Two years have passed since people confined in California's Pelican Bay State Prison initiated a 60-day hunger strike to protest the conditions associated with the prison's "security housing unit," or SHU. ...
...In May 2012, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed Ashker v. Brown, a federal lawsuit on behalf of people who have spent 10 or more years in Pelican Bay's security housing unit. The suit alleges that prolonged solitary confinement violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and that the absence of meaningful review for security housing unit placement violates the right to due process. In June 2014, a federal judge certified it as a class-action suit with two classes, one encompassing anyone who has spent 10 years or more in Pelican Bay's security housing unit and the other, a due process class, consisting of those assigned to an indeterminate security housing unit term as a result of "gang validation" (being labeled as gang members). ...