LOS ANGELES, Calif. – In response to multiple reports of continued retaliation by guards at the Men’s Central Jail against detainees who report wrongdoing, the ACLU and the ACLU of Southern California, together with Disability Rights California and the law firm of Bingham McCutchen, today filed a motion in U.S. District Court seeking a protective order for inmates detained there.

“Retaliation against prisoners for cooperating in investigations of official wrongdoing isn’t uncommon, but the retaliation at issue here is so extreme – multiple credible accounts of beatings, stomping and shattered bones – that I haven’t seen anything to equal it in 17 years of prison litigation around the country,” said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “These witnesses must have the court’s protection.”

The motion asks the federal court to order that all officers and agents of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department be prohibited from punishing inmates for communicating with the ACLU. Additionally, the order asks that the sheriff’s department be required to post their anti-retaliation policy throughout the jail, as well as thoroughly investigate any claims of retaliation.

The ACLU and ACLU/SC are the court-appointed monitors of conditions within the jail. In May the ACLU released a damning report detailing the culture of violence and fear in Men’s Central Jail, a dungeon-like, overcrowded facility where prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and the use of excessive force by deputies is routine.

“For two years we have been trying to work with the sheriff’s department to end the practice of deputies’ retaliating against prisoners for talking with the ACLU,” said Peter Eliasberg, ACLU/SC managing attorney. “However, the problem has just gotten worse, so we had no choice but to seek relief from the court.”

With approximately 20,000 detainees, the Los Angeles County jail system is the largest and most expensive in the nation, costing nearly $1 billion a year to operate. Men’s Central Jail is nearly 50 years old and currently houses an average of 4,500 detainees. Almost 80 percent of them are simply awaiting trial – in other words, they are presumed innocent and have yet to get their day in court.

Sheriff Baca has acknowledged that many are also mentally ill, often stating that he runs the largest mental facility in the nation. “These detainees are especially vulnerable to deputy violence and intimidation," said Melinda Bird of Disability Rights California.

Mayor Villaraigosa was joined today by LAUSD Deputy Superintendent John Deasy, Board Member Yolie Flores, lawyers from the ACLU-SC, Public Counsel, and Morrison & Foerster, LLP, as well as teachers from Gompers Middle School to discuss the details of the settlement agreement in Reed v. State of California, et al., a class action suit that claimed the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights to a quality education was being violated by the disproportionate impact of teacher layoff at their schools. The Mayor’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools brought this problem to the attention of the ACLU/SC and Public Counsel, who assembled a legal team and filed suit on behalf on the affected students and their families.
“I created the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools not only to turn around our District’s lowest-performing schools, but also to be a catalyst for system-wide change,” said Mayor Villaraigosa. “When I saw our most vulnerable schools in our most impoverished communities losing up to two-thirds of their teachers, I knew that I had to stand up and fight. Today, we can claim a civil rights victory and it’s a victory that resonates across the country. This settlement is proof that we are willing to acknowledge problems and tackle them head on. This is about fairness and equality, and when it comes to guaranteeing that for our child
The approved settlement will fully protect up to 45 Targeted Schools in the event of layoffs. The Targeted Schools include 25 underperforming and difficult-to-staff schools that have suffered from staff retention issues and that have demonstrated growth over time based upon several measures of school-wide teacher performance and overall academic growth. In addition, up to 20 new schools will be selected based on the likelihood that the school will be negatively and disproportionately affected by teacher turnover. The schools that make up the Targeted Schools will vary over time based on retention and performance data. This settlement also protects schools throughout the LAUSD by ensuring that no school is impacted by layoffs at a rate greater than the District average.
“This settlement agreement is historic in so many ways,” said LAUSD Deputy Superintendent John Deasy. “We have assured the rights of youth, especially our most vulnerable youth and have limited the impact of RIFs across our entire school system. Further we are now beginning the long needed reform to our antiquated approach to dealing with critical budget reductions. It is my hope that we will not need to implement these reforms because California will honor is basic obligation to fund schools better than prisons.”
The agreement also includes a number of other reform-minded components directed at the targeted schools, with the aim of retaining teachers in schools that traditionally have high teacher turnover to improve the overall growth and success on those campuses. The settlement implements an intervention program for targeted schools that includes teacher effectiveness provisions, a collaborative effort to fill teacher vacancies as quickly as possible (including those that occur mid-year), retention incentives — including financial bonuses — for teachers who remain at a targeted school beyond a certain number of years, plus further incentives if that school experiences growth as measured by the school’s value-added score. Similar incentives are structured for principal retention.
“This is a proud moment for our Board of Education,” said Board Member Yolie Flores. “We have signaled, once again, our commitment to putting the interest of children first. The ACLU lawsuit effectively created the conditions for us to challenge the rules that historically have not served students well and that instead protect the interests of adults. For this we are grateful.”

