Supreme Court Term 2025-2026

The ACLU, the NYCLU, and the CLEAR project at CUNY Law School filed a lawsuit in June 2013 challenging the New York City Police Department’s discriminatory and unjustified surveillance of New York Muslims. We were later joined by the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP. The plaintiffs include three religious and community leaders, two mosques, and one charitable organization, all of whom were subject to the NYPD’s unconstitutional religious profiling program. In January 2016, we announced a proposed settlement in the case with important reforms that include a bar against NYPD investigations on the basis of race, religion, or ethnicity, and the creation of a civilian representative position to oversee rules that safeguard against discriminatory and unjustified NYPD surveillance. That settlement was a joint one, with both the NYPD and the lawyers in Handschu v. Special Services Division, a long-standing class action that challenged the NYPD’s unlawful surveillance of political groups and activists. In October 2016, the federal district court judge presiding over the Handschu case held that he would approve the settlement if the parties agreed to three alterations, which would further strengthen protections. In March 2017, the courts in both Handschu and Raza approved the revised settlement.

The case involves Groton’s enforcement of its nuisance ordinance against a landlord based on calls for police service, circumstances that did not constitute criminal activity, and other unjustified grounds. The ACLU filed an amicus brief that highlighted the serious due process and First Amendment issues with the ordinance, as well as the impact of these ordinances on domestic violence survivors and people with disabilities.

On July 28, 2017, the U.S. District Court blocked an Alabama law that imposed severe barriers on a minor’s ability to get abortion care in the state. The law, which was passed in 2014, applied to minors who sought a judicial bypass of the state’s parental consent requirement for abortion. It went beyond any other parental consent law in the country and forced minors seeking abortion care to stand trial if they were unable to obtain a parent’s consent for the procedure.

On July 24, U.S. District Court Chief Judge William Smith dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit against the Rhode Island Training School for Youth, which challenged the deplorable conditions at the institution as violations of the Eighth Amendment. This landmark case is now closed at the behest of the ACLU and the state of Rhode Island because the institution has made the improvements in education, medical care, vocational training, the physical plant, meals, and other conditions required by the consent decree between the state and the plaintiffs.