The ACLU, NYCLU, Family Justice Law Center, Brooklyn Defender Services, Center for Family Representation, NYU School of Law Family Defense Clinic, and Sullivan & Cromwell have filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of three New York parents challenging unconstitutional delays in the appeals process for reports on the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment (SCR). Parents who challenge their placement on the registry often wait months—sometimes more than a year—for a final decision. While they wait, they can be shut out of jobs in childcare, education, healthcare, and other fields involving children, and barred from adopting or fostering. Low-income parents, parents of color, and disabled parents are disproportionately policed by the family regulation system—also known as the child welfare system—and more likely to end up on the registry. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that parents have a way to clear their names in a timely manner.

This case asks whether the State of New Mexico’s actions enabling pollution from oil and gas extraction, and its failure to control that pollution, violate the New Mexico Constitution’s Pollution Control Clause, Inherent Rights Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. Our brief urges the New Mexico Supreme Court to answer those questions by retiring its “interstitial approach” to state constitutional interpretation—which looks first to federal doctrine when interpreting state constitutional provisions that arguably have U.S. Constitutional analogues—and instead interpreting the New Mexico Constitution holistically and independently. This independent approach, we explain, will ensure that New Mexicans can enjoy—and enforce—the rights guaranteed to them in their unique founding document.

This case asks whether government officials who intentionally violate the law are immune from damages suits under a state statute governing such suits, and if so, whether the statute itself violates the Open Courts Clause of the Utah Constitution. Utah’s Open Courts Clause, like similar provisions in thirty-nine other states across the country, protects an individual’s right to seek judicial remedies for wrongs committed against them. It therefore serves as an important tool that does not exist in the U.S. Constitution to hold government actors accountable.

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.