Katie Schwartzmann

Constitutional Protection at Gray’s Landing

Katie Schwartzmann’s work spans immediate constitutional relief, appellate rulings, damages recoveries, lasting reforms, public records, and continuing oversight.

Residents of Gray’s Landing and REACH Community Development challenged federal deployment of chemical munitions near a 209-unit Portland housing community under the Fifth Amendment right to bodily integrity.

On March 6, 2026, the District of Oregon barred the Department of Homeland Security from using chemical munitions in ways likely to reach Gray’s Landing while the case proceeds, except when necessary to protect human life. The court found that the residents had shown likely deliberate indifference based on the volume and location of the deployments, agency guidance, and the government’s specific notice of harm. Schwartzmann served as Special Counsel at Protect Democracy on the matter.

The injunction supplied immediate constitutional protection for occupied homes while the merits were litigated, connecting the residents’ bodily-integrity claim to a concrete limit on further deployments near the community.

Religious Exercise and Constitutional Limits

Schwartzmann brought a federal action for Norman Sanders after Louisiana State Penitentiary rejected Latter-day Saint books because established sellers were absent from an approved-vendor list. A March 2007 settlement added the Brigham Young University Bookstore, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, and Deseret Book Direct to the approved list and provided Sanders $10,950 in damages. The full $21,786.13 resolution included attorney fees and costs.

The claim focused on unequal treatment embedded in the vendor list: books used by some faiths could enter the prison while established Latter-day Saint sellers could not, and officials identified no safety concern tied to the requested sellers.

Schwartzmann and cooperating attorney Nelson Cameron also challenged a ban on The Final Call for Henry Leonard. In March 2010, the district court entered summary judgment for Leonard, finding no evidentiary basis for treating the newspaper as a security threat. The Fifth Circuit affirmed in November 2011, requiring delivery of the publication. The controlling ruling also secured access for Shawn Anderson in a companion action.

In a separate Establishment Clause matter, Schwartzmann and the ACLU’s Daniel Mach challenged direct Louisiana appropriations to selected churches. Judge Sarah Vance blocked the grants in October 2007, and a January 2009 settlement made the order permanent, ensuring that none of the disputed taxpayer funds went to the eight houses of worship.

The challenge began before the funds left the treasury. The first injunction preserved the grants while the action expanded to six additional church earmarks, allowing the final settlement to address eight houses of worship at once.

Prosecutorial Process and Independent Monitoring

Schwartzmann helped challenge papers issued by the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office that bore the office seal and threatened penalties even though no judge or clerk had issued them. The Louisiana Legislature restricted material-witness procedures in 2019. In 2020, the Fifth Circuit held at the motion-to-dismiss stage that the individual prosecutors were not entitled to absolute immunity on the subpoena-related state-law claims.

The immunity ruling turned on the alleged use of papers that bypassed the judicial process Louisiana law required for genuine subpoenas rather than carrying out an authorized court function.

The remaining plaintiffs and the office’s new administration settled in October 2021. The agreement ended the challenged subpoena practice, required documented communications, established internal audits and training, and limited the use of material-witness warrants.

The parties selected Schwartzmann, then director of Tulane Law School’s First Amendment Clinic, to monitor compliance. Her review included forms, warrant requests, case files, training materials, and daily office practices.

The monitoring terms gave her access to the documents and daily procedures needed to test whether an invitation was again being presented with the force of a court order. The settlement’s safeguard therefore operated through continuing inspection of what the office issued and used.

Privacy and Competency-Treatment Orders

Schwartzmann’s ACLU of Louisiana represented a teachers’ federation with Yigal Bander in a challenge to automatic post-accident drug testing for public-school employees. A federal consent decree filed in May 2009 ended automatic testing and permitted testing only when the school system possessed reasonable suspicion of intoxication.

The decree placed a reasoned, individualized decision before compelled testing: an injury alone no longer triggered the collection of biological evidence from a public employee.

She also represented more than one hundred pretrial detainees whom Louisiana courts had found incompetent to stand trial and ordered into restorative treatment. In August 2010, the federal court ordered transfer to Feliciana Forensic Facility within twenty-one days.

A 2011 consent decree established continuing treatment deadlines: two working days after assessment for emergency mental-health needs, ten working days for other urgent cases, and thirty days after a finding of need for inpatient treatment. Testing and continuing reports allowed the parties and court to measure compliance.

Schwartzmann’s team connected competency findings, treatment orders, facility capacity, and delay in a single due-process record.

Damages, Disclosure, and Public-Speech Relief

Schwartzmann represented William Goetzee’s family in Nagle v. Gusman, a case addressing the jail’s failure to maintain required continuous observation. Three days before the scheduled March 2016 trial, the defendants agreed to a $1.75 million settlement.

