Council AKA Kinetik Justice, Et Al. v. Kay Ivey, Governor of the State of Alabama, Et Al. (2023)
A federal class action lawsuit filed on December 12, 2023 challenges a “modern-day form of slavery” run by the State of Alabama and private employers across Alabama that disproportionally traps Black Alabamians into a forced labor scheme. This forced labor scheme, Alabama’s modern “convict leasing program,” sells days, months and years of labor from these forced laborers to private employers across Alabama as well as compelling and using such forced labor to power the state, realizing a benefit to Alabama of more than $450 million annually. The suit, which challenges systemic unconstitutional overdetention and state policies requiring incarcerated people to work under threat of grave physical harm, including a high likelihood of death in Alabama’s notoriously violent prisons, seeks to dismantle the forced labor scheme, secure the immediate reform of the state’s parole system to comply with constitutional requirements and cease operating in a racially discriminatory manner, and compensate current and former incarcerated individual Alabamians for the profits their work has powered. The action was filed by Justice Catalyst Law, Altshuler Berzon LLP, and Quinn, Connor, Weaver, Davies & Rouco LLP, representing Plaintiffs Robert Earl Council, Lee Edward Moore, Jr., Lakiera Walker, Jerame Apprentice Cole, Frederick Denard McDole, Michael Campbell, Arthur Charles Ptomey III, Lanair Pritchett, Alimireo English, Toni Cartwright, the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Mid-South Council (RWDSU), and The Woods Foundation. News about the lawsuit was featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Alabama Political Reporter, Birmingham NBC affiliate, AL.com, and Alabama Reflector among others.
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