A new judge has been assigned to oversee two consolidated lawsuits against Los Angeles Unified over the 2022 fentanyl overdose death of 15-year-old Bernstein High School student Melanie Ramos, after the previous judge accepted the district's request to step aside. Judge Mark Kim was named to the case on October 5, replacing Judge Janet Hong, who had inherited the litigation following the retirement of Judge Tony Richardson.
Why the Judge Change Happened
According to MyNewsLA.com, Judge Hong accepted LAUSD's requests to step aside from the two lawsuits on September 30 and sent both cases to Supervising Judge Lawrence Riff for reassignment. Riff then appointed Kim, who earned his law degree from Cornell University in 1988, worked for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, and was appointed to the bench by former Gov. Pete Wilson in 1998.
The litigation traces back to September 13, 2022, when Ramos and a classmate went missing after school at Bernstein High. Ramos was missing for about eight hours. The classmate's stepfather arrived around 8 p.m. to search the school, found his stepdaughter in the courtyard, and, with a school employee, found Ramos unresponsive in a restroom, according to CBS News. Police responded around 9 p.m., according to the Beverly Press & Park Labrea News. The surviving student was hospitalized and later recovered.
Two Lawsuits, One Consolidated Case
Ramos's mother, Elena Perez, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against LAUSD in December 2022. A second lawsuit was filed in October 2023 on behalf of a teen identified as H.W., now 19, described as Ramos's friend and fellow student. Both cases have since been consolidated and were the subject of Hong's recusal before landing with Kim.
LAPD officers arrested two teenagers, ages 15 and 16, who attended APEX Academy — an independent charter school sharing the Bernstein campus — on suspicion of drug sales, CBS News reported at the time. The 15-year-old was suspected of selling pills to Ramos and her friend, while the 16-year-old was suspected of selling pills to other students at Lexington Park. The pills were described as Percocet or fentanyl-laced. Police served a search warrant and held the 15-year-old suspect on suspicion of manslaughter. Authorities believed the pills had been bought at Lexington Park, a public park four blocks southeast of the school, where police noted multiple teen overdoses that week also originated from transactions, per the Beverly Press report.
Fighting Over the Timeline
Much of the legal dispute has centered on pinpointing exactly when Ramos died and whether staff could have intervened sooner. In January 2024, LAUSD attorneys sought court permission to review 70 autopsy photographs of Ramos, arguing the images were necessary to establish her precise time of death that afternoon, according to Patch. The family's attorney opposed the motion. That timeline question remains central to the consolidated case now before Kim, as does the broader issue of district foreseeability.
LAUSD argued that Ramos's death was unforeseeable and that it had no duty to monitor bathroom stalls. The motion was set for a June 2025 hearing, and a judge cleared the case for trial in December 2025. CBS News reported six drug-related incidents involving narcotics purchased at Lexington Park, including the latest victims. The family alleges administrators failed to act.
A Death That Reshaped District and State Policy
Ramos's death set off swift changes beyond the courtroom. Nine days after she died, then-LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho announced that all district K-12 schools would begin stocking naloxone. Narcan was later supplied to campuses.
A year later, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 10 — known as Melanie's Law — requiring public middle and high schools to build fentanyl overdose prevention and response protocols into their campus safety plans starting January 1, 2024. The bill, authored by state Sen. Dave Cortese, is detailed on Sen. Cortese's website. Hoodline has also discussed SB 10's connection to Ramos.
The scale of the crisis behind the lawsuits is stark. Illicit fentanyl was involved in 92% of all fatal drug overdoses among LA County adolescents aged 12 to 17 in 2021, the year before Ramos died, according to the Los Angeles Times, which also reported countywide fentanyl deaths surged 1,280% between 2016 and 2021. Counterfeit pills pose a serious risk to adolescents.
The lawsuits raise questions about what the district knew and when.
