A Texas statute requires “the state” to turn over certain information to criminal defendants as part of discovery. In 2024, in a case called State v. Heath, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals interpreted the term “state” broadly to mean the entire state of Texas, including prosectors and law enforcement. Now, just two years after Heath, the State Prosecuting Attorney is asking the Court to revisit its decision and adopt a narrower interpretation of “the state”—one that would limit prosecutors’ statutory disclosure obligations. The outcome of this case, which centers on whether a recorded jail call should have been disclosed, has significant implications for the rights of criminal defendants throughout Texas to discover evidence relevant to their cases.

This case asks whether Michigan should adopt an approach to state constitutional interpretation that prioritizes Michigan sources and does not automatically require reference to parallel federal provisions or interpretations. The outcome of this case could have significant implications for the constitutional rights of Michiganders because an interpretation of the Michigan Constitution untethered from federal precedent provides an independent, and potentially more expansive, layer of security for individual rights.

This case concerns the constitutionality of a highly intrusive law enforcement practice: the use of geofence warrants. Geofence warrants compel tech companies like Google to provide to law enforcement location data from every cell phone likely to have been within a certain area during a given time window. Then, law enforcement officers decide for themselves which users to focus on, and demand additional location information—and eventually identifying information—for the users they select. Geofence warrants raise grave constitutional concerns, including that (1) they authorize dragnet searches that sweep up the private data of many people without probable cause to believe that all or any of them were involved in any crime, and (2) they allow law enforcement officers to decide which users to focus on for additional data collection without judicial oversight. This case therefore has significant implications for Texans’ ability to secure their digital privacy and property against unjustified government intrusion.

This consolidated case arises from two warrantless searches of closed containers belonging to criminal defendants. It raises two key questions: (1) whether the New Mexico Supreme Court should adopt an approach to interpreting the New Mexico Constitution that does not require reference to federal law, and (2) whether the New Mexico Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable searches provides greater protections against inventory searches by police than does the federal Fourth Amendment standard. The ACLU's State Supreme Court Initiative, joined by the ACLU of New Mexico, filed an amicus brief with the New Mexico Supreme Court.