On June 2, 2016, a group of prisoners of the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) filed this class-action lawsuit against the IDOC in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201. Represented by the Uptown People's Law Center and private counsel, the plaintiffs alleged that the IDOC housed them in “extreme isolation,” which the plaintiffs defined as segregation from the mainstream prisoner population. During isolation, they claimed that they were involuntarily confined to their cells for upwards of 22 to 24 hours a day. This, they alleged, violated the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as class-action certification.

On August 22, 2016, the IDOC moved to dismiss this case for failure to state a claim and lack of jurisdiction. The court (Magistrate Judge Stephen C. Williams) denied the motion on March 10, 2017. The court explained that the plaintiffs had alleged they were deprived of human contact, food, and sanitary living conditions, and that the defendant was aware of the conditions because the plaintiffs had filed grievances. In addition, the court found that the plaintiffs adequately pled that they had not been allowed to challenge the defendant's decision to isolate them. 2017 WL 951406. The parties then engaged in discovery.

The case was re-assigned to Magistrate Judge Mark A. Beatty on January 8, 2019.

The plaintiffs filed for class certification on September 6, 2019. The court issued an order on March 6, 2020 announcing that the plaintiffs' motion for class certification was fully briefed and that the court intended to set this motion for oral argument. As of April 10, 2020, the case has yet to go to oral argument and is ongoing.

Gloria Han - 01/22/2017
Elizabeth Heise - 10/25/2018
Alex Moody - 04/10/2020


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