Case: Flores v. Stanford

On March 20, 2018, several people serving indeterminate sentences of a term of years to life with the possibility of parole in New York for crimes committed under age 18 filed this putative class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs sued the Commissioners of the New York State Board of Parole under 42 U.S.C §1983. The plaintiffs, represented by private counsel, claimed that the New York State Board of Parole violated their Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by repeatedly denying their parole applications. The plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief. The case was assigned to Judge Vincent L. Briccetti.

Plaintiffs argued that they had been denied the realistic and meaningful opportunity for release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation to which they were entitled and violated their Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth amendment rights. Specifically, the complaint alleged repeated instances where individual plaintiffs who were sentenced to prison for crimes committed as juveniles were denied parole arbitrarily. The complaint alleged that the New York State Board of Parole cherry-picked instances of misconduct to justify denying parole instead of reviewing parole applications holistically. In one instance, the Board allegedly relied on a single misbehavior from twenty years ago as a reason to deny parole to an inmate. This denial occurred even though the inmate had earned a master's degree while incarcerated, had been commended by local prison officials for helping to rehabilitate other prisoners, had low likelihood of recidivism, and had no instances of misconduct while in prison. The impact of these denials was that inmates, who had been sentenced for varying ranges of time, had their sentences extended beyond when they were supposed to be paroled.

On March 23, 2018, plaintiffs filed a motion to certify their class for the lawsuit. Judge Briccetti denied their motion without prejudice on April 26, 2018, as being premature. Plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary injunction seeking to force the commissioners to review all of the application materials for an upcoming May Parole hearing on April 19, 2018. Judge Briccetti denied the motion and gave his reasoning verbally at a May 15 hearing.

On June 22, 2018, defendants filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted and on qualified immunity grounds. Shortly afterwards, the court, on its own motion, allowed plaintiffs to file an amended complaint, which was filed on July 18. This amended complaint added six more named plaintiffs. On August 3, 2018, defendants filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim and for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. On September 20, 2019, the court dismissed the plaintiffs' Sixth Amendment claims and all claims for injunctive relief, but ruled that the plaintiffs' Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment claims for declaratory relief could proceed. 2019 WL 4572703. The court explained that, at that stage of the litigation, it found plausible plaintiffs' claim that the parole procedures for juveniles serving potential life terms do not satisfy due process.  It further reasoned that the alleged denial of parole on the sole basis of the crime or juvenile criminal history and despite evidence of maturity and rehabilitation, if true, would violate the Eighth Amendment.   

Thereafter, the parties engaged in discovery and related disputes.  On June 1, 2022, plaintiffs filed a third amended complaint, with updated plaintiffs and defendants.  And on October 21, 2022, plaintiffs filed a motion to certify the class.  On February 2, 2023, the court issued an order requiring the parties to discuss settlement in good faith and denying plaintiffs' motion for class certification without prejudice pending resolution of defendants' anticipated motion for summary judgment.  As of May 2023, the case remains in mediation.