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Our Litigation

Our Litigation

The Appellate Courts Immersion Clinic handles complex public-interest appeals.  The Clinic director – Brian Wolfman – previously directed the Civil Rights clinic at Georgetown’s Institute for Public Representation (IPR), which did both trial-court and appellate litigation. In that capacity, he mentored teams of Georgetown Law students handling a range of complex public-interest appeals similar to those now being handled by the Appellate Courts Immersion Clinic. Therefore, below, we provide a list of some of our litigation followed by a partial list of IPR appeals.

Fall Semester 2023

  • Goode v. Cook (2d Cir.) (pending) ─ concerning, among other issues, whether long-term solitary confinement violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel-and-unusual punishment (Clinic wrote opening brief)
  • Talley v. Pillai (3d Cir.) (pending) ─ concerning a range of unresolved issues under the “three-strikes” provision of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief as court-appointed amicus for the appellant)
  • Ye v. GlobalTranz Enterprises, No. 23-475 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ concerning whether federal law preempts state-law suits against truck brokers whose negligence causes calamitous truck crashes (Clinic wrote amicus brief for the Institute for Safer Trucking)
  • Nealy v. Shinn (9th Cir.) (pending) ─ concerning whether state officials’ hostile interference with Muslim congregate prayer in a prison violates the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)

Spring Semester 2023

  • Ferguson v. United States of America, No. 22-1216 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ concerning whether the federal habeas statute limits a district court’s discretion to consider legal errors in prior proceedings as “extraordinary and compelling reasons” warranting a sentence reduction under the federal compassionate-release statute (Clinic wrote petition for certiorari and reply brief)
  • Karas v. California Dep’t of Corrections & Rehabilitation, 2023 WL 8889552 (9th Cir. 2023) ─ concerning whether California’s scheme for providing good-time credits to inmates creates a Fourteenth Amendment “liberty interest” triggering procedural-due-process protections (Clinic wrote opening brief, reply brief, and opposition to request for judicial notice)
  • Moore v. Walton, WL 1203885 (3d Cir. 2024) ─ concerning the circumstances under which a prisoner’s lengthy exposure to contamination by human waste violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and when the time for amendment and service of a complaint can be extended under federal civil rules 15(c) and 4(m) (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Talandar v. Vermont, No. 21-1441 (2d Cir.)  ─ concerning the interaction between the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial and Younger abstention (Clinic wrote petition for rehearing)

Fall Semester 2022

  • Jackson v. Sheriff of Winnebago County 74 F. 4th 496 (7th Cir. 2023) ─ concerning whether a jail officer’s delay in bringing emergency medical care to an inmate struggling to breathe violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process of law  (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Grace v. Bd. of Trustees, Brooke East Boston, 85 F.4th 1 (1st Cir. 2023)  ─ concerning the circumstances under which homophobic and transphobic grade-school bullying violate Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination in educational institutions and programs receiving federal financial assistance  (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Santos v. Yellowfin Loan Servicing Corp., No. 22-0910 (Tex. S. Ct.) ─ concerning whether a claim to collect a deficiency judgment on a second mortgage accrues when that judgment is entered or whenever in the future the lender (or its successor in interest) decides to “accelerate” the original mortgage loan (Clinic wrote petition for review, petition reply, opening merits brief, and reply merits brief to the Texas Supreme Court)
  • Daye v. Garland, No. 22-356 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ concerning whether the Supreme Court should overrule Jordan v. De George and hold that the phrase “crime involving moral turpitude” is unconstitutionally vague as used in 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(A) (Clinic wrote amicus brief for former immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals officials)
  • Sonmez v. WP Company (D.C. Court of Appeals) (pending) ─ concerning whether coverage ban and other employment decisions imposed on a journalist by Washington Post violates the D.C. Human Rights Act (Clinic wrote appellant’s opening brief and cross-appeal response and reply brief)
  • Naes v. City of St. Louis, Missouri (8th Cir.) (pending) ─  concerning whether sex-based job transfers violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Clinic wrote appellant’s opening brief, reply brief and petition for rehearing en banc)

