For years, people arrested in East Baton Rouge Parish who appeared before Judge Trudy White have been jailed unless they pay a $525 fee to a private corporation called Rehabilitation Home Incarceration (“RHI”). This fee is paid by each person for their own pre-trial release. This fee is paid in addition to any bail amount required by the judge as a condition for that person’s release. This has been going on for at least three years in the parish.

The ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of criminal defendants in Orleans Parish who are unable to afford an attorney. The suit attacks Louisiana’s chronic underfunding of its public defender system.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana have filed a federal lawsuit against a public school in Sabine Parish that harassed a non-Christian student and has a long history of proselytizing students and promoting religion. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two parents, Scott and Sharon Lane, and their three children, including their son, C.C., who is a Buddhist of Thai heritage.

Damon A. Thibodeaux was exonerated in 2012 after 15 years on death row in Louisiana. DNA and other evidence proved he did not commit the crime of raping and murdering his young cousin to which he originally confessed. His confession came at the end of nine hours of police interrogation; he was exhausted when it began and beyond confused by the time he issued a confession riddled with mistakes of fact, and containing only information he had received from the police or conjecture.

On September 8, 2009, the ACLU Women's Rights Project and the ACLU of Louisiana filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in Louisiana challenging the Vermilion Parish School District’s illegal sex segregation policy. The lawsuit charged that mandatory sex segregation in public schools violated Title IX of the Education Amendments, the Equal Education Opportunities Act and the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a parent whose two children were placed in sex segregated classrooms without being offered equal coeducational options as required by law.