Featured
National Security
Status: Filed
The ACLU is challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s mass interception and searching of Americans’ international Internet communications. At issue is the NSA’s “Upstream” surveillance, through which the U.S. government systematically monitors private emails, messages, and other data flowing into and out of the country on the Internet’s central arteries. The ACLU’s lawsuit was brought on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation and eight legal, human rights, and media organizations, which together engage in trillions of sensitive communications and have been harmed by Upstream surveillance.
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Reproductive Freedom
Status: Decided
The case concerns the constitutionality of a Mississippi law prohibiting abortions after the fifteenth week of pregnancy. The state used the case as a vehicle to ask the Supreme Court to take away the federal constitutional right to abortion it first recognized 50 years before in Roe v. Wade. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States accepted the state’s invitation and overturned Roe eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion.
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Privacy & Technology
Status: Decided
In a case scheduled to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on November 8, 2021, three Muslim Americans are challenging the FBI’s secret spying on them and their communities based on their religion, in violation of the Constitution and federal law. In what will likely be a landmark case, the plaintiffs — Yassir Fazaga, Ali Uddin Malik, and Yasser Abdelrahim — insist that the FBI cannot escape accountability for violating their religious freedom by invoking “state secrets.” The plaintiffs are represented by the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, the ACLU of Southern California, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council for American Islamic Relations, and the law firm of Hadsell Stormer Renick & Dai.
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Reproductive Freedom
Status: Decided
In 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Kentucky filed a suit on behalf of Kentucky abortion providers and their patients challenging a state law banning physicians from providing a safe and medically proven abortion method called dilation and evacuation, or “D&E.” If it were to take effect, this law would prevent many patients from being able to obtain an abortion altogether. After two courts held that the law is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled in March 2022 that Kentucky Attorney General Cameron can continue his pursuit to push abortion out of reach by intervening in the underlying challenge to an abortion ban, which is proceeding in a lower court.
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Immigrants' Rights
Status: Heard
Whether the Immigration and Nationality Act requires a bond hearing for immigrants subject to prolonged detention while seeking protection in the U.S. from persecution or torture.
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Reproductive Freedom
Status: Decided
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, and coalition partners filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of abortion providers and funds on July 13, 2021, challenging S.B. 8, a Texas law allowing private citizens to enforce a ban on abortion as early as six weeks in pregnancy—before many know they are pregnant. The ACLU’s challenge made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court three times in as many months. After hearing oral arguments in the case, the Court issued a decision on December 10, 2021, that ended the most promising pathways to blocking the ban. The Supreme Court’s decision makes it more difficult to obtain adequate relief from the courts and gives states the green light to ban abortion using bounty-hunting schemes. Texas’ abortion ban will remain in effect until relief can be secured from a court.
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Immigrants' Rights
Status: Filed
The American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Center for Gender & Refugee Studies filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s new policy forcing asylum seekers to return to Mexico and remain there while their cases are considered.
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Immigrants' Rights
Status: Filed
In February 2019, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s emergency powers declaration to secure funds to build a wall along the southern border. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition. The lawsuit argues that the president is usurping Congress’s appropriations power and threatening the clearly defined separation of powers inscribed in the Constitution. On January 20, 2021, President Biden halted further border wall construction. Litigation in this and subsequent related challenges has been paused or deadlines extended while the ACLU’s clients and the Biden administration determine next steps.
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Free Speech
Status: Decided
On September 25, 2017, the ACLU-PA filed suit on behalf of B.L., a high school sophomore who has been cheerleading since she was in fifth grade and was expelled from the team as punishment for out-of-school speech.
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All Cases
Brakeen v. Haaland
Racial Justice
Status: Filed
On August 18, 2022 the American Civil Liberties Union, along with 12 ACLU state affiliates and represented by Cooley LLP, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the court to uphold the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act.
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Fitisemanu v. United States, et al.
Voting Rights
Status: Filed
On May 28, 2022 the American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in a case, Fitisemanu v. United States, addressing the constitutionality of the federal law designating persons born in American Samoa as “non-citizen U.S. nationals.”
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Carson v. Makin
Religious Liberty
Status: Decided
Whether a Maine law that prohibits the use of taxpayer funding for religious instruction at religious schools is constitutional.
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Nance v. Ward
Capital Punishment
Status: Heard
May a death-row prisoner use 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to challenge a state’s proposed method of execution as cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment, when his proposed alternative method of execution is not presently authorized under the extant state law?
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Vega v. Tekoh
Criminal Law Reform
Status: Heard
May a person sue a police officer under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by engaging in a custodial interrogation without issuing a Miranda warning and facilitating the introduction of their unwarned statement at their criminal trial?
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How Do Terms Work?
A Term of the U.S. Supreme Court begins on the first Monday in October and continues until late June or early July. Cases can go through multiple terms and switch between different types of courts whether that is at the state or federal level.
April
Submitting petitions
Our legal team at the ACLU files a cert petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, a type of petition that usually argues that a lower court has incorrectly decided an important question of law that violates civil liberties and should be fixed to prevent similar confusion in similar cases.
U.S. Supreme Court decides to take a case
The U.S. Supreme Court judges reviews cases and decides if they want to take up a case. On average, they go through about 7,000 - 8,000 petitions each term.
February
Oral arguments
This is the period where the U.S. Supreme Court listens to our case in court.
U.S. Supreme Court makes final decisions
While the U.S. Supreme Court makes decisions throughout the term, many verdicts are released in June, right before the term ends. If a decision doesn't go in our favor, we appeal or fight back!