Spring Semester 2022

  • Muldrow v. City of St. Louis (U.S. Supreme Court) (pending) ─ Concerning whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discriminatory job transfers and refusals to transfer (Clinic wrote petition for certiorari, reply brief, opening merits brief, and merits reply brief)
  • Stafford v. George Washington University, 56 F.4th 50 (D.C. Cir. 2022) ─ Title VI race-discrimination appeal involving allegations of egregious racially hostile environment on college tennis team; appeal poses questions about imputation of liability to the university and the appropriate statute of limitations (Clinic wrote appellant’s opening brief and reply brief)
  • Pyankovska v. Abid, 65 F.4th 1067 (9th Cir. 2023) ─ concerning the federal and Nevada Wiretap Acts, the Noerr-Pennington and other First Amendment doctrines, and Rule 55(b) default-judgment damages (Clinic wrote appellant’s opening brief and reply brief)
  • Robinson v. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, 71 F.4th 51 (D.C. Cir. 2023) ─ concerning whether the time period for suing in district court on “mixed” Title VII/Civil Service Reform Act claims is jurisdictional or, rather, a claim-processing rule subject to equitable exceptions) (Clinic wrote appellant’s petition for initial hearing en banc, opening brief and reply brief)
  • Moss v. Miniard, 62 F.4th 1002 (6th Cir. 2023), cert. denied, 2024 WL 674729 (2024) ─ habeas appeal concerning whether our client’s Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel was violated (Clinic wrote appellee’s response brief, petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc, petition for certiorari, and reply brief)

Fall Semester 2021

  • Burrell v. Staff, 60 F.4th 25 (3d Cir. 2023) ─ concerning a range of issues under the Thirteenth Amendment, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, RICO, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and state law in a challenge to an alleged scheme by government and private actors to jail and then profit from the labor of child-support debtors (Clinic wrote appellants’ opening brief and reply brief)
  • Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools, 143 S. Ct. 859 (2023) ─ concerning whether and to what degree a student must exhaust administrative remedies under the federal special-education law before filing an education-related suit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (Clinic wrote certiorari-stage amicus brief for law professors in the field)
  • Davis v. Legal Services of Alabama (11th Cir. and U.S. Supreme Court) (pending) ─ concerning what discriminatory acts are covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s prohibition on discrimination in the “terms, conditions, or privileges of employment”  (Clinic wrote appellant’s petition for rehearing en banc, petition for certiorari, reply brief and supplemental brief)
  • Harrison v. Brookhaven School District, 82 F.4th 427 (5th Cir. 2023) ─ concerning whether an employer’s discriminatory refusal to reimburse an employee for training is a so-called “adverse employment action” and therefore violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Clinic wrote appellant’s opening brief and reply brief)
  • Creech v. Ohio Dep’t of Rehabilitation and Correction, 2022 WL 4480124 (6th Cir. 2022) ─ concerning whether a prison’s confiscation of a cane from a prisoner with serious ambulatory disabilities violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and whether Congress appropriately abrogated the state’s immunity to suits of this kind under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment (Clinic wrote appellant’s opening brief and reply brief)
  • Wallace v. Performance Contractors, 57 F.4th 209 (5th Cir. 2023) ─ concerning sex-based job discrimination, serious and pervasive harassment, and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Clinic wrote appellant’s opening brief and, with our friends at the Hecker Kaplan law firm taking the laboring oar, appellant’s reply brief)
  • A.P. v. Fayette County Sch. Dist., 2023 WL 4174070 (11th Cir. 2023) ─ concerning when on-campus sexual assault and a school’s failure to respond violates Title’s IX’s prohibitions on discrimination and retaliation and the Equal Protection Clause (Clinic wrote appellant’s opening brief and reply brief)
  • Johnson v. Ryan, 55 F.4th 1167 (9th Cir. 2022) ─ concerning whether the Arizona prison system’s program for release from solitary confinement violates due process and related issues (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)

