The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a lawsuit in August 2010 challenging the government's asserted authority to carry out "targeted killings" of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.

In February 2010, the ACLU filed two habeas corpus petitions challenging the illegal detention of four men who have been held — some for nearly two years — at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The men — who have never engaged in hostilities against the United States and are not members of groups that have engaged in hostilities against the United States — have never been told why they are being detained, been permitted to speak with a lawyer, or given a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention before a court or a fair and impartial administrative board.

Conditions of confinement in a US "supermax" prison

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) is responsible for implementing the government’s activities with regard to freezing foreign assets belonging to certain designated individuals. While these measures are an important part of a variety of U.S. sanctions regimes, they create large potential for abuse. In particular, OFAC claims the power to prevent any designated person – including U.S. citizens – from retaining a lawyer without first obtaining a license from the government. The ACLU believes that OFAC does not have the authority to prevent individuals from retaining and being representing by a lawyer, especially when that lawyer is not being compensated (and therefore is not being paid out of “frozen” assets). ACLU v. Geithner is a constitutional challenge to these rules.

In December 2008, Lisa Valentine, a devout Muslim, accompanied her nephew to Douglasville Municipal Court for his traffic hearing. While going through security, she was informed by an officer that she would have to remove her religious head covering before she entered the courtroom, due the court's "no headgear" policy. When she protested the policy, believing it to be a violation of her right to freely practice her faith, she was restrained, arrested, forced to remove her headscarf, and jailed.