ACLU Accomplishments
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When YOUR rights are on the line... the ACLU is there.
For nearly one-hundred years, the ACLU has been at the center of one critical, history-making court case after another, participating in more Supreme Court cases than any other private organization.
And whether we're standing on principle before the highest court in the land or in state and federal courthouses across America (our network includes affiliates that are active on-the-ground in all 50 states), the ACLU wins far more often than we lose.
The key to nearly ten decades of defending our most fundamental rights and freedoms is our vast, nationwide network of citizen activists. Every landmark victory and courtroom win is empowered by over 1.5 million card-carrying ACLU members who support and sustain our vital work.
Here are just a few of our civil rights victories from the last nine decades:
A Full-Court Press Challenging the Trump Administration in 2017: During Donald Trump’s first year in office, the ACLU has filed 56 lawsuits challenging his administration’s assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. These suits cover a wide range of issues including immigrant rights, reproductive freedom, and discrimination against the LGBT community.
Halting the Trump Transgender Military Ban in 2017: A federal court granted the ACLU’s request for a complete halt to implementation of the president’s directive banning transgender service members from serving in the military while our lawsuit challenging the ban moves forward.
Challenging Trump’s Muslim Ban in 2017: The day after Donald Trump issued his Muslim Ban, the ACLU enjoined it in court. When he revised it, we again shot it down—with the full 4th Circuit ruling 10–3 in our favor and describing President Trump’s order as “drip[ping] with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” We also won a decision that Trump’s Muslim Ban 3.0 was unconstitutional. However, in June 2018 in a companion case brought by the state of Hawaii, the Supreme Court upheld the third version of the ban. This ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s great failures. The ACLU will continue to push Congress to end the ban once and for all.
A Landmark Voter Suppression Decision in 2016: The ACLU won a landmark voting rights case when a federal appeals court struck down North Carolina’s harsh voter suppression law — which imposed a voter ID requirement, cut a week of early voting, and eliminated same-day registration. The court ruled that the law was enacted with discriminatory intent and with “almost surgical precision” targeted African-American voters.
The Fight for Freedom to Marry in 2015:
The Struggle for Freedom Continues…
Today, the ACLU continues to play a defining role in protecting and advancing individual rights and the rule of law — wherever they come under attack. From the courts, to legislatures, to individual communities, we defend the constitutional rights guaranteed to all Americans, no matter the repercussions.