Spring Semester 2021

  • Chambers v. District of Columbia, 35 F.4th 870 (D.C. Cir. 2022) (en banc)  ─ concerning whether the en banc D.C. Circuit should overturn circuit precedent and hold that a discriminatory transfer of an employee (or a discriminatory refusal to transfer an employee) violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Clinic wrote appellant’s opening en banc brief and reply en banc brief)
  • United States v. Jones (5th Cir.) (pending) ─ concerning whether a generic appeal waiver in a plea agreement bars a challenge to a conviction under an invalid, unconstitutional statute (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Cole v. Wake County Board of Education, No. 20-1364 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ concerning whether the Supreme Court should overturn the adverse-employment-action doctrine, which significantly narrows Congress’s ban on employment discrimination (Clinic wrote petition for certioriari and reply brief)
  • Garrett v. Murphy, 17 F.4th 419 (3rd Cir. 2021) ─ concerning a range of issues under the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s “three strikes” provision (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Hamilton v. Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, 79 F.4th 494 (5th Cir. 2023) (en Banc) ─ concerning whether the Fifth Circuit should overturn the adverse-employment-action doctrine, which significantly narrows Congress’s ban on employment discrimination (Clinic wrote initial petition for hearing en banc, opening panel brief, reply panel brief, petition for rehearing en banc and merits en banc brief)
  • Famous v. Fuchs, 38 F.4th 625 (7th Cir. 2022) ─ habeas petition raising ineffective assistance of counsel and statute-of-limitations issues and the circumstances under which a habeas petitioner has a right to a federal-court evidentiary hearing (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Townsend v. United States, 2022 WL 4769075 (D.C. Cir. 2022) ─ concerning whether the D.C. Circuit should overturn the adverse-employment-action doctrine, which significantly narrows Congress’s ban on employment discrimination (Clinic wrote initial petition for hearing en banc)
  • Board of Comm., Weld County, Colo. v. Exby-Stolley, No. 20-1357 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ regarding whether the Supreme Court should review the Tenth Circuit’s en banc decision concerning the breadth of an employer’s “reasonable accommodation” duty under the Americans with Disabilities Act (Clinic students researched and drafted this opposition to certiorari in collaboration with Jason Wesoky of the Denver, Colorado law firm Darling Milligan, PC)

Fall Semester 2020

  • Collier v. Dallas County Hospital District, No. 20-1004 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ whether and in what circumstances workplace use of the n-word or similar odious racist epithets creates a hostile work environment and, therefore, violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Clinic wrote Supreme Court petition for certiorari and reply brief)
  • Threat, et al. v. City of Cleveland, 6 F.4th 672 (6th Cir. 2021) ─ concerning whether the City of Cleveland’s race-based system for assigning EMS supervisors violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and related issues (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Sartori v. Schrodt, 2021 WL 6060975 (11th Cir. 2021) ─ concerning the circumstances under which a person is authorized to access online electronic messages under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Stored Communications Act and related issues (Clinic wrote appellee’s principal brief)
  • Castaneda Medina v. Garland, 849 Fed. App’x 674 (9th Cir. 2021) ─  concerning the proper venue for an asylee to challenge a removal order entered in absentia (Clinic wrote opening and reply briefs) (These briefs are non-public filings and cannot be posted here.)
  • Ziccarelli v. Dart, 35 F.3d 1079 (7th Cir. 2022) ─ raising a range of important issues under the Family and Medical Leave Act (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)

Spring Semester 2020

  • Kelly v. City of Alexandria, et al. (Kelly I), 830 F. App’x 722 (4th Cir. 2020) ─ whether employment-discrimination claims against a city and its officers are (1) valid under applicable federal civil-rights law (Section 1983), and (2) whether the filing period for certain Title VII claims may be equitably tolled (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • C.W. v. Denver County School District, 994 F.3d 1215 (10th Cir. 2021) ─ concerning what exhaustion of administrative remedies entails under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Fry v. Napoleon Public Schools (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply-response cross-appeal brief)
  • Rad v. Attorney General of the U.S., 983 F.3d 651 (3rd Cir. 2020) ─ whether, under both the “categorical approach” and the “circumstance-specific approach,” a legal permanent resident may be removed to his country of citizenship on the ground that he committed an “aggravated felony” under federal law (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief) (Watch Immersion Clinic Clinical Fellow Hannah Mullen’s oral argument before the Third Circuit)
  • Kelly v. City of Alexandria, et al. (Kelly II), 830 F. App’x 722 (4th Cir. 2020) ─ whether employment-discrimination claims against city officers are (1) valid under applicable federal civil-rights law (Section 1983) or (2) precluded by prior litigation (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Thomas v. Baca, et al., 827 F. App’x 777 (9th Cir. 2020) ─ whether (1) the court of appeals has jurisdiction to hear this qualified-immunity appeal, and/or (2) our client has a right to religious meals under the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (Clinic wrote answering brief for the appellee) (Watch Immersion Clinic Fellow Madeline Meth’s oral argument before the Ninth Circuit)

