Supreme Court Term 2025-2026

Four families of transgender youth and two doctors have challenged an Arkansas law that would prohibit healthcare professionals from providing or even referring transgender young people for medically necessary health care. The law would also bar any state funds or insurance coverage for gender-affirming health care for transgender people under 18, and it would allow private insurers to refuse to cover gender-affirming care for people of any age. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges that House Bill 1570 is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

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.