Legal Advocacy & Impact Litigation

The State of Oregon has effectively denied hundreds of children with disabilities the opportunity to attend school for a full day, in violation of federal laws, the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Rehabilitation Act.

Filed on on behalf of all Medicaid-eligible District of Columbia children who have a mental health disability and are not receiving medically necessary intensive community-based services as required by federal law.

This lawsuit charges the government with inappropriately detaining children in unnecessarily restrictive detention centers without fair process, unlawfully medicating children without appropriate authorization, and failing to promptly release children to family members.

The Flores Settlement Agreement established national minimum standards for the treatment, placement, and release of detained immigrant children.

This lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s unlawful plan to secretly remove unaccompanied Guatemalan children from the United States. The National Center for Youth Law, National Immigration Law Center (NILC), and Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) serve together as

In May 2025, the National Center for Youth Law and co-counsel Democracy Forward filed Angelica S. v. HHS, which challenges new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) policies that have resulted in the separation of families and the prolonged detention of unaccompanied children in federal

This lawsuit challenges egregious delays in the release of detained immigrant children to their families resulting from new policies and practices that subject parents and others to unwarranted fingerprint checks.

seeks to ensure timely compliance with an important U.S. Department of Education regulation that is intended to ensure students that need special education are being correctly identified.

Settled in 2021, this case will bring transformative, structural change to Kansas’s broken child welfare system by ending extreme placement instability and ensuring children receive the mental health care they need.