The Lawsuits
Gregory Jones v. County of Wayne, SCAO, Judge Yvonna Abraham (Case No. 2:25-cv-13153-TGB-KGA)
I am a disabled veteran with a severely weakened immune system, heart and lung disease, and a cancer diagnosis. Over and over, I asked Judge Abraham's court to let me appear by video instead of in person, wear a mask, and avoid situations where I could catch something dangerous. Those requests were ignored, and I was ordered to appear in person anyway -- including for a hearing on December 1, 2025 -- even though the court already knew about my health.
When I missed one court date, Judge Abraham had me jailed for about two months. While I was locked up, I was exposed to both COVID-19 and tuberculosis, and it was during that same stretch that I was diagnosed with cancer.
This lawsuit argues that ignoring a disabled person's accommodation requests and then locking them up somewhere that exposes them to serious illness violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the right to due process and equal treatment under the law.
Gregory Jones v. Wayne County, Wayne County Sheriff, Jail Administrators, Jail Medical Staff (Case No. 2:25-cv-13149-RJW-APP)
Judge Abraham ordered me jailed starting December 20, 2024. For the first two and a half weeks I was locked up, I wasn't allowed to use a phone at all -- meaning I couldn't call my family, a lawyer, or a doctor.
It was during that same blackout period that I was diagnosed with lung cancer. Because I also have a history of tuberculosis and a compromised immune system, starting cancer treatment safely required careful medical coordination -- coordination that couldn't happen because I had no way to reach anyone outside, and jail medical staff didn't act on my requests for care.
This lawsuit says that cutting off a sick person's only way to reach help, then ignoring repeated requests for medical attention, is deliberate indifference to a serious medical need and a violation of due process.
Gregory Jones v. Wayne County, Judge Yvonna Abraham
On October 7, 2024, I missed a court date in front of Judge Abraham because of housing problems and a medical issue. Nobody told me that missing it would be treated as contempt of court.
More than two months later, on December 20, 2024, Judge Abraham sent Wayne County Sheriff's deputies to arrest me at my home -- without ever holding a hearing, issuing a written charge, or giving me a chance to explain what happened. I was locked up for about two months.
Under Michigan and federal law, missing a court date is supposed to be treated as "indirect" contempt, which requires notice and a hearing before anyone can be jailed for it. This lawsuit argues that Judge Abraham treated it as "direct" contempt instead -- skipping all of that -- and that jailing someone for two months without ever giving them a hearing is a basic violation of due process.
Gregory Jones v. CARE House of Oakland County
From June 2024 through December 2025, I repeatedly reached out to CARE House of Oakland County -- an organization meant to help protect children -- asking for crisis counseling and for someone to look into how CPS was handling my children's case.
CARE House refused to provide trauma therapy, refused to look into CPS's handling of the case, and refused to report what I described as ongoing abuse. This lawsuit says that while CPS and Judge Abraham were returning my children to their mother's home -- where a man who had previously strangled one of my children was living -- CARE House knew what was happening and did nothing to step in.
This claim isn't against Judge Abraham directly; it's against an organization that's supposed to be a safety net for kids in exactly this kind of situation and, in my view, failed to act when it mattered.
Gregory Jones v. Hon. Yvonna Abraham, Wayne County, Wayne County Sheriff's Dept.
This case wasn't a criminal case -- it was a custody dispute. But Judge Abraham had me jailed anyway for allegedly missing a court date. While I was locked up, I was diagnosed with lung cancer and needed a biopsy right away to find out how serious it was and start treatment.
My attorney filed an emergency motion asking the judge to release me early because of the life-threatening diagnosis. Judge Abraham denied it -- without a hearing, without giving a reason, and without ever reviewing my medical records from Detroit Receiving Hospital. Because of that denial, my biopsy was delayed roughly six weeks.
This lawsuit argues that denying a documented, urgent medical request with no hearing, no explanation, and no review of the medical evidence isn't a judicial decision in any real sense -- it's the kind of act that courts have said falls outside what judicial immunity is meant to protect.
Gregory Jones v. Hon. Yvonna Abraham, Wayne County, Wayne County Family Court
I tried to bring evidence into the custody case showing that my son Bilal had been abused -- first by his mother, Tenisha Hampton, who Michigan's own Child Protective Services already found had abused him and placed on the state's central abuse registry, and later by her boyfriend, in an incident witnessed by his siblings and documented in a forensic interview.
Judge Abraham wouldn't let me bring that evidence into the case. When I pushed the issue, she said on the record that she "was not a mandated reporter of child abuse" and wasn't going to do anything about it.
This lawsuit argues that refusing to even look at documented abuse evidence in a case about who gets custody of an abused child denies both due process and equal treatment under the law. It also asks that Judge Abraham be removed from the case.
Gregory Jones v. Dr. Mohammad Sibai, Wayne County, Wayne County Family Court, State of Michigan
As part of the custody case, Wayne County Family Court ordered me to undergo a psychological evaluation, conducted by Dr. Mohammad Sibai in July 2025. By that point, I had already been jailed and every one of my children had been removed from my care -- including my youngest son, Jameel, whose voice I hadn't heard in over ten months.
