Fox ‘Empire’ Class Action over Filming in Juvenile Detention Center Can Proceed

Two teenage inmates who are being held in a Chicago juvenile detention center filed a class action lawsuit last year claiming that they were prevented from attending school and other activities while Twentieth Century Fox Television and other Fox entities were filming the hit television show “Empire.”

Last week, an Illinois federal judge rejected motions by the Fox defendants as well as the Dixon and Cook County defendants to dismiss the Empire filming class action lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve dismissed some clams but allowed the case to move forward.

According to the Fox Empire filming class action lawsuit, the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center was placed on lockdown during the filming of “Empire” and children and teenage inmates were confined to their cells or unable to participate in family visits and other activities while the crew was filming in the summer of 2015.

The plaintiffs assert that these lockdowns deprived them of their constitutional rights. The lockdowns were also psychologically damaging to many juvenile detainees, the Fox Empire filming lockdown class action lawsuit alleges.

“Numerous areas that are essential to the JTDC’s mission of educating and rehabilitating the children housed there—including the JTDC’s school, its facilities for family visits, its only outdoor recreation yard, its library, and its chapel—were placed off limits so that Fox’s agents and employees could use them to stage the show,” the Fox Empire class action lawsuit says.

The children and teens at the detention center were ordered to remain in their cells and the “pod” areas outside their cell doors for days on end. These restrictions were more severe than the restrictions imposed in many adult jails, the plaintiffs argue in the Fox Empire filming class action lawsuit.

“The schooling continued in name only, visits from their families were interrupted, cut back, or effectively eliminated, sick-call requests were ignored, and programs that are intended to help them overcome the problems that landed them at the JTDC in the first place were cancelled or interrupted,” the Fox Empire filming class action lawsuit alleges.

The plaintiffs claim that the sole purpose of these lockdowns was to give Fox access to a realistic prison facility they could use as the primary set for two “Empire” episodes. They allege that the inmates’ rights under the U.S. Constitution and state law were violated and that the profits derived from the defendants’ misconduct were unjustly obtained.

On Thursday, Judge St. Eve dismissed most of the claims against Fox but will allow the plaintiffs to file an amended Empire filming class action lawsuit. However, the judge allowed claims against Cook County to proceed. She also denied requests for qualified immunity by Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans and Juvenile Detention Superintendent Leonard Dixon.

The plaintiffs are represented by Pamela Hanebutt, Susan Razzano and Stephen Weil of Eimer Stahl LLP.

The Fox Empire Filming Class Action Lawsuit is T.S., et al. v. Twentieth Century Fox Television Inc., et al., Case No. 1:16-cv-08303, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.