Despite a federal court order from 2008, the Maricopa County jails – overseen by Sheriff Joe Arpaio –continue to skirt their constitutional responsibility for detainees' mental health. On April 1, 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arizona – which have represented the detainees at the Maricopa County jails for close to 20 years – filed a motion to enforce the 2008 order. Many detainees with mental illnesses were still suffering unnecessarily from the scarcity and poor quality of the jails' care.

The ACLU, along with the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood, has challenged an Arizona law that forces doctors to lie to and mislead patients by telling them that it may be possible to reverse a medication abortion.

In March 2014 the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled in favor of Zander Welton, finding that his parents and physicians could resume treating his seizure disorder with a marijuana extract. Sadly, Zander passed away in September 2015. During the trial, Judge Katherine Cooper found that the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act (AMMA), approved by voters in 2010, allows patients to use marijuana extracts without fear of prosecution. In October of 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arizona sued the county on behalf of Zander and his parents, Jennifer and Jacob Welton, because Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and other Arizona law enforcement agents had asserted that the AMMA does not sanction the use of marijuana extracts and threatened criminal charges for patients who used extracts.

After a long legal battle the ACLU, on behalf of plaintiffs in Lopez Valenzuela v. Maricopa County prevailed by blocking further implementation of a law that for years did not allow judges to even consider bail for criminal defendants who were suspected of having "entered or remained in the United States illegally," and which applied to most state felony charges in Arizona, including relatively minor crimes such as shoplifting and possessing a phony ID. As a result of Proposition 100, which amended the state constitution, state courts were required to jail countless individuals who posed no risk of flight or danger to others.