Fall Semester 2019

  • Real v. Perry, 810 F. App’x 776 (11th Cir. 2020) ─ whether police officer’s brandishing of gun in face of unarmed citizen with threat to shoot, accompanied by use of virulent racial slur, violates Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable seizures or the Due Process Clause (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Ledford v. Baenen, No. 19-1694 (7th Cir.) ─ whether toxic emissions and frigid temperatures in prison cell block violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments (Clinic wrote opening brief )
  • Creese v. City of New York, 815 F. App’x 586 (2d Cir. 2020) ─ concerning the constitutional standards for imposing liability on police officers for false arrest and malicious prosecution (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief) (Listen to Immersion Clinic student Kalen Pruss’s present oral argument before the Second Circuit)
  • United States v. Dorsey, No. 19-30001 (9th Cir. Dec. 18, 2019) ─ concerning the First Amendment right of access to court documents in criminal cases (Clinic wrote opening brief)

Spring Semester 2019

  • Peterson v. Linear Controls Incorporated, No. 18-1401 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ whether employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is limited to only “ultimate” actions, such as demotion and firing, or rather covers all discriminatory conduct by employers (Clinic wrote cert-stage amicus brief)
  • Molina-Aranda v. Black Magic Enterprises, 983 F.3d 779 (5th Cir. 2020) ─ concerning standards for pleading federal wage-and-hour and RICO claims on behalf of foreign guest workers under federal H-2B program (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • Taylor v. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, 958 F.3d 556 (7th Cir. 2020) ─ concerning banks’ obligations to modify distressed mortgages under state law and the federal HAMP program enacted by Congress in response to the Great Recession (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • [Doe] v. William Barr, U.S. Attorney General (XX Cir.) ─ whether our client, an undocumented immigrant, is entitled to deferral of removal from the United States under the Convention Against Torture because she is likely to face torture in her home country (Clinic wrote opening and reply briefs, but we cannot post the briefs here; the filings in the appeal are sealed because of the risk public disclosure would pose to our client.)

Fall Semester 2018

  • Graviss v. Department of Defense, No. 18-1061 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ whether violation of the time limit for taking an appeal from the Merit Systems Protection Board to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is an absolute jurisdictional bar to the suit or, rather, is a “claim-processing” rule subject to exceptions (Clinic wrote Supreme Court petition for certiorari and reply brief)
  • Ritter v. Brady, Chapter 7 Trustee, No. 18-747 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ whether an underwater mortgage lien may be stripped down/off in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy—that is, whether Dewsnup v. Timm, 502 U.S. 410 (1992), should be overruled (Clinic wrote Supreme Court petition for certiorari )
  • Burningham v. Raines, No. 18-747 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ regarding whether the court of appeals had jurisdiction to consider whether police officers who shot our client were entitled to qualified immunity (Clinic students researched and drafted opposition to certiorari in collaboration with Arkansas law firm James & Carter)

Spring Semester 2018

  • Golden v. Indianapolis Housing Agency, No. 17-1113 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ whether cancer patients and others who need multi-month leave to treat their disabilities are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (Clinic wrote cert-stage amicus brief for national cancer survivors’ organizations)
  • United States v. Mitchell, 905 F.3d 991 (6th Cir. 2018) ─ whether our client’s sentence (1) was unlawfully lengthened under the Armed Career Criminal Act and (2) contained an unlawful supervised release term (Clinic wrote answering brief as appellee and reply brief as cross-appellant)
  • Cirocco v. McMahon, 768 F. App’x 854 (10th Cir. 2019) ─ whether administrative exhaustion under Title VII, the federal law prohibiting employment discrimination, is a jurisdictional prerequisite to suit and other key issues concerning the hostile-work-environment doctrine (Clinic wrote opening brief and reply brief)
  • In re Lithium Ion Batteries Antitrust Litigation, 777 F. App’x 221 (9th Cir. 2019) ─ whether a nationwide class-action settlement that treats groups of class members with claims of greatly different value identically is authorized by federal class-action law (Clinic students researched and drafted opening brief for objector Center for Class Action Fairness)

