Drinker Biddle, the Mississippi Center for Justice, and ABA Death Penalty Representation Project under the auspices of the Barbara McDowell High Impact Pro Bono Project brought an action in the Mississippi Chancery Court on behalf of 16 inmates on death row against the state of Mississippi seeking to enforce the inmates’ right to competent counsel and access to the courts during their state post-conviction proceeding in order to remedy the denial of those rights in past proceedings while requesting a stay of execution for all of the inmates.

On October 19, 2011, Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP (DBR), in collaboration with the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery, Alabama (EJI), filed a first of its kind civil class action in the United States District for the Middle District of Alabama. The lawsuit seeks to eradicate the long-standing pattern and practice of Alabama state prosecutors’ use of peremptory challenges to exclude otherwise qualified African Americans from serving on juries in serious felony cases (principally capital cases) in Houston and Henry Counties, Alabama, solely because of their race in violation of the U.S. Constitution, federal and anti-discrimination laws, including the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875, and state law.

Working with the law firm of Drinker Biddle & Reath as a project of the firm’s Barbara McDowell High Impact Pro Bono Initiative, Legal Aid sued DHS and DDOE at the Office of Administrative Hearings when the District of Columbia failed to implement the Food Stamps Expansion Act of 2009 on the date on which it became effective. A settlement was reached whereby the District agreed to recalculate Food Stamps benefits for all current and former beneficiaries who were receiving benefits.

The Equal Rights Center (ERC) is currently conducting testing to determine whether housing providers in various geographic locations are discriminating on the basis of national origin. Drinker Biddle & Reath’s Barbara McDowell High Impact Pro Bono Initiative has teamed up with the ERC to prepare a public report highlighting key issues and concerns with respect to national origin discrimination.

Drinker Biddle & Reath partnered with the National Center for Law and Economic Justice to represent a class of blind and seriously visually impaired individuals to sue the New York City Human Resources Administration, the New York State Office of Temporary Disability Assistance (OTDA), the New York State Department of Health, and the Commissioners of these agencies for being denied their right to receive Medicaid and Food Stamps benefits information in formats that are accessible to them.

Dallas Richards had stopped attending a public high school in Williamson County, Tennessee because school officials failed to take appropriate steps to protect her from sexual harassment and assault by a male student with a known history of violence and sexual misconduct.

A team of Drinker Biddle lawyers from its Washington office as part of the firm's Barbara McDowell Pro Bono High Impact Litigation Project partnered in 2014 with lawyers from Disability Rights Advocates, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and Urban Affairs to represent United Spinal Association and the DC Center for Independent Living to sue as class action the District of Columbia for its poor emergency planning for persons with disabilities.

Lawyers from Drinker Biddle along with lawyers from the Texas Fair Defense, the University of Texas Civil Rights Clinic, and the Susman Godfrey firm in Houston, Texas brought a class action against the City of Austin in a case styled Gonzales v. Salazar asserting that its practice of incarcerating individuals for failure to pay their debts for fines and fees for petty misdemeanors, such as traffic tickets, without legal representation was unconstitutional in violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitutions which protected their rights to counsel, due process, and equal protection.

A team of Drinker Biddle & Reath lawyers from the Washington and Philadelphia offices in partnership with the DC Prisoners’ Project of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs are investigating a possible lawsuit and other actions to be taken against state and federal government agencies relating to their treatment of residents of government and privately-run halfway houses.

The American Immigration Council (AIC) represented by Drinker Biddle sued in 2016, to force the CBP to turn over information to it about complaints for misconduct for abusive behavior during immigration processing against agency personnel nine months after seeking these records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. 

Drinker Biddle was asked by the Legal Aid Justice Center of Charlottesville, Virginia to participate in a federal district court case in Virginia to overturn a sheriff department policy requiring the use of restraints whenever transporting people with a mental disorder unless the “physical condition would not warrant the use of restraints.”

In conjunction with the Foundation’s High Impact Project, Children’s Rights and Disability Rights Iowa filed in November 2017 G.R. v. Foxhoven on behalf of all children confined to Iowa’s Boys State Training School who have significant mental illnesses. The lawsuit asserts that these boys, aged 12 to 19, do not receive the mental health treatment needed to fulfill the facility’s mission of providing “a program which focuses on appropriate developmental skills, treatment, placements and rehabilitation.”

Systemic litigation was brought by Drinker Biddle and Disability Rights North Carolina to address the failure of the State of North Carolina to provide appropriate behavioral health services to citizens with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (I/DD).

As part of its High Impact Litigation Project, the Barbara McDowell Foundation, in conjunction with the law firm Drinker Biddle, the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, and New Economy Project, filed a federal class action lawsuit charging the NYC Transit Authority, an arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, with systemic due process violations.

The Public Interest Law Center and Drinker Biddle under the auspices of the Foundation's High Impact Project have filed complaints with the Philadelphia Human Rights Commission against landlords refusing to accept Section 8 Housing Vouchers from potential tenants who have low incomes.

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Disability Rights New York, Disability Rights Advocates, and Drinker Biddle under the auspices of the Foundation's High Impact Project are investigating a school system that fails to integrate school children into normal school classes and programs.

Dan Aiken, a partner at Drinker Biddle, under the auspices of the Foundation represents a Pennsylvania-based mother of two children, who seeks to terminate all parental rights of the children’s father, who was also the mother’s adopted father.