Supreme Court Term 2023-2024

On August 8, 2023, the ACLU, the ACLU of Idaho, Professor Seth Kreimer, and law firm Strindberg Scholnick Birch Hallam Harstad Thorne, filed a lawsuit on behalf of two teachers’ unions and six professors in the U.S. District Court of Idaho to challenge Idaho’s No Public Funds for Abortion Act. The statute criminalizes the use of any public funds to “promote abortion” or “counsel in favor of abortion.” On behalf of our Plaintiffs, we argue that the law violates the First Amendment by restricting the academic speech of faculty at Idaho’s public universities, and is unconstitutionally vague under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Nine Oklahoma residents and a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting public education in Oklahoma filed a lawsuit in July 2023 in state court to stop Oklahoma from sponsoring and funding the nation’s first religious public charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The plaintiffs are faith leaders, public school parents, and public education advocates who object to their tax dollars funding a public charter school that will discriminate against students and families based on their religion and LGBTQ+ status, fail to adequately serve students with disabilities, and indoctrinate students into one religion — all in violation of Oklahoma law and our country’s promises of the separation of church and state and public schools that are open to all.

Whether federal courts have the power to remedy systemic unconstitutional pretrial detention practices that remain unchecked by state courts.

On September 2, 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Ohio, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the law firm WilmerHale filed a lawsuit in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas bringing a state constitutional challenge against SB 23, a law banning abortion starting at approximately six weeks of pregnancy. The reproductive rights organizations asked the court to immediately restore Ohioans’ reproductive rights secured by the Ohio Constitution. This lawsuit came more than two months after the draconian bill took effect on June 24, 2022 for the first time since it was passed in 2019, causing an immediate, devastating crisis across the state. Due to the ongoing irreparable harm to Ohioans, the reproductive rights organizations withdrew the lawsuit they initially filed in the state Supreme Court in late June and asked the lower court to grant immediate relief blocking the ban.

A law passed in 2023 significantly diminishes access to the ballot for Mississippians with disabilities by restricting who may return an absentee ballot for a voter to only a narrow category of assistors. We’re suing to block this law.