Pepperdine's Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic Advocating for Prisoner Rights

I am very proud of our brilliant students in the Ninth Circuit Appellate Advocacy Clinic, under the direction of Prof. Jeremy Rosen.  Please see this story with video of their recent oral argument in San Francisco where they represented our client, a detainee suing the Maricopa County (Arizona) Jail for civil rights violations. They did excellent work. 

Here is a brief description of the case:

The Ninth Circuit appointed the Pepperdine Ninth Circuit Clinic to represent pre-trial detainee Charles Byrd who filed a section 1983 lawsuit challenging Maricopa County’s practice of having female guards routinely observe male inmates at extremely close quarters while they are using the toilets and taking showers. Such cross-gender observations have been routinely disallowed when the guards are male and the prisoners are female and case law suggests the same should be the case here. The district court exercised its authority under the Prison Litigation Reform Act to dismiss Byrd’s lawsuit at the screening stage. The students argued on appeal that such dismissal was improper because Byrd plainly stated a claim for constitutional violation.