Ruth Brown
Partner
- 312-243-5900
- ruth@loevy.com
Biography
Ruth Brown is a partner at Loevy + Loevy. Her work focuses on wrongful convictions, unconstitutional conditions in jails and prisons, and police brutality. Ms. Brown has helped her clients win tens of millions of dollars in compensation for civil rights violations. She is an experienced appellate attorney, and her successful en banc petition and argument in Henry v. Hulett, 969 F.3d 769 (7th Cir. 2020), established the legal precedent that convicted prisoners retain Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable visual strip searches.
Prior to joining Loevy + Loevy in 2014, Ms. Brown worked at the ACLU of Illinois, where she litigated class actions challenging unconstitutional conditions of confinement in state prisons and detention facilities. Ms. Brown has also completed clerkships with Judge Matthew Kennelly of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and Judge Sidney Thomas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Ms. Brown graduated with distinction from Stanford Law School in 2009. During law school, she helped represent prisoners sentenced to death in appeals before the United States Supreme Court as a member of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic.
Before becoming a lawyer, Ms. Brown taught high school math through Teach for America. In that role, she was selected as one of five national semifinalists for Teach for America’s Sue Lehmann Award for Excellence in Teaching and also received the Symantec Award for Innovation in Education.
Representative Cases
Henry v. Hulett, No. 3:12-cv-03087 (C.D. Ill.) and No. 16-4234 (7th Cir.): Litigation, trial, and appellate counsel for class of 200 women subjected to public group strip searches during a training exercise at a state prison. Successful en banc petition and argument resulted in a 13-1 ruling by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that convicted prisoners retain Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable visual strip searches, reversing prior precedent. Favorable jury verdict resulted in a settlement of $3 million, in addition to strip search policy changes adopted by the Illinois Department of Corrections as a precondition to settlement. Settlement is currently pending final judicial approval.
Bledsoe v. Jefferson County, et al., Case No. 2:16-cv-02296 (D. Kansas) and Case No. 20-3252 (10th Cir.): Litigation and appellate counsel for Floyd Bledsoe, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent over fifteen years in prison as a result of alleged police misconduct. Secured settlements of $18.75 million for Mr. Bledsoe from police officer defendants, plus an additional $1 million certificate of innocence award, in what is believed to be the highest ever wrongful conviction case recovery in Kansas to date.
Montanez v. Guevara, et al., Case No. 17-cv-4560 (N.D. Ill.): Litigation counsel for Jose Montanez, who was wrongfully convicted of a murder he did not commit. Obtained settlements totaling $15.1 million on behalf of Mr. Montanez in suit alleging that Chicago Police Department officers and two prosecutors fabricated evidence in violation of his constitutional rights.
Our Impact
Loevy + Loevy has won more multi-million dollar verdicts than perhaps any other law firm in the country over the past decade. Our willingness to take hard cases to trial, and win them, has yielded a nationally recognized reputation for success in the courtroom.
Read the latest public reporting and press releases about Loevy + Loevy’s clients, our public interest litigation, and our civil rights impact.
We take on the nation’s most difficult public interest cases, advocating in and outside the courtroom to secure justice for our clients and to hold officials, governments, and corporations accountable.
