Supreme Court Term 2025-2026

Every person accused of a crime is entitled to a jury of their peers that represents a fair cross section of their community. But that is never the reality for Black and brown people facing the death penalty. A process called death qualification excludes people from capital juries if they do not believe in the death penalty. Death qualification rigs juries to be whiter and more likely to convict. It discriminates against Black prospective jurors, women, and people of individual faiths that oppose capital punishment.   Our fight against death qualification is just one piece of our ongoing challenge to Kansas’ use of the death penalty. The ACLU, together with the law firms Hogan Lovells and Ali & Lockwood, Democracy Forward, and the Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services’ Death Penalty Defense Unit has brought constitutional challenges on behalf of four people charged in separate cases with capital murder. In each case, the case has resolved without a death sentence. In Wyandotte County, the judge issued an order finding extensive and irredeemable defects in the application of the death penalty.

Whether the Department of Defense Education Activity can remove educational material related to race and gender from its libraries and classrooms in K-12 schools.

The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Pennsylvania filed an emergency lawsuit in federal court to again halt removals under the Alien Enemies Act for people within that court’s judicial district.