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.

Despite the Supreme Court's June ruling in Barbara v. Trump, the administration is again targeting birthright citizenship with another unlawful executive order. We'll see the government in court – again.

The Trump administration upended decades of standard immigration procedures and defied the plain language of federal law by denying bond hearings to people jailed on civil immigration charges. In September 2025, the ACLU of Maine and several partners filed a class action lawsuit challenging this unlawful and cruel policy. The government cannot indefinitely jail people without providing them with a hearing before a judge.

We're challenging the federal government’s attempt to access Maine’s unredacted voter file – including information like voters’ Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

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.

We filed five administrative claims against the federal government on behalf of people who suffered abuse at the hands of rogue federal immigration agents. The filings are part of a coordinated nationwide effort by the ACLU involving 54 claims across 17 states and Washington, D.C.

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.

As federal agents continue to deploy reckless immigration operations across Maine and the country, the ACLU of Maine is fighting back in court, and helping others do the same.

We’re suing Sanford for refusing to comply with Maine’s Freedom of Access Act. We’re asking the Cumberland County Superior Court to order Sanford to turn over public information about their police department’s cooperation with ICE and CBP – something 112 other Maine agencies have already done.