Mayor Villaraigosa today thanked the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education for their approval of a settlement agreement in Reed v. State of California, a class action suit that claimed the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights to a quality education was being violated by the disproportionate impact of teacher layoff at their schools. The agreement marks a departure from the LAUSD’s long-standing “last hired, first fired” policy that determines layoffs solely by seniority.

“Fundamentally, this lawsuit was about protecting some of our most vulnerable students in some of the City’s most challenging schools,” Mayor Villaraigosa said. “But this agreement is about protecting all our students in every one of our schools. Our children have long deserved better and this decision is a victory for students throughout LA Unified. These kind of sweeping reforms are exactly what I had in mind when I created the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, and I am thrilled to see the Partnership has once again proved itself a catalyst for District-wide change.”

The approved settlement targets schools for protection from layoffs and defines those targeted schools as the 25 ranked in the bottom 30 percent by Academic Performance Index (API) score, high teacher turnover rates, and other determining criteria. It also allows for up to 20 new schools to be protected as target schools. Although it allows the LAUSD discretion in protecting the schools most vulnerable to high turnover rates and classroom instability, this agreement protects schools throughout the LAUSD by ensuring that no school is impacted by layoffs at a rate greater than the District average.

The agreement also includes a number of other reform-minded components directed at the targeted schools, with the aim of retaining teachers in schools that traditionally have high teacher turnover to improve the overall growth and success on those campuses. The settlement implements an intervention program for targeted schools that includes teacher effectiveness provisions, a collaborative effort to fill teacher vacancies as quickly as possible (including those that occur mid-year), retention incentives — including financial bonuses — for teachers who remain at a targeted school beyond a certain number of years, plus further incentives if that school experiences growth as measured by the school’s value-added score. Similar incentives are structured for principal retention.

“The settlement assures that the State and District will no longer balance the budget on the backpacks of innocent children already attending the hardest to staff schools in Los Angeles,” said Mark Rosenbaum, Chief Counsel of the ACLU of Southern California. “It represents a model step toward school reform by targeting underperforming schools for protection from any budget-based layoffs at all in part based upon how well schools are educating children. Instead of having to wait for Superman, the settlement guarantees that the LAUSD will be committed to building and sustaining superschools staffed with the superteachers and superprincipals our most neglected children have long deserved.”

At the urging of Mayor Villaraigosa and his Partnership for Los Angeles School, the ACLU and Public Counsel filed a lawsuit (Reed v. Smith) on behalf of Gompers, Liechty, and Markham Middle Schools arguing that the children’s constitutional right to a quality education was being violated due to the disproportionate impact of teacher layoffs at those schools.

“LAUSD today restored civil rights to all its students,” said Catherine Lhamon, Director of Impact Litigation at Public Counsel Law Center. “This historic settlement ends the bad old days, when only some students bore the brunt of the budget crisis, and instead recommits Los Angeles to offer educational opportunity on an equal basis.”

Due to their relatively young teaching staffs, these three campuses were particularly hard-hit by teacher layoffs, in some cases losing up to two-thirds of their teachers. The policy of determining layoffs solely based on seniority resulted in teachers teaching subjects in which they had no training, high teacher turnover rates, and a reduction in the quality of instruction due to a lack of stability in the classroom.

"Morrison & Foerster is extremely pleased with today's vote,” added Sean Gates, Partner at Morrison & Foerster, LLP, who provided legal counsel pro bono for this case. “This important agreement goes a long way towards ensuring that all Los Angeles public school students receive equal educational opportunity. Today's vote proves that even in times of extreme economic stress, we can work together, develop creative solutions, and protect the rights of those most vulnerable."

The Mayor and the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools stood in full support of the plaintiff’s arguments and actively sought the changes requested by the plaintiffs in the case. The Partnership welcomed its role as a defendant in order to have a seat at the table to ensure reforms were implemented to protect students from this and other such inequitable policies.

Markham and Gompers Middle Schools are operated by the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools by agreement with the LAUSD. John Liechty Middle School is part of the LAUSD.