Zoe Li ’23 Fights Police Ticketing of Illinois School Children

Zoe Li
Zoe Li ’23 was recently a Meselson Fellow at the MacArthur Justice Center.

Zoe Li ’23 recently concluded her Meselson Fellowship at the MacArthur Justice Center in Chicago, where she challenged the practice of “ticketing” over misbehavior in schools — referring children to the police, an action that can result in fines and arrests. Civil rights groups argue that the practice, as implemented by Illinois’ third-largest in school district, is discriminatory. 

In 2018, the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law created the Meselson Fellowship in memory of Amy Meselson ’02, a former Liman Fellow who worked tirelessly on behalf of immigrant children. This fellowship continues through the generosity of her family, friends, and classmates. 

Li spoke to the Liman Center about her fellowship.


Why did you decide to spend your fellowship year at the MacArthur Justice Center (MJC)?

My first job out of college, which led me to law school, was working at an inner-city public high school in Boston. On the day school began, I sat in on a ninth-grade English class discussing stereotyping. Every student in that room was a student of color and was living below the poverty level. One by one, they raised their hands and shared how they believed the world saw them: dangerous, violent, criminal. 
They were 14-year-old children who hadn’t done anything wrong. But even in school — a space that is supposed to be safe and nurturing — they felt the oppressive harm of our criminal legal system.

MJC works for change from several angles. I decided to spend my fellowship year here because the Center provides the kind of work I came to law school to do. As my first job, it was important for me to feel centered, to have a sense of purpose, and to be surrounded by mission-driven, compassionate advocates. 

Tell us about the work you are doing there.    

My fellowship focused on challenging policing in public schools — specifically, the pervasive Illinois practice of referring students to police to be fined for disciplinary infractions. It’s called “ticketing.” I traveled around the state to learn about the impact of tickets. I also represented affected students, connected with advocacy groups on their incredible work, and filed a Title VI administrative complaint — an advocacy tool that urges the government to conduct an independent investigation into violation of federal law, providing relief through executive rather than judicial resources.

I worked on other MacArthur Justice Center cases, such as police misconduct and wrongful conviction cases. One such lawsuit was on behalf of the orphaned son of a migrant farmworker in Florida. While desperately seeking help for a mental health crisis, the father was shot three times by an officer, and then violently mauled by a police dog before he died. Another lawsuit was on behalf of a man who lost 20 years of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, because, as a vulnerable teenager, he was detained, isolated, manipulated, and threatened into giving a false confession. Though emotionally difficult, these cases have given me extraordinary insight into how to challenge the failings of the criminal legal system. Some of these lessons are in strategy; others are in spirit. The wonderful attorneys at MJC embody the principle that no matter how grim the landscape is, having hope is vital to restoring dignity to those wronged by the system. 

What issues stand out? 

School ticketing is a practice that came to public attention through the phenomenal journalism of Jodi Cohen and Jennifer Richards Smith in ProPublica. School administrators, largely in under-resourced suburban and rural municipalities, refer kids as young as age eight to the police for what teachers deem misbehavior — things that range from major problems, such as severe drug abuse and violence to minor issues such as swearing, vaping, or running in the halls. One young woman told me she was sent to the police for refusing to obey a teacher’s instructions; she was having a stomach problem and did not want to leave the bathroom. The police ticketed her for “disorderly conduct.“

These tickets are charged based on a municipal ordinance. They are the same kind of tickets adults would get for traffic violations, animal abuse, or disturbing the peace. And, like adults, students who receive tickets must attend a hearing in municipal court, often during school hours. Students do not have a right to an attorney. If the hearing officer finds them liable, hefty fines can follow. A single ticket can be hundreds of dollars. For example, the girl who got ticketed for “disorderly conduct” had to pay $150. In Rockford, if a kid doesn’t show up to a hearing, the automatic default fine is $750. 

The ticketing process exposes vulnerable youth to law enforcement and feeds the school-to-prison pipeline.”

— Zoe Li ’23

In my experience, the people who receive tickets from the police are often students of color or students with disabilities. If they don’t pay the fine, the debt can go to collections and can affect credit and future opportunities when they enter the job market. The ticketing process exposes vulnerable youth to law enforcement and feeds the school-to-prison pipeline. I wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times advocating that schools should stop relying on the police to discipline kids for school-based behavior. Policing students, most of whom are Black, has turned schools into punitive institutions that hurt the most vulnerable kids. 

What impact have you had?

In early June, with our partners at the National Center for Youth Law based in New York and Seattle, we filed a Title VI complaint with the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights against Rockford Public Schools, the third largest school district in Illinois. The complaint alleged that the district’s teachers and school administrators were referring Black students to police in a racially discriminatory practice. We included data in the complaint showing that Black students were twice as likely as their white peers to be ticketed — and Black students with disabilities were three times as likely. The complaint has received national coverage from outlets like ProPublica and the Roland Martin show

Since the complaint was filed, we’ve received many responses from the Rockford community organizing to effect change. We hope this filing will continue to empower affected families and communities to speak up about their experiences. We also hope that increased publicity around this issue will pressure the state legislature to enact a bill — that advocates have been working on for years — to end the practice of ticketing kids for school-based behaviors. 

What have you learned that surprised you?

I have been surprised, in the best way possible, by the drive and generosity of advocates who work in the public interest space. I can’t count the number of times my organization and I have encountered problems we have no expertise on, and within hours, I found someone among the network of public interest lawyers in Illinois who was willing to take time out of their day to provide advice and support. 

I’ve also been impressed by the resilience of the students and the advocates. The school ticketing issue has been a challenging problem to resolve for many reasons — the fact that it targets under-resourced communities in suburban and rural districts that are hard to reach, the variability and opaqueness of the municipal systems in which it occurs, and the privacy concerns that make it difficult to identify the youth and families affected. The people who have been working on this problem keep looking for solutions. Their commitment is inspiring.  

How has your time as a Liman Fellow has prepared you for your next role?

I will be clerking in the Southern District of New York and thereafter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As I head into my clerkships, I am grateful for the focus that my fellowship has given me to do mission-driven work, for helping me deepen my understanding of how our many tools of change — litigation, legislation, executive and administrative enforcement, media, community organizing — come together, and bringing me into an incredible network of public interest advocates.