The mission of UPLC is to advocate for tenants faced with loss of housing, disabled people denied public benefits, and prisoners whose constitutional rights are violated.
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We assist clients in fighting illegal evictions, recovering security deposits, and working with tenants whose landlord has allowed the building to fall into disrepair.
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We have multiple class action lawsuits currently filed against the state of Illinois for unconstitutional prison conditions.
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We represent disabled adults seeking Social Security Disability Income benefits in Chicago.
In the News
In a ruling that lawyers called "historic," a federal judge ordered that Illinois Department of Corrections ( IDOC ) review the case of Strawberry Hampton, a 27-year-old transgender woman who is being-held in a male-only detention facility downstate.
Illinois has just two weeks to present a plan to train its prison staff on transgender issues and rethink the placement of a trans inmate at the center of a highly-publicized abuse allegation.
Most allegations are never proven, but accusations of sex between inmates and staff keep coming at Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, the state’s largest women’s prison.
Censorship Isolates LGBTQ Prisoners, Lawsuit Says
On Oct. 18, Uptown People’s Law Center and the MacArthur Justice Center sued the Illinois Department of Corrections director on behalf of Chicago’s Black and Pink chapter for censoring the organization’s mail sent inside state prisons. According to the lawsuit, 11 prisons censored and refused mail from Black and Pink Chicago on over 200 occasions since 2016. The DOC’s censorship of Black and Pink material is part of a wider pattern of discrimination against LGBTQ people, the attorneys said.
