Late this afternoon U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake denied the Arizona Department of Correction’s motion for summary judgment in a class-action lawsuit seeking adequate medical, mental health, and dental care for Arizona’s prisoners, and challenging the state prisons’ use of solitary confinement.

Workers with the immigrant rights group Puente today asked a federal court to stop the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and Attorney’s Office from using two contested state felony identity theft laws that target immigrant workers pending the outcome of the group’s constitutional challenge.

TUCSON – Araceli Rodriguez, the mother of slain Mexican teen Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, filed a federal lawsuit today in Arizona to pursue justice for her son, who was killed nearly two years ago by U.S. Border Patrol agents, identified only as John Does in the lawsuit.

PHOENIX – It took the state of Arizona nearly two hours to execute Joseph Wood by lethal injection today. According to his attorneys, Mr. Wood was “gasping and snorting for more than an hour.” Alessandra Soler, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, issued the following statement.

PHOENIX – Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was wrong to bar some young immigrants from receiving driver’s licenses, a panel of federal judges ruled today.

TUCSON – The American Civil Liberties Union has initiated a second legal claim against the Tucson Police Department (TPD) after finding that the implementation of the “show me your papers” provision of SB 1070 continues to result in the violation of people’s constitutional rights.

PHOENIX – Several Maricopa County residents, joined by immigrant rights and civil rights groups, will today announce the filing of a new class-action lawsuit,Puente Arizona v. Arpaio, which challenges the County’s enforcement of two state laws that turn immigrants into felons.

PHOENIX and TUCSON – Earlier this week, 150 men detained at the Pinal County Jail (PCJ) in Florence, Arizona signed and released a letter documenting the facility’s deplorable conditions and calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to end its detention contract with the jail.

CHICAGO, LOS ANGELES, PHOENIX and MIAMI—Widespread abuse of unaccompanied immigrant children at the hands of U.S. border officials spurred a group of civil and human rights organizations to file a complaint today on behalf of more than 100 children, each of whom reported experiencing abuse.