During the evaluation, I allege Dr. Sibai was combative and hostile, accusing me of missing appointments that never happened and of child abuse, while ignoring the CPS records that had already cleared me. I believe the anxiety and trauma I carried into that evaluation traced directly back to how Judge Abraham had treated me in her courtroom -- dismissing evidence, ignoring CPS findings, and ruling against me over and over.
This lawsuit argues that an evaluation conducted under those conditions, by an evaluator who wasn't accounting for any of that context, violated my civil rights and caused real emotional harm -- and it asked, urgently, for a court order restoring contact with Jameel.
Gregory Jones v. Hon. Yvonna Abraham, Wayne County, Michigan
On June 8, 2024, my son Bilal was strangled by Douglas McClain, his mother's boyfriend -- an incident witnessed by his siblings Jameel and Maryam. A protective order was issued to keep McClain away from Jameel and entered into the state's law enforcement database. Judge Abraham had no role in issuing that order.
On December 19, 2024, Judge Abraham removed that protective order and had it deleted from the database -- even though she had no authority over the separate criminal case in Macomb County it came from. The very next day, she ordered the Wayne County Sheriff to raid my home, arrest me, and place my children with McClain and their mother. When the criminal case went to trial, prosecutors never called Jameel or Maryam as witnesses, and McClain was acquitted.
This lawsuit argues that erasing a child's protective order in a case a judge has no jurisdiction over, then immediately ordering the children placed with the person that order was protecting them from, isn't a judicial act. A companion request for a guardian to represent the children states that all three "expressed that they feel suicidal if removed from the home again."
Gregory Jones v. Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan, Frank Hardester (ADA Coordinator)
Because of my documented disabilities, I kept asking to appear in my ongoing case before Judge Abraham by video instead of in person. Each time, the court's ADA Coordinator, Frank Hardester, turned me down -- and each denial gave the same reason: that Judge Abraham wanted me there in person. One denial says it in plain words: the accommodation was refused "because Judge Abraham says so."
On one occasion, after my service dog had already been approved for the courtroom, I showed up in person and was surrounded by Wayne County Sheriff's deputies, who told me that -- anticipating Judge Abraham would order me taken into custody -- they had already been instructed to seize my service dog and take it to an animal pound.
This lawsuit argues that letting one judge's personal preference override a disabled person's legal right to an accommodation, instead of the ADA Coordinator making an independent decision, is exactly what the ADA is supposed to prevent.
Gregory Charles Jones v. Frances Yturri (General Counsel), Hon. Patricia Fresard (Chief Judge)
After the ADA Coordinator kept denying my accommodation requests by deferring to what Judge Abraham wanted, I filed a formal grievance with the Court's General Counsel, Frances Yturri. I allege Yturri told me Chief Judge Patricia Fresard had instructed her to look into whether "Judge Abraham has the right" to decide ADA accommodations on her own -- and that the Chief Judge's position was that my accommodations only exist if Judge Abraham approves them.
In other words, the officials who are supposed to independently check a judge's ADA decisions were, by my account, treating that judge's personal approval as the deciding factor instead of doing their own review.
This lawsuit argues that isn't how the ADA is supposed to work, and that it also amounts to retaliation for having raised the accommodation issue and filed complaints about it in the first place.
Gregory Charles Jones v. Hon. Yvonna Abraham (individual capacity, non-judicial acts)
After I started filing federal complaints, judicial-misconduct complaints, ADA requests, and reports about my daughter Maryam's documented suicidal thoughts, I allege Judge Abraham began taking a series of actions that weren't judicial rulings at all -- revoking ADA accommodations with no hearing or explanation, having staff withhold the links I needed to attend hearings remotely, and refusing to accept or forward filings and evidence I submitted, including the clinical letters about Maryam.
This came to a head around the December 1, 2025 hearing, which I could not attend because I was involuntarily hospitalized at the VA from November 30 to December 3. That's the same hearing that resulted in an order suspending my parenting time and authorizing law enforcement to retrieve Maryam.
This lawsuit argues these actions were retaliation for exercising my right to file complaints and speak up, not legitimate judicial decisions, and asked the court for an emergency order stopping it and restoring my accommodations and my ability to file evidence.
Gregory Jones v. Wayne County, Wayne County Circuit Court
On February 21, 2025, I was in Judge Abraham's courtroom trying to present evidence of ongoing abuse involving my children. She became visibly angry, raised her voice, and told me she "was not a mandated reporter" and didn't have to report or even allow evidence of child abuse in her courtroom.
That triggered a severe panic attack -- a documented symptom of the anxiety disorder and PTSD I live with. Instead of accommodating that with something as simple as a short recess or a chance to calm down, Judge Abraham had me taken into custody and jailed while the panic attack was still happening, without any medical evaluation at all.
This lawsuit argues that jailing someone in the middle of a documented medical crisis, instead of offering any accommodation at all, violates the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and basic due process.