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.

Whether Congress’s zeroing out of the tax assessment in the Affordable Care Act for people who fail to obtain health insurance renders the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional?

Whether Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act creates a private cause of action for disparate impact claims.

It is critical that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals clarify that the Fourth Amendment applies to the use of force against schoolchildren. J.W. v. Paley involves Fourteenth and Fourth Amendment claims stemming from a police officer tasing a high school student with disabilities who was attempting to exit the school building to calm down following an incident with another student. The district court dismissed the Fourteenth Amendment claim based on precedent, but allowed the Fourth Amendment claim to proceed, denying qualified immunity to the officer. The Fifth Circuit, however, reversed the lower court’s decision regarding the Fourth Amendment claim, ultimately leaving schoolchildren without any constitutional protection from excessive force by law enforcement in the Fifth Circuit.

On March 5, 2021, Governor Henry McMaster issued an executive order mandating all non-essential state employees to return to the office in person. On March 30, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of South Carolina, sent a letter urging Governor McMaster to take immediate action and rescind the executive order, or at minimum, delay the return date to in-person work until the end of the school year, and allow agencies to grant employees any and all individualized reasonable accommodations. When the Governor failed to respond by April 1, the ACLU, joined by the ACLU South Carolina and the law firm of Bloodgood & Sanders LLC, filed a lawsuit challenging the executive order as exceeding the Governor's emergency authority.  The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a non-essential state employee and the ACLU of South Carolina on behalf of its members who are non-essential state employees. The lawsuit seeks an immediate injunction halting the operation of the discriminatory return-to-in-person-work requirement in the executive order. The suit argues that the executive order not only exceeds the governor's emergency authority because it does not protect the health and safety of state employees--and on the contrary, actively puts their health and safety at risk, ignoring the serious health risks posed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but also discriminates against women, who disproportionately bear caregiving responsibilities, and/or may be pregnant or breastfeeding and unable to get vaccinated, as well as people with disabilities, many of whom have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.