Supreme Court Term 2025-2026

This case asks whether Kentucky’s legislature can legally favor some unions by giving them preferential treatment and disfavor others. A recent law does just that: SB 7 prohibits public employers from allowing their employees to use payroll deductions for union dues yet expressly exempts law enforcement and fire protection unions from this prohibition. Two state circuit courts and the Court of Appeals have held that this law violates the Kentucky Constitution’s equal protection guarantee. The State now appeals to the Kentucky Supreme Court. The Court’s decision has important implications for equal protection, free speech, and labor rights in Kentucky.

At the core of this case is the question of whether the government can extract and test our DNA without a warrant. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative and Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, together with the ACLU of Michigan, filed an amicus brief arguing that, since our DNA contains vast amounts of highly sensitive information about us, DNA testing and extraction constitute a search and therefore require a warrant under both the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, section 11 of the Michigan Constitution. If there were no warrant requirement, as the State urges, police would be able to arrest someone for one offense, even pretextually, and limitlessly test their DNA to investigate unrelated crimes. This would especially impact people from marginalized populations who are most likely to be subject to these police practices.

There are serious privacy concerns raised by reports that the United States DOGE (“Department of Government Efficiency”) Service (“USDS”) has gained access to federal agency systems, including those housing sensitive information like federal payment data, student loan data or federal employee records, and may be using artificial intelligence technology in analyzing them. The ACLU submitted a FOIA request to more than 40 federal agencies to provide the public with information on what federal records the agencies have provided to or been asked for by the USDS and if sensitive information and key decision-making has been outsourced to unvetted technology.

In 2023, North Carolina legislators enacted a congressional map that diluted the voice and voting power of Black North Carolinians. Plaintiffs sued to enjoin that map. After a trial on the merits, North Carolina engaged in unprecedented mid-decade redistricting to target Black voters in Congressional District 1.