Supreme Court Term 2023-2024

This case in the Mississippi Supreme Court is a post-conviction appeal of a pro se defendant, Mr. Soweto Love, who argued that his guilty plea was not entered knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the ACLU of Mississippi, filed an amicus brief arguing that the law is on Mr. Love’s side, but urging the Court to exercise its discretion to inform Mr. Love that a win could resuscitate his charge and expose him to longer sentences.

The National Security Agency (NSA)—one of the country’s biggest intelligence agencies—has been rapidly developing and deploying AI, but we still know remarkably little about this transformation and its impact on civil rights and civil liberties. As the NSA increasingly integrates AI into its daily operations and some of its most profound decisions, it has left the public largely in the dark about how it is using AI and what safeguards, if any, are in place to protect everyday Americans. In March 2024, the ACLU filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act seeking the release of recently completed studies, roadmaps, and reports that show how the NSA is using AI and how those tools affect people’s privacy and civil liberties. When the government failed to release the documents sought in our FOIA request, we filed suit in April 2024 to challenge this unjustified secrecy and compel public disclosure of these documents.

Civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit to block SF 2340, one of the worst, most far-reaching immigration laws ever passed in the state of Iowa. The measure conflicts with existing federal law and will have a number of dramatic consequences for Iowans. It creates new crimes for anyone in Iowa, including a child, who has reentered the country after being deported, even if that person is now authorized to be in the U.S.  

This federal class-action lawsuit alleges that the federal government’s post-conviction supervision system in Washington, D.C., violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act by systematically failing to accommodate the needs of people with disabilities on supervision.

A group of health care providers filed a lawsuit in federal court to prevent Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and district attorneys throughout the state from prosecuting those who assist Alabamians seeking to travel across state lines to access abortion care where abortion is legal. Attorney General Marshall has explicitly threatened that health care providers could face felony charges for assisting Alabamians seeking to travel out of state to obtain abortion where it is legal.