Pending

For over a decade, the ACLU of Michigan has fought against Michigan’s cruel policy of allowing children to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  There is a second group that is often overlooked: children who were sentenced to life with the theoretical possibility of parole, but who are not given meaningful hearings, fair consideration, or a realistic shot at release when they become parole-eligible.  

In December 2018 we joined the Juvenile Law Center in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Michigan Supreme Court on behalf of Montez Stovall, who pled guilty when he was 17 years old to second-degree murder in order to avoid a first-degree conviction and sentence of life without parole.  Ironically, had Stovall received the harsher sentence, he would now be eligible for resentencing to a shorter term because of the Supreme Court’s subsequent rulings.

In a series of opinions released in July 2022, the Michigan Supreme Court agreed with our position that the Michigan Constitution provides greater protections to youth facing life sentences. The Court held that a life sentence cannot be automatic for 18-year-olds, and judges must consider their youth at sentencing like they would for those under 18. The Court also held that for children charged with lesser, second-degree offenses, a life sentence (including with the possibility of parole) is categorically unconstitutional and cannot be imposed. Finally, in cases where prosecutors are still allowed to seek life-without-parole sentences for youth, the Court held that they must meet a “clear and convincing evidence” burden of proof. Hundreds of youth will now be eligible for resentencing based on these new, more protective, constitutional rules. (Hill v. Snyder; People v. Poole; People v. Stovall; People v. Taylor; ACLU of Michigan Attorneys Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio and Dan Korobkin; National ACLU Attorneys Steven Watt and Brandon Buskey; co-counsel Marsha Levick and Riya Shah of the Juvenile Law Center, Tessa Bialek and Sarah Russell of Quinnipiac University School of Law, and Deborah LaBelle.)

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the parent agency of Border Patrol, claims authority under a federal statute to conduct warrantless searches within a “reasonable distance” of the border. Its outdated regulations define “reasonable distance” to be “100 air miles” from any external boundary, including coastal boundaries, unless an agency official sets a shorter distance. In Michigan, the agency considers the entire state of Michigan as falling within the 100-mile zone. The ACLU of Michigan and coalition partners filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for more information about these warrantless searches, but CBP failed to respond, so in 2016 we sued in federal court to obtain the records. Although CBP provided some information in response to our lawsuit, it redacted all geographic information from the records, making it impossible to determine where in Michigan CBP is operating and how far from the actual border the agency is conducting warrantless searches. In 2018 we reached a settlement agreement that required CBP to provide city/township-level geographic information, and in 2020 we finally received the last of the documents. Our analysis of those records showed disturbing patterns of racial profiling and abuse, as well as extensive and damaging entanglement between local law enforcement and CBP. In March 2021 we published our findings in a report entitled The Border’s Long Shadow: How Border Patrol Uses Racial Profiling and Local and State Police to Instill Fear in Michigan’s Immigrant Communities, a first-of-its-kind investigation of CBP’s Michigan operations. Following the release of our report, the Michigan State Police, who were responsible for initiating the detention of the most people who are transferred into CBP custody, adopted policy changes to better safeguard against violations of immigrants’ rights, and members of Congress have asked the Department of Homeland Security for briefing and information regarding the report’s findings. (Michigan Immigrant Rights Center v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security; ACLU Attorneys Miriam Aukerman and Monica Andrade; Cooperating Attorneys Samuel Damren, Dante Stella, Nina Gavrilovic, and Corey Wheaton of Dykema.)

In 1971, legendary federal judge Damon Keith held that the City of Hamtramck had "intentionally planned and implemented a series of urban renewal projects and other government programs designed to remove a substantial portion of Black citizens from the city, in violation of plaintiffs’ federal statutory and constitutional rights."

The litigation that generated that ruling has had a long life span, and in 2017 the case found its way before the court again when some of Hamtramck’s African American residents filed a motion requesting a court order enforcing a decades-old consent judgment in the case. In their motion, the residents complained that Hamtramck’s current tax assessment practices are purposeful efforts to purge African American homeowners from the city. Specifically, they alleged that homes owned by black families have been assessed at elevated rates multiple times during an assessment cycle, making it unreasonably difficult for homeowners to satisfy resulting tax requirements. 

In February 2017, the ACLU of Michigan filed a friend-of-the-court brief pointing out that historically, taxation has been a convenient tool for placing a special burden on minority populations — particularly when there are efforts to impact a city’s racial demographics. We further argued that the alleged tax assessment practices in Hamtramck, if true, are consistent with a pattern of racial exclusion and discrimination occurring in other regions of the country. The residents’ motion to enforce the consent judgment remains pending. 

(Garrett v. City of Hamtramck; ACLU of Michigan Attorneys Mark Fancher and Michael J. Steinberg.)