Hundreds if not thousands of Salt Lake City, Utah, residents have nowhere safe to stay and must live and sleep in public. This case—brought by a small group of residents and businesses—involves the question whether this citywide homelessness crisis constitutes a nuisance under Utah state law. It also presents the question whether Salt Lake City can be ordered to clear encampments, forcibly relocate people who are unhoused, and enforce vague and overbroad laws criminalizing homelessness where doing so will likely, if not certainly, violate unhoused people’s state and federal constitutional rights. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative and Trone Center for Justice and Equality, along with the ACLU of Utah and the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association, represent amici curiae in the trial court who oppose the plaintiffs’ nuisance claims and their request for relief.

On September 8, 2023, the ACLU, the ACLU of Michigan, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy filed an amicus brief in the Michigan Supreme Court arguing that the local government deploying an unmanned drone to take aerial photographs of the appellant’s property violated the Fourth Amendment.

On November 30, 2021, the ACLU and co-counsel filed a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Ohio (LWVO), A. Philip Randolph Institute of Ohio, and several individuals. The suit challenged Ohio’s newly-drawn congressional map.

In 2023, the Kentucky General Assembly passed a new law that targets only those Kentuckians who “challenge the constitutionality” of a state statute or similar law and seek relief against a state defendant in state court. Under S.B. 126, any party to a covered lawsuit will have a unilateral right to require transfer of the case from the circuit court where it was properly filed to a randomly chosen circuit anywhere else in the state, potentially hundreds of miles away and at great cost to Kentuckians who stand up for their rights. The ACLU of Kentucky, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, and the Kentucky Resources Council—with representation from attorneys at the ACLU of Kentucky and the ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative—filed an amicus brief in the Kentucky Supreme Court, asking the Court to hold that the law violates the Kentucky Constitution. In October, the Kentucky Supreme Court invalidated S.B. 126, ruling in favor of the ACLU.