This docket report covers the cases (and a handful of selected non-litigation matters of import) that we handled at any point in 2023 or 2024.
As of this writing at the outset of the second Trump administration, we are preparing (or, in a few instances, have already filed) litigation across a range of issues—from immigration to freedom of speech to antidiscrimination to the rule of law itself—as Trump races to fulfill his starkly anti-civil liberties campaign promises. These new cases will be documented in our next report.
With the rightward lurch of the Supreme Court over the past several years, some may be tempted to discount the courts as guardians of our rights. This report, I hope, provides something of a counternarrative—not to the well-founded concern that the most anti-civil liberties President of the modern era will be up to his old tricks (along with frightening new ones), but to the view that ACLU litigation cannot be effective in response.
Although the period covered by this report was one in which Trump was out of office, it should come as no surprise that we have been quite busy in 2023 and 2024. As the ACLU has witnessed throughout its 105-year history, attacks on civil liberties occur in every administration. The old saw among ACLU lawyers that “the battle for civil liberties never stays won” resonates throughout these pages, which shows how the Biden administration, despite making progress in certain respects, also continued or resurrected key anti-civil liberties policies of the Trump administration, especially on immigration. Reflecting the time it takes to vindicate our rights, this report also discusses numerous cases challenging abuses of Trump’s first term, some of which were not resolved until years after he left office and a few of which remain pending today. Meanwhile, the District of Columbia government has continued to violate the rights of some of our community’s most vulnerable residents through its policies and practices on policing and incarceration. And governments at all levels are all too eager to suppress speech they dislike and to try to cleanse public discourse of controversial ideas.
In the face of these threats to our rights, I am pleased to report that we have won significant victories. Despite some truly appalling decisions from the Supreme Court (the erasure of the constitutional right to abortion via the Dobbs decision and the invention of presidential criminal immunity in Trump v. United States being two prominent examples out of many), fears that Trump’s nominees to the federal bench have fundamentally changed the character of the judiciary or that litigation is no longer an effective route to defend and advance civil liberties are misplaced. The vast majority of cases do not reach the Supreme Court. And we expect most lower court judges—including Trump appointees—to adhere to normal judicial procedures, precedent, and established rights. This is particularly true in the federal courts of the District of Columbia, where we have won significant rulings on constitutional and/or civil rights issues from six of the seven judges that Trump appointed to the federal district court and court of appeals. Three of these rulings held unlawful a Trump administration immigration policy.
In sum, our successes over the last two years, as detailed in this report, offer a model for continued vigorous defense of civil liberties going forward. Despite our small staff (currently five litigators and one support professional), we have litigated a docket of significant breadth and scope across the range of civil rights and liberties issues, from free speech to criminal justice reform to antidiscrimination to immigrants’ rights. We cannot win all of our cases, of course, but the victories we have achieved have made a real impact on the contours of our legal rights, on government policies and practices, and most importantly on our clients and the communities we serve.