Fall Semester 2017

  • Alvarez v. City of Brownsville, 904 F.3d 382 (5th Cir. 2019) (en banc) ─ whether the government must disclose exculpatory evidence to a criminal defendant before entering a plea agreement under the principles of Brady v. Maryland (Clinic wrote en banc brief on behalf of wrongly-convicted, actually-innocent defendant)
  • Jones v. Medtronic, 745 F. App’x 714 (9th Cir. 2018) ─ whether federal medical-device law preempts state-law damages claims caused by certain defective medical devices (Clinic wrote opening and reply briefs)
  • Haywood v. Massage Envy, 887 F.3d 329 (7th Cir. 2018) ─ concerning the breadth of the consumer-protection statutes of Missouri and Illinois (Clinic wrote opening and reply briefs)
  • Montgomery Country, Maryland v. Complete Lawn Care, Inc., 207 A. 3d 365 (Md. Ct. Spec. App.), cert denied, 212 A. 2d 395 (2019) ─ whether state pesticide law bars counties from adopting environmental-protection ordinances restricting pesticides in places likely to be used by children (Clinic students researched and drafted opening brief for the county)

Spring Semester 2017

  • Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton, 137 S. Ct. 1652 (2017) ─ whether ERISA plans maintained, but not established, by certain church affiliates are “church plans” and thus exempt from ERISA’s protections for retirees (Clinic wrote merits-stage amicus brief on behalf of the National Employment Lawyers Association)
  • Balbed v. Eden Park Guest House, 881 F.3d 285 (4th Cir. 2018) ─ concerning the circumstances under which employees who live and work on employers’ premises must be paid minimum wage and overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act and state wage-and-hour laws (Clinic wrote opening and reply briefs)
  • Lyons v. The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 712 F. Appx. 287 (4th Cir. 2018) ─ concerning the scope of the exemption from coverage under the Americans with Disabilities Act for employees who have used illegal drugs (Clinic wrote opening and reply briefs)
  • M.R. v. Ridley School District 868 F.3d 218 (3rd Cir. 2017) ─ whether and under what circumstances the parents of a child with a disability are entitled to an award of attorney fees under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (Clinic wrote reply brief)
  • Oppositions to certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court ─ (1) Clinic students worked with Georgetown law professor Gary Peller drafting an opposition to certiorari addressing complex issues of bankruptcy law and due process arising out of General Motors’ “Great Recession” bankruptcy; and (2) Clinic students researched and drafted an opposition to certiorari in a Class Action Fairness Act case arising out of the Flint water crisis in collaboration with McAlpine P.C.

Illustrative cases from the Institute for Public Representation

  • Elgin v. Department of Treasury, 561 U.S. 1 (2012) ─ whether the Civil Service Reform Act precludes a federal district court from granting a federal employee equitable relief on a constitutional claim against that employee’s federal employer (Clinic handled both cert and merits stages)
  • U.S. Airways, Inc. v. McCutchen, 569 U.S. 88 (2013) ─ whether ERISA contract abrogates equitable common-fund doctrine (Clinic wrote brief for consumer-group amicus)
  • Knight v. Thompson, No. 13-955 (U.S. Supreme Court) ─ whether prisoners have a right under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act to resist state prison’s restrictive hair-grooming rules (Clinic wrote cert-stage amicus brief for national anti-discrimination and religious-liberty organizations)
  • Freeman v. Dal-Tile Corp., 750 F.3d 413 (4th Cir. 2014) ─ concerning the standard for imputation of liability to employer based on third-party sexual and racial harassment under Title VII (Clinic wrote appellate briefs and then mediated settlement)
  • McBurney v. Cuccinelli, 616 F.3d 393 (4th Cir. 2010) ─ whether plaintiffs had Article III standing to bring constitutional challenge to Virginia law limiting use of Virginia’s FOIA to Virginia citizens (Clinic handled this appeal as well as the trial litigation)