2025 Impact Report
In 2025, the rights of children and youth were tested across the country. The National Center for Youth Law met that moment with urgency, clarity, and strength.
Our 2025 Impact Report shares how NCYL defended children’s rights, held systems accountable, protected families, and worked alongside young people to build a future where every child is treated with dignity.
Every right defended.
Every voice heard.
NCYL’s 2025 Impact Report tells the story of a year when children’s rights were tested across the country, and how NCYL worked to defend them.
Inside the report, you’ll see how NCYL used litigation, policy advocacy, public education, youth-centered strategy, and deep systems expertise to protect children, strengthen families, and hold powerful institutions accountable.
In a year of serious threats, NCYL acted.
Across the country, children and families faced weakened protections, shifting federal priorities, attacks on civil rights enforcement, and policies that placed young people at risk.
NCYL responded with the tools this moment required: enforcing legal protections, challenging unlawful government action, supporting advocates in the field, and working alongside young people whose lives are shaped by the systems we seek to change.
In 2025, that work helped protect unaccompanied immigrant children from unlawful removal, challenge the abandonment of federal civil rights enforcement in schools, advance reforms that protect students from harmful municipal ticketing, enforce foster care settlements benefiting thousands of children, expand support for young people facing commercial sexual exploitation, strengthen youth mental health advocacy, and defend reproductive health equity for young people.
Impact Highlights
This year, NCYL’s work reached children, families, advocates, educators, policymakers, providers, and public systems across the country.
23,000
children impacted through NCYL settlement monitoring in foster care systems.
42,000
students benefited from NCYL settlement enforcement requiring inclusive schools.
1.8 million
Illinois public school students protected by legislation prohibiting municipal fines in schools.
6,600+
advocates, providers, and policymakers trained by NCYL across youth health, mental health, immigration, education, and child-serving systems.
6,000
youth each year will be freed from endless probation under landmark California reform.
$10 million
secured with NCYL support for trauma-informed services for youth in Colorado.
100+
organizations convened through the Education Civil Rights Alliance.
63
news articles and radio pieces featured or quoted NCYL team members, helping shape public understanding of children’s rights.
Youth voice
centered through advisory boards, advocacy training, policy engagement, and campaigns across NCYL’s issue areas.
Where We Worked
NCYL’s 2025 work advanced children’s rights across education, immigration, child welfare, youth justice, health, mental health, reproductive health equity, and efforts to prevent and address commercial sexual exploitation.
Defending students’ civil rights
When federal civil rights enforcement in schools was effectively dismantled, NCYL filed suit on behalf of families whose valid discrimination complaints were abandoned without resolution. This litigation challenges the federal government’s failure to protect students from discrimination, harassment, and assault.
Protecting immigrant children
When the federal government moved to unlawfully remove hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children without due process, NCYL worked through the night to help stop those removals. A federal judge issued an emergency order halting the flights before any children were deported.
Ending harmful juvenile court fees and fines
In Illinois, NCYL helped drive passage of legislation stopping schools from using municipal tickets as a form of discipline. The law protects students from being pushed into court for school-based incidents and shields families from unfair financial penalties.
Preventing and addressing commercial sexual exploitation
NCYL advanced survivor-centered approaches that help communities identify exploitation earlier, respond with care instead of punishment, and build systems that recognize exploited children as children in need of protection and support.
Enforcing foster care protections
NCYL continued settlement monitoring in Washington, Missouri, and Kansas to ensure nearly 23,000 children in foster care receive the health care, services, and safeguards they are owed.
Reforming youth justice systems
NCYL supported reforms that reduce harm, expand community-based supports, and help young people move out of systems that too often punish rather than support them.
Strengthening youth mental health
NCYL worked to expand access to responsive, trauma-informed supports for young people and to strengthen the systems responsible for meeting their mental health needs.
Advancing youth health and reproductive health equity
NCYL released national resources, supported youth advisory boards, trained advocates and providers, and advanced policies that protect young people’s access to care, including reproductive health care and health information they can trust.
Strategic Litigation
The law is one of the most powerful tools we have to protect children.
In 2025, NCYL used litigation to defend core protections at moments when children’s rights were under direct threat.
We defended the Flores Settlement Agreement, preserving the only enforceable protections for children in federal immigration custody. We challenged the federal government’s abandonment of civil rights enforcement in schools. We filed suit to defend children’s right to maintain family connection with parents held in pretrial detention. And we continued litigation and enforcement work to protect family reunification, foster care safeguards, educational equity, and the basic rights of children in public systems.
These cases are about more than courtroom victories. They are about whether children can go to school safely, stay connected to family, receive due process, access health and mental health care, and be treated with humanity by the systems that hold power over their lives.
Youth Voices
Young people bring essential insight to the work of changing the systems that shape their lives.
Across NCYL’s issue areas, young people guide strategy, identify gaps, share what systems often miss, and help build solutions rooted in lived experience.
Through advisory boards, advocacy training, leadership development, podcasts, campaigns, and direct policy engagement, youth leaders strengthened NCYL’s work in education, immigration, youth justice, health, mental health, reproductive health equity, and efforts to prevent and address commercial sexual exploitation.
Leaving young people out of the conversation means leaving them out of the solutions.
Looking Ahead
The work ahead is urgent.
The coming years will test how effectively the law protects children and youth when rights are weakened, institutions retreat, and safeguards fail.
In 2026, NCYL will focus on reducing immediate harm while defending and reestablishing foundational rights. We will continue to hold governments accountable, build power with young people and families, and fight for systems that protect children instead of punishing, excluding, exploiting, or abandoning them.
Every child deserves the full protection of the law.
Every family deserves dignity.
Every young person deserves the chance to learn, thrive, receive care, and be heard.