Sidley works closely with many civil rights advocacy organizations across the country to protect and defend the constitutional rights and civil liberties of all people, especially those most subjected to marginalization, persecution, or profiling. Our clients include prisoners and detainees, women in the workplace, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial and ethnic minorities. Our pro bono practice has worked through the courts, administrative agencies, and legislatures to safeguard, promote, and expand individual rights and civil liberties so that all people can live freely and proudly.
Sidley’s Section 1983 practice has been a fixture of our pro bono work for many years. The firm worked on more than 10 Section 1983 matters in 2025, contributing thousands of pro bono hours on behalf of our clients. These matters include suits at both the trial court and appellate court level seeking redress for individuals whose constitutional rights have been violated while incarcerated in jails or prisons. In 2025, Sidley lawyers worked to file new lawsuits on behalf of our clients, achieve significant litigation victories, and help our clients reach settlements.
A Sidley team in Chicago won a pro bono victory for a client who was the victim of an attack by another inmate while in prison. Proceeding pro se, the victim filed a federal lawsuit under Section 1983, alleging that prison officials were deliberately indifferent to his health and safety in connection with the attack. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on the ground that the plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies within the prison system before suing in court. The victim initially proceeded pro se on appeal, but the Seventh Circuit sought counsel because the case raised difficult issues regarding the interplay between federal exhaustion law and state prison regulations. On October 9, 2025, the Seventh Circuit vacated and remanded the district court judgment, holding that summary judgment was improper under the correct application of the relevant exhaustion-law principles and distinguishing prior circuit precedent in a way that will benefit similarly situated prisoners. On May 4, 2026, the Sidley team received the Seventh Circuit Bar Association’s Award for Pro Bono Service for its work on this appeal. Sidley continues to represent the client on remand in the district court, and following an evidentiary hearing, succeeded in defeating the exhaustion affirmative defense, allowing the client’s case to proceed on the merits.
In 2025, Sidley filed three lawsuits in federal court in Illinois on behalf of women whose constitutional rights were violated by prison officials at Logan Correctional Center, the largest women’s prison in Illinois.
Two of the lawsuits allege our clients were sexually assaulted by prison guards at Logan. The abuse the clients suffered was not an isolated incident — the lawsuits allege that prison officials allowed a toxic culture to thrive at the prison, resulting in widespread sexual misconduct and sexual abuse of the women incarcerated there. Sidley is co-counsel with Uptown People’s Law Center (UPLC) and the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE). The cases are among seven lawsuits filed simultaneously in a mass action by UPLC and CAASE on behalf of women who similarly suffered sexual abuse at Logan, detailing a disturbing pattern of sexual assault by correctional and internal affairs officers. Equally troubling, the women’s attempts to report the abuse were often ignored or resulted in retaliation from prison officials.
Sidley, along with UPLC, also filed a lawsuit on behalf of a client who was incarcerated at Logan and subjected to excessive force and abuse by prison guards, discriminated against on account of her race, and faced retaliation when she spoke up about the mistreatment on behalf of herself and other women in the prison’s custody.
A Sidley team in Washington, D.C. obtained a favorable outcome for a client who was incarcerated for over 20 years after being convicted of second-degree murder under the urban gun battle theory, which at that time allowed juries to be instructed that a defendant only had to be a “substantial factor” in a person’s death to be convicted. The U.S. Supreme Court later called this lower burden of proof into question in Burrage v. United States, and the D.C. Court of Appeals formally overturned such instructions in Fleming v. United States. Sidley represented the client in his post-conviction motion for resentencing and associated negotiations with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Ultimately, the Court reduced the client’s sentence, and he was released to his family without any continuing obligations. The Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs referred the case to Sidley.
After 31 years of incarceration and over seven years of pro bono representation by Sidley, a firm client was released from prison on October 16, 2025. The client had been sentenced to serve 40 years to life for crimes committed when he was 17. The Washington, D.C.-based Sidley team represented the client in motions under the D.C. Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act, arguing that a sentence reduction was appropriate in light of his reduced culpability as a juvenile and substantial rehabilitation. The representation spanned multiple filings and two evidentiary hearings in 2022 and 2025, and culminated in the client being resentenced to time served and the D.C. Superior Court ordering his immediate release.
Sidley’s pro bono Supreme Court program has represented clients at the Court for decades. In both civil and criminal cases, our work has produced precedent-setting decisions with lasting impacts for our clients.
A key component of our pro bono Supreme Court work is the Supreme Court Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. A nearly two-decade partnership between Sidley and Northwestern, the Clinic gives law students the chance to work on cases pending before the Supreme Court. In 2024, the Clinic and the appellate advocacy center of which it is a part were renamed in honor of Sidley partner and law school alumnus Carter Phillips, a founder and longtime co-director of the Clinic. Through the Clinic, Sidley lawyers supervise second- and third-year law students in researching and drafting briefs in cases at the petition stage and on the merits. The students also monitor lower court decisions to identify promising cases to take to the Court. The Clinic’s classroom sessions feature in-depth instruction on Supreme Court practice and guest speakers from the Court, the Solicitor General’s Office, and the Court’s press corps. Sidley partners Carter Phillips and Tobias Loss-Eaton serve as the Clinic’s co-directors, together with Northwestern Professor Danielle Hamilton and Jeffrey Green of Green Lauerman Chartered PLLC.
