CARES Act Prison Case: Scholl v. Mnuchin, et al., No. 4:20-cv-05309-PJH (N.D. Cal.). Lieff Cabraser and the Equal Justice Society filed a lawsuit challenging the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department’s improper withholding of CARES Act stimulus funds from over 1.5 million incarcerated Americans and their families. In October 2020, Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the federal Northern District of California certified a class and entered a permanent injunction stopping the government misconduct, ruling the policy of excluding incarcerated people from stimulus benefits was “arbitrary and capricious.”

In the aggregate, the judgment won for our clients may be the largest recovery on behalf of a purposefully disenfranchised group through a single lawsuit ever, securing over $1.5 billion in economic assistance to date.