peer Review Panelist (2024-present).

Lasch Clinical Teaching Fellow Miriam Kerler

Presentations

Presenter, Intimate Associations in Prison, Work-in-Progress, New York University School of Law, New York, New York (September 28, 2024). 

Presenter, “Trauma Informed Lawyering: Taking Care of Victimized Clients and Yourself,” Colorado Bar Association CLE, Denver, Colorado (February 21, 2024).