Quarterly News & Updates

Stephen C. vs. Bureau of Indian Education

Havasupai students, their families, and the entire Havasupai community achieved a watershed legal victory last month advancing the education rights of Native American students. On March 16, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed down a historic ruling in Stephen C. vs. Bureau of Indian Education, confirming that the federal government can be held accountable for its failure to provide general education to Native American students attending its schools. The court also held that the Havasupai students may seek the remedy of compensatory education to make up for educational services that should have been provided, a move that is likely to have profound reverberations in primary and secondary education nationally. This decision comes on the heels of five years’ worth of litigation and paves a path forward for the students to continue to pursue their day in federal court.

“The Havasupai community is resilient and steadfast in its commitment to its children as evidenced by its decades-long fight to obtain education from the Bureau of Indian Education. Today, the community’s courage and bravery to hold the federal government has resulted in this historic decision safeguarding the rights of Havasupai students to receive a quality general elementary education,” said Alexis M. DeLaCruz, Attorney at the Law Center, also an organizational plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Attorneys at the NADLC, Public Counsel, and Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP will continue to vigorously defend the students’ rights in the next stages of the legal proceedings.

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Alexis M. DeLaCruz and Therese Yanan

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Law Center Volunteer Honored

Teresa Markowitz is the President and CEO of Case Commons. Case Commons is a nonprofit dedicated to providing technical assistance, education, training, research, and thought leadership on behalf of public and private agencies focused on reforming human services across the country with a particular emphasis on data and technology.

Prior to her 2018 appointment by Casey at Case Commons, Markowitz spent 18 years as an employee of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, most recently as the vice president of the Center for Systems Innovation (Center). In this role, she led the Foundation’s work of improving outcomes for children in the country’s most fragile families. The focus of the Center is to promote improvements in public systems, develop effective practices that strengthen families, and bring evidence-based interventions and data-based proven programs to large scale.

Markowitz is also the Foundation’s former vice president, Chief of Staff, where she assisted the office of the president in the daily operations of Casey, including coordinating and managing the senior leadership team, acting as a liaison to the president, and staffing the Board of Trustees.

Her relationship with the Foundation began in 2001 when she was selected for the Foundation’s Children and Family Fellowship. After the Fellowship, she stayed to serve as a special assistant to the president, eventually becoming Chief of Staff, with the title of vice president added in 2011. She is currently a board member of KVC Health Systems and Case Commons.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Teresa was commissioner for children and family services for Kansas, where she helped lead a child welfare system reform effort that changed the way services were delivered and tracked for some of the state’s most vulnerable children and families. She has worked extensively in juvenile justice and in the mental health field, including managing and operating psychiatric facilities and detention centers for juveniles. She received a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Kansas. She also holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Emporia State University in Kansas and in 2011 was awarded its Distinguished Alumni Award.