The case translated “continuous observation” into concrete operational duties: an assigned person, an occupied post, a visible detainee, and a timely response.

She represented United States citizen Ramon Torres in a Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment action after an Ascension Parish jail kept him for three days beyond a release order under an immigration hold. In February 2021, the court approved a $50,000 damages settlement plus attorney fees.

Schwartzmann also helped Orleans public defender Laura Bixby secure mandamus, disclosure of a map showing approximately 400 cameras in New Orleans’s Real-Time Crime Center network, and attorney fees and costs. In December 2019, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit affirmed, preserving equal access to surveillance evidence for the defense.

The affirmed mandamus gave defense lawyers the same practical opportunity to locate footage that could establish innocence or test an official account, making the public camera network accessible from both sides of a criminal case.

After environmental activist Luke Fontana was arrested for operating a Save Our Wetlands information table during the 2018 French Quarter Festival, Schwartzmann’s ACLU team filed a First Amendment action. Two days later, the City agreed not to harass or arrest Fontana for the organization’s speech at the 2019 festival.

Public Comment and a Fifth Circuit Reversal

Through Tulane’s First Amendment Clinic, Schwartzmann filed an October 2023 federal action for journalist Weston Merriott challenging Bossier City Council public-comment rules and their enforcement. The complaint presented First Amendment and Louisiana Open Meetings Law claims based on the rules, interruptions and removal threats, and an alleged private meeting concerning revised restrictions.

On appeal, the Fifth Circuit had three distinct records to examine: the text of the public-comment rules, the officials’ interruptions and removal threats, and the alleged private meeting of a council quorum. Together, those records supported the speech, retaliation, viewpoint-discrimination, and open-meetings claims.

After the district court dismissed much of the case, the clinic carried the record to the Fifth Circuit. On June 25, 2026, the court reversed much of the dismissal, reinstating claims that the policies were overbroad, unconstitutionally vague, and enforced through viewpoint discrimination. It also restored retaliation allegations and the Louisiana-law claim concerning the private meeting, then returned the restored claims to the district court.

Student-attorneys and recent graduates Raleigh Hightower and Ezekiel Millrood researched, briefed, prepared, and argued the March 2026 appeal with the clinic’s continuing litigation team.

The case placed student lawyers inside the full path from factual development and briefing to argument before a federal appellate panel, carrying forward the clinic model Schwartzmann established.

Evidence, Journalism, and Lasting Reform

Within her first week directing Tulane’s clinic, Schwartzmann sent New Orleans police evidence showing that rubber projectiles had been used during 2020 protests after the department had denied their use. Within two days, senior leadership apologized and acknowledged that the use violated normal police protocol.

Her letter identified the conflict between the evidence and the department’s public account and requested an investigation. It placed the relevant material before police leadership while the event and official response were still under immediate review.

Under her direction, the clinic secured a $375,000 Legal Clinic Fund for Local News grant supporting a full-time Louisiana-licensed Sunshine Fellow. The program expanded public-records litigation, direct representation, negotiation, student supervision, and access training for regional journalists.

When Schwartzmann organized the clinic, she began with a listening tour. Local reporters described a recurring barrier: Louisiana law offered enforcement rights, but small newsrooms often lacked the capacity to bring the state-court actions needed to obtain withheld records.

As managing attorney of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Louisiana office, Schwartzmann served as lead counsel in the 2012 Orleans Parish Prison class action. The resulting federal agreement required professional administration and independent monitoring and established requirements for force, staffing, supervision, training, youth housing, medical care, mental-health treatment, suicide prevention, and language access. Its obligations also applied to any replacement jail facility.

Schwartzmann directed a separate statewide public-records effort concerning immigration detainers in sixty-three Louisiana parishes. In November 2012, Judge Herman Clause ordered the Vermilion Parish sheriff to release the requested policies, procedures, and individual detainer forms, supplying records needed to compare written rules with actual detention periods.

Vermilion Parish was among fifteen that refused access. Schwartzmann, the named records requester, brought a state-court action under Louisiana’s Public Records Act after several unanswered demands, seeking the documents needed to test the parish’s detention practices.

From Louisiana to National Constitutional Work

Schwartzmann has served as legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana, managing director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Louisiana office, founding co-director of the MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans, and inaugural director of Tulane Law School’s First Amendment Clinic.

She joined Protect Democracy as Special Counsel, working on free expression and the protection of dissent. Schwartzmann earned her J.D. cum laude from Tulane Law School, received a CALI Award in International Human Rights, and received the 2023 Mark Moreau Public Interest Law Award.

The move to national constitutional work carried forward experience from Louisiana trial courts, the Fifth Circuit, monitored settlements, and public-records litigation.

At Tulane, student-attorneys interviewed clients, preserved evidence, drafted pleadings, negotiated with public bodies, and appeared in active constitutional matters under faculty supervision.