Court Cases

In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aiming to rename the Gulf of Mexico “Gulf of America.” When the Associated Press chose not to use the new moniker, the White House retaliated by barring the AP’s reporters from participating in the press pool in the Oval Office or aboard Air Force One. The news organization filed suit in February for retaliation in violation of its First Amendment rights, and it won a preliminary injunction in April. The government appealed. Together with the National ACLU, we filed an amicus brief at the D.C. Circuit supporting the AP and arguing that, although the disagreement about geographic nomenclature that began this controversy is a small one, the constitutional implications of the dispute itself are profound. American history shows that scrupulous protection of the press’s right to disseminate information, without fear or favor to those in power, is essential to our democracy. From early American history, to World War I, to the Second Red Scare, dark chapters in our Nation’s past illustrate what happens when we stray from our commitment to First Amendment freedoms. The White House’s exclusion of the AP is, alarmingly, part of a broader assault on free expression. Our brief catalogues how the administration has attempted to muzzle institutions like the bar, the academy, and the media that are at the heart of civil society. Constant vigilance for our liberties is as critical as ever. Finally, we explain how developments in other democracies and former democracies highlight the dangers of allowing the government to infringe speech and press freedoms. Across the world—including in the Philippines, Hungary, Turkey, and Russia—democracies have backslid into repressive regimes with few freedoms after their institutions failed to hold the line on free expression. Backsliding often begins with a crackdown on speech and the press. Our brief warns that condoning government retaliation against disfavored media outlets would not only fly in the face of First Amendment jurisprudence, but also ignore the warnings from our Nation’s history and from recent history around the world: that incursions on free expression, left unchecked, lead to increasing repression.

The Arab Student Union’s activities would not be disruptive; they are the same kinds of activities in which other student clubs engage. Their speech has been suppressed because the school does not want their viewpoint to be heard.

On May 1, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” which directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies to terminate all direct and indirect funding to NPR and PBS in explicit retaliation for the broadcasting organizations’ editorial and journalistic choices, which the order characterizes as “biased” and “partisan.” NPR and PBS each filed lawsuits challenging the executive order. On June 20, we ACLU filed amicus briefs in both cases (together with the National ACLU and the ACLUs of Colorado and Minnesota, where some plaintiffs in the cases are located), supporting the NPR and PBS motions for summary judgment, and arguing that the executive order constitutes a flagrant violation of the First Amendment because it retaliates against both speakers solely for their constitutionally protected speech, including the words they choose to use in coverage and what stories they choose to highlight. The briefs also argue that the order unconstitutionally restricts federal funding, including funds appropriated for local public broadcasters throughout the country to use as they see fit, based on President Trump’s disapproval of NPR’s and PBS’ news coverage. The briefs warn that the executive order threatens the editorial independence of local public broadcasters nationwide, undermines the congressionally mandated purpose of the Public Broadcasting Act, and