Victory!

In January 2016, Detroit police officers arrived at the home of Nikita Smith with a search warrant. Ms. Smith told the police that she owned three dogs and offered to put them in a separate room so they would not get in the way of the search. When the officers entered her home, they handcuffed Ms. Smith and immediately shot all three dogs to death. 

Smith sued the police for violating her Fourth Amendment rights when they killed her dogs without reason to believe they posed a threat, but the district court dismissed her lawsuit on the grounds that she did not have a “license” to keep the dogs under Michigan law. 

When the case was appealed to the Sixth Circuit, the ACLU of Michigan filed a friend-of-the-court brief explaining that the lower court improperly equated compliance with licensing requirements under state law with legitimate property interests under the Fourth Amendment. Property not properly licensed might be subject to lawful seizure, but the manner of that seizure must be reasonable because the owner still has a Fourth Amendment interest in the property. Shooting a dog when it poses no threat is not reasonable, regardless of whether the dogs are licensed.

In October 2018 the Sixth Circuit agreed with us and reversed the lower court’s dismissal of Ms. Smith’s lawsuit.  

(Smith v. City of Detroit; ACLU Attorney Dan Korobkin; Cooperating Attorney David Moran of U-M Law School.)

In October 2016 we joined the National Disability Rights Network, the Arc Michigan and the Arc of the United States in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Michigan Supreme Court in a case the involves the termination of parental rights where the parent is known to have a cognitive or developmental disability. 

When the state takes custody of a child, it cannot permanently terminate a parent’s legal rights without first making reasonable efforts to safely reunify the family by developing a case “service plan” for the parent to follow. In this case, a mother made the painful decision to relinquish her children into foster care after her family support system fell apart, leaving her homeless and overwhelmed. The mother was also cognitively impaired, and she received a full diagnosis along with recommendations for specialized services with an organization that help parents with such disabilities. 

However, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) refused to follow these recommendations and demanded that the mother follow a standard service plan that failed to take into consideration her disability. When the mother failed to show improvement in the standard service plan, the trial court terminated her parental rights. On appeal, we argued that DHHS violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to make any effort to accommodate the mother through a service plan that would have provided her with the specialized services tailored to her disability. 

In May 2017, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a decision agreeing with our position, ruling that the state, in attempting to reunify the family, was obligated to modify its standard procedures in ways that are reasonable necessary to accommodate the mother’s disability under the ADA. 

(In re Hicks; ACLU Attorneys Michael J. Steinberg and Dan Korobkin; Jill Wheaton and Courtney Kissell of Dykema.)

Sophia Lothamer, a transgender woman, filed a petition for a legal name change in Hillsdale County Circuit Court. She complied with all the requirements of Michigan’s name change statute, including being fingerprinted, having a criminal background check, and publishing notice of her hearing in the local legal news. However, when she arrived at court for what should have been a routine hearing, Chief Judge Michael Smith refused to grant her petition for a legal name change, stating she would have to come back when she completed gender confirmation surgery, which is not required under Michigan law. 

In May 2018 the ACLU of Michigan sent a letter to Judge Smith explaining that he had no legal authority to impose a surgical requirement for a legal name change and doing so would be unconstitutional. In response, Judge Smith ordered Ms. Lothamer’s case reassigned to a different judge, stating in his order his “religious convictions” precluded him from granting her relief. 

In June 2018 we represented her at a hearing before a different judge, and Ms. Lothamer was able to obtain her legal name change. 

(In re Lothamer; ACLU Attorney Jay Kaplan.)