The Legal Aid Society brought this class action lawsuit on behalf of high school aged students held in New York City adult jails who have been denied their right to an education. In 2000, the federal court ruled that New York City was violating the constitutional and statutory rights of these incarcerated youth, and entered successive injunctions to enforce the law and secure special education and general education services on Rikers Island. The Court appointed successive monitors to evaluate the City’s compliance.

The matter was considered by the Second Circuit twice. First, in 2002, the Court remanded the case to the district court to determine whether the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s exhaustion requirement barred the lawsuit. The district court concluded that it did not. Then, in 2006, the Court affirmed the district court’s finding that exhaustion was not required, affirmed portions of the district court’s injunction that were based primarily on federal statutory law, vacated portions of the injunction that relied solely on violations of state law, and vacated other portions of the injunction and remanded consideration of them to the district court to determine whether they were based primarily on state or federal law.

In 2016, the plaintiff class secured a new court order mandating that DOC and the Department of Correction provide class members with a daily minimum of three hours of education, including special education, no matter where they are housed on Rikers Island. A monitor was simultaneously appointed for two years to oversee the plan’s implementation.

Since 2019, when children left the custody of the New York City Department of Correction pursuant to the Raise the Age law, the class has consisted of 18 to 20 year olds.

We continue to enforce these decrees so that no child is deprived of a high school education due to incarceration in New York City jails.