Since our founding in 2013, we have led the push against solitary in the Third Circuit, initiating or leading litigation that has:

• • won court orders to release clients from solitary confinement from every federal district court in Pennsylvania, including orders putting an end to 37 and 24 years in solitary respectively, and another that forced a county jail to stop holding a suicidal detainee in solitary (Johnson v. Wetzel, Hall v. Wetzel, Andrews v. Allegheny County/Andrews v. Harper)

• • set the two most important Eighth Amendment precedents in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on the issue of solitary confinement (Palakovic v. Wetzel, Porter v. DOC)

• • and put an end to solitary confinement of those on death row in Pennsylvania (Reid v. Wetzel)

Other key solitary cases to date include Howard v. Williams, Bell v. Little, Hammond v. DOC, Little v. Dauphin County, and Remick v. City of Philadelphia.

• Howard v. Williams

In September 2021, we filed Howard v. Williams, a class action lawsuit and our 10th case to challenge solitary confinement since our founding in 2013. The suit alleged severe and systemic constitutional violations, as well as violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, for the Allegheny County Jail’s (PA’s second largest county jail system) failure to provide adequate mental health care and its discriminatory and brutal treatment of people with psychiatric disabilities. In March 2024 we announced that a landmark agreement has been reached, that demands sweeping changes that will impact all people with psychiatric disabilities who are currently, or will in the future, be held at ACJ, and could potentially lead to decarceration (reduction of the jail’s population) if the jail does not comply.

• Bell v. Little

In October 2023, ALC added another groundbreaking class action suit aimed at solitary to our docket, with our representation of a group of men in the Security Threat Group Management Unit (STGMU) at PA State Correctional Institution (SCI) Fayette (Bell v. Little) who initially filed a pro se lawsuit — which they hand wrote, while in solitary confinement — challenging their indefinite assignment to this unit where they are enduring brutal, tortuous conditions with no clear pathway out.

• Hammond v. PA DOC

In March 2024, ALC filed our next, even larger and more complex, federal class action lawsuit with plaintiffs caged in various PA state prisons challenging the constitutionality of solitary confinement in the entire Pennsylvania Department of Corrections system, and seeking relief and damages. Each of the six plaintiffs has documented mental illness diagnoses that have worsened considerably during repeated and prolonged periods of solitary confinement.

The suit, Hammond v. PA DOC, is the first of its kind that seeks to end prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement of anyone in the state prison system, and prohibit all solitary confinement for anyone with a mental health diagnosis. The lawsuit seeks a prohibition against the placement of any incarcerated person with mental health diagnoses in solitary confinement, and seeks injunctive relief as well as compensatory and punitive damages.

• Little v. Dauphin County

At the end of 2024, ALC filed yet another class action challenging solitary confinement torture. This case is suing a county jail that engaged in a shocking, malevolent campaign of torture that culminated in shutting off the power – no electricity, no lights, no heat – in the midst of winter for more than two weeks.

On December 17, 2024, people who were incarcerated in Dauphin County Prison (DCP) in PA’s state capitol, Harrisburg, filed a class action lawsuit after the warden cut the power and shut off the heat for dozens of men being held in solitary confinement in November and December 2023. Prior to this act of collective punishment, officials confiscated legal paperwork, cut off communication with loved ones on the outside, and deprived people of basic necessities, including toilet paper, showers, and religious texts. ​​Their actions violate the Constitution and basic human decency. The plaintiffs lived for weeks in frigid darkness, unable to see the food and medicine they were ingesting, to bathe themselves properly, to participate in their own legal defense, or to pray as their consciences demanded.

ALC learned of this situation early in 2024, and spent the rest of the year investigating. We connected with the incarcerated people who were leading the fight back by filing complaints within the jail and in federal court, speaking out to the press, and getting their family members involved. After a comprehensive investigation we filed suit to expose the cruelty and lawlessness of the jail and help the community inside and outside the jail fight back and build power.

• Remick v. City of Philadelphia

This federal civil rights class action suit addressed a range of dire conditions in Philly’s county jail system including rampant solitary confinement in the form of insufficient out-of-cell time, delays in the provision of medical care, excessive force by corrections officers, and insufficient access to legal counsel and the courts. A settlement was reached in 2021 that has included ongoing monitoring and further legal action finding the City in contempt for failure to meet the mandated terms.

In partnership with the Human Rights Coalition’s Solidarity not Solitary project and in other formations, ALC is working in coalition with groups across Pennsylvania and around the country to build pressure campaigns and champion legislation to end the practice.

In March 2024, ALC staff and movement partners were in PA’s capital, Harrisburg, for the first-ever hearing by the PA House judiciary committee on the topic of solitary confinement, initiated by ALC’s organizing and lobbying efforts. ALC executive director Robert Saleem Holbrook testified and answered legislators’ questions about data around this horrific practice, and his personal experience of spending over 10 years in solitary throughout his 27 years of incarceration. The full video of the hearing is here, and Saleem’s testimony begins here.

In Allegheny County we’re working collaboratively on efforts to update the first-of-its-kind-in-the-nation referendum passed by voters in 2021 limiting the use of solitary at the jail (PA’s second largest).

In Philadelphia, curtailing solitary in PA’s largest county jail system is one of the key goals of our campaign to establish a jail oversight board in the city.