Supreme Court Term 2023-2024

This case in the Oregon Supreme Court centers on whether Article I, Section 41(3) of the Oregon Constitution, which provides that Oregon prisoners lack legally enforceable rights to prison jobs and training, bars prisoners from collecting damages relating to lost prison jobs and training caused by the alleged breach of a settlement agreement by prison officials. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the ACLU of Oregon, filed an amicus brief arguing that that plaintiff Arnold Huskey, an incarcerated individual whose identity was used in Department of Corrections training materials, is entitled to damages notwithstanding Article I, Section 41(3), because plaintiffs in contract disputes never have to show standalone legal rights to the damages they claim. Instead, they need only show that the damages were reasonably foreseeable consequences of the alleged breach of contract.

This case in the Indiana Supreme Court concerns whether a case is moot when someone is released from a civil commitment while appealing the commitment order. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the ACLU of Indiana, filed an amicus brief arguing that the appellant’s case is not moot, despite her release from civil commitment, because the Indiana Constitution favors adjudicating appeals by people whose liberty has been curtailed, because it meets a traditional mootness exception for cases that at capable of repetition yet evading review, and because it also meets Indiana’s public interest exception to mootness.

In 2020, in a nearly unanimous bipartisan vote, Mississippi joined eighteen other states in accepting mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrived after Election Day (in Mississippi’s case, up to five business days). This lawsuit by partisan actors seeks to disenfranchise these voters whose ballot is mailed by Election Day but—through no fault of their own—does not arrive until afterwards. In Mississippi, this harm will fall disproportionately on voters with disabilities, older voters, and other communities that rely upon absentee voting. Twisting the words and meaning of Congress, the RNC argues that three longstanding federal laws that set a uniform election day for federal races require that ballot may only be counted if they are received by election officials by Election Day. If accepted, this radical argument would not only disenfranchise thousands upon thousands of voters in Mississippi and eighteen other states, but also upend election administration in every state.

On September 10, 2024, the ACLU and the ACLU of Texas filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to protect the public’s right to access books and ideas at public libraries free from government censorship.

The Georgia’s State Election Board recently passed two new rules about local election certification that threaten to disenfranchise thousands of Georgia voters. The rule changes are part of a nationwide effort by 2020 election-deniers to obtain positions on county election boards and weaponize certification for partisan ends at the expense of voters.