This case concerns whether the Department of Education acted within its administrative authority in issuing its student-borrower debt relief plan.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit challenging South Carolina’s “disturbing schools” and “disorderly conduct” laws. The laws allowed students in school to be criminally charged for normal adolescent behaviors including loitering, cursing, or undefined “obnoxious” actions on school grounds and encouraged discriminatory enforcement against Black students and students with disabilities. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court ruling that enforcing these laws against students was unconstitutional, affirming that subjecting students to criminal penalties under such vague rules interferes with their education and their future, and produces stark racial disparities. This decision should be instructive to the many school districts across the country where students continue to be charged with ‘disorderly conduct’ and similar vague crimes.

On May 28, 2022 the American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in a case, Fitisemanu v. United States, addressing the constitutionality of the federal law designating persons born in American Samoa as “non-citizen U.S. nationals.”

Whether civil rights statutes that prohibit federal financial recipients from discriminating on the basis of disability, race, and sex allow plaintiffs to be compensated for emotional distress injuries where they show that they were victims of discrimination.