In 2025, the Clinic worked on 15 cases at the petition stage, including successfully petitioning for plenary review in Abouammo v. United States, No. 25-5146, concerning venue for criminal prosecutions, and successfully securing a grant, vacatur, and remand in Zielinski v. United States, No. 25-5067, addressing affirmative defenses for parents who violate custody arrangements because they fear abuse. The Clinic also contributed to briefing and oral argument preparation in multiple merits cases — including Rivers v. Guerrero, No. 23-1345, and Soto v. United States, No. 24-320, both argued by Sidley attorneys in spring 2025 — and mooted other advocates in merits cases. And the Clinic filed a merits-stage amicus brief in Olivier v. City of Brandon, No. 24-993, on behalf of the Human Rights Defense Center and the American Association For Justice.
In June 2025, Sidley secured an important victory in the U.S. Supreme Court for Corporal Simon Soto, a former Marine, and a class of more than 9,000 veterans who were denied the full extent of their retroactive Combat-Related Special Compensation (CRSC). CRSC is a benefit available only to combat-wounded veterans who are military retirees. In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court held that veterans with combat-related disabilities are entitled to receive CRSC benefits for all months in which they are eligible, no matter when they applied for such benefits.
In doing so, the Court overturned the Federal Circuit’s ruling that veterans’ claims for CRSC are subject to the statute of limitations in the Barring Act. The firm was co-counsel with the National Veterans Legal Services Program (NVLSP) on the matter.
On March 31, 2025, senior managing associate Peter Bruland made history as the first Sidley associate to argue before the Supreme Court in Rivers v. Guerrero. Bruland and the Sidley team argued that a Fifth Circuit ruling mistakenly prohibited the firm’s client, a Texas state prisoner, from proceeding with a federal challenge to his state conviction — effectively forcing him to start from scratch with a second or successive habeas petition. Historically, courts have differed over when an initial petition ends and a second petition begins.
In a unanimous opinion issued on June 12, 2025, the justices ruled that a prisoner may not add new claims to a habeas corpus petition once a final judgment is issued, reinforcing strict limits on repeat habeas filings. The court ruled that attempts by state prisoners to raise new claims while their habeas petitions are on appeal amount to second or successive petitions.
A Sidley team in Washington, D.C. recently achieved a significant victory on behalf of Chabad Lubavitch of the Beaches, a New York-based religious nonprofit organization. In November 2021, Chabad acquired a long-vacant commercial property to use as a center for Jewish worship, outreach, and education; Chabad celebrated the acquisition in December 2021 by holding a Hanukkah celebration. Within days of the Hanukkah celebration, Village leadership announced plans to seize the property through eminent domain. Sidley secured a federal court injunction halting the attempted taking, with the court noting that the Village’s decision appeared to be “intolerant of Chabad’s members’ religious beliefs.”
Through hard-fought discovery, Sidley obtained evidence of Village leadership’s religious animus towards Chabad. In private emails and text messages, Village officials freely and frequently engaged in open anti-Chabad and anti-Orthodox sentiment and trafficked in vile antisemitic tropes, including that Orthodox Jews are “buying the world,” “procreate” too much, and “don’t tip.” One senior Village official stated that “most people don’t want the Chabad and just don’t want to say it. Any secular Jew doesn’t want them,” to which the then-Mayor agreed “Very true.” And the Village’s senior land use official privately mused that the Village should “string an Eruv around the village with Xmas lights” to “keep Chabbad [sic] out of the village.”
The parties initially reached a settlement agreement in late 2023. As part of that settlement, in early 2024, Chabad submitted a special permit application to enable religious use of the property consistent with Chabad’s mission. However, in November 2024, the Village’s zoning board denied the application, including the request to use the building for religious purposes. Despite Chabad’s attempts to address the denials cooperatively, the Village’s continued refusal to grant the necessary approvals forced Chabad to terminate the settlement agreement and resume litigation. The parties executed a new settlement agreement in July 2025.
Under a court-approved consent decree called for by the new settlement, the Village has permanently agreed to abandon any further eminent domain actions or interference with Chabad’s ownership and religious use of the property, and to grant specified permits and zoning approvals necessary for Chabad’s use of the property. The settlement also includes a US$950,000 payment to Chabad, federal court oversight to ensure continued compliance, and public statements by Village officials welcoming Chabad to Atlantic Beach. This resolution ensures Chabad’s long-term ability to serve the community from its Atlantic Beach property without further government obstruction. Sidley achieved this result in partnership with co-counsel from the First Liberty Institute and the Harvard Religious Freedom Clinic.
A Sidley team helped ensure that Preston High School in New York will remain open, following a public hearing held by the Office of the New York State Attorney General in April 2025. Sidley represented the school, which has served the Bronx community for 75 years, facilitating the purchase of Preston High School from the Sisters of the Divine Compassion by Bally’s Foundation of North America, a charitable nonprofit organization.
Sidley helped broker an agreement with the Bally’s Foundation which will lease the property back to the school for US$1 per year for the next 25 years, with options to renew the lease upon the completion of the original term. Hundreds of alumni, students, staff, and concerned community members attended the April 2025 hearing.
