Recent news

Juvenile Law Center, the nation’s oldest public interest law firm focused on children’s rights, today denounces the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill in the U.S. Senate as uniquely harmful and damaging for young people in the child welfare system.

Advocacy organizations Juvenile Law Center, SchoolHouse Connection and National Network for Youth strongly support the introduction in Congress yesterday of two bills that would significantly improve the chances for higher education success for youth experiencing homelessness and youth who have been in the foster care system.

Juvenile Law Center today released a critical report with key findings on the use of solitary confinement at juvenile facilities nationally. The report found that despite progress at the federal level and in a growing number of states, solitary confinement of youth remains widespread, with a disproportionate impact on youth of color, LGBT youth, and youth with disabilities.

Yesterday, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that before youth can be sentenced to life without parole, the state bears a high burden of establishing they are permanently incorrigible.

Today, Western District Judge Peterson found that the use of solitary confinement, pepper spray and restraints at two juvenile facilities in Wisconsin violate youths’ constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Juvenile Law Center’s Susan Vivian Mangold and Marsha Levick, two of America’s top children’s law experts, will be sharing their experiences, insights and lessons learned with advocates and academics from around the world at the 7^th World Congress on Family Law and Children’s Rights, taking place June 4-7 in Dublin.

To kick off National Foster Care Month today, Juvenile Law Center and University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice unveiled Youth Matters: Philly – an innovative app created with Penn computer science students Rani Iyer, Zhiyu Meng, and Ben Sandler. The app is targeted towards youth in foster care or experiencing homelessness in Philadelphia, and helps them to connect with vital resources and programs easily and quickly.