Court Rules That Thousands of People Imprisoned by Louisiana Past Their Release Dates May Sue as a Class Action

Baton Rouge, LA, September 25, 2025 – This week, a Baton Rouge federal judge took a major step in the long-running litigation about “overdetention” – a term referring to the constitutional violation that can occur when an incarcerated person is held in prison past the end of their judge-ordered sentence.

Specifically, Judge John W. deGravelles of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana granted motions for “class certification” in two related lawsuits against state officials regarding the state’s alleged pattern of overdetention. The classes were certified as follows:

All persons who have been remanded to the custody of the DOC since April 16, 2019, and who were entitled to release at the time of their sentencing yet were released more than 48 hours later.

 All persons who have been, or will be, sentenced to the custody of the Louisiana DOC, and who were, or will be, entitled to release at the time of their sentencing, but who nevertheless remain in custody for more than 48 hours past their sentencing dates.

If a person falls within the certified class that dates to April 16, 2019, they may be entitled to money damages for the alleged violations raised in one of the two lawsuits, Humphrey v. LeBlanc. The second lawsuit, Giroir v. LeBlanc, seeks injunctive relief. Ultimately, the thousands of people in Louisiana who may have been imprisoned past their release dates can proceed as a group – rather than having to file thousands of individual lawsuits.

The judge ruled that the state’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections is “legally bound to release [incarcerated people] on their release date” and it is that agency’s “legal duty to make sure timely release of [incarcerated people] happen.” But the judge also pointed to a range of evidence showing that “timely release” frequently does not occur. For example, the judge explained how plaintiff, Brian Humphrey was entitled to be released on April 16, 2019 based on his court-ordered sentence. However, the judge pointed to evidence showing he wasn’t actually released until May 13 – twenty-seven days after the end of his sentence.

Kara Crutcher, of the Promise of Justice Initiative, stated “Sadly, in Louisiana, the practice of overdetention is widespread and incredibly harmful not only to those incarcerated, but also to their loved ones who are forced to wait for the opportunity to welcome their family members home. This ruling brings us one step closer to eliminating this unconstitutional practice and wholly unnecessary bureaucratic neglect.”

In his order, the judge walked through the history of the Department’s knowledge of the systemic overdetention problem and its failure to fix it. deGravelles pointed out that although the then-department-head, James LeBlanc learned in 2012 that “thousands of people in the custody of the DOC were being held past their release date,” no employee was “fired, demoted, reprimanded, or lost pay.” And department data also showed that “from January to June of 2018, there were about 1,360 [“incarcerated people”] overdetained for an average of 38.6 days.”

The judge agreed with the plaintiffs “that unconstitutional overdetentions are, by and large, measured in hours and not days. The judge also pointed to a 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Justice that concluded that “a result of the systemic deficiencies identified in our investigation, thousands of individuals annually suffer the significant harm of having their freedom unconstitutionally denied by their overdetention” in state custody.

William Most, of Most & Associates, commented, “This is a major victory for accountability – and we hope it is the beginning of the end of the state’s pattern of illegally imprisoning thousands of Louisianans at taxpayer expense.”

deGravelles also cited the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the courts have been “the problem is endemic in Louisiana, where the process for calculating release dates is so flawed (to put it kindly) that roughly one in four [“incarcerated people”] released will have been locked up past their release dates—for a collective total of 3,000-plus years.”

Brian Morris, of Loevy & Loevy, a Chicago-based law firm also representing the class suit, said "We applaud class certification as a major step in the right direction. The Department of Corrections (DOC) has been overdetaining individuals and violating their rights for many years now, denying them of their rightfully deserved freedom. We look forward to finally ending this unconstitutional practice and detrimental pattern of indifference by the DOC on a class-wide basis."

Class counsel plans to provide notice to class members that may be eligible for relief as the litigation proceeds.