Court Cases

On April 11, 2025, the ACLU and ACLU of Maine filed a lawsuit on behalf of two human rights advocates who were forced to stop their humanitarian work with the International Criminal Court (ICC) due to unlawful sanctions imposed by a Trump executive order.

The federal government has targeted noncitizen students and faculty by arresting, detaining, and deporting them in retaliation for their pro-Palestinian activism. This is a coordinated attempt to chill their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly.

The federal government threatened to withhold billions of dollars in research funding from Harvard University after the school refused to adopt the government’s preferred ideological approach to who it admits to study, who it employs to teach, and what classes and other programs it offers.

We filed an amicus brief urging a federal appeals court to apply the correct test to determine if a Massachusetts police officer’s comments are protected by the First Amendment.

The ACLU of DC is representing dozens of federal workers – including a plaintiff from Maine – who were targeted in Trump's purge of federal employees associated with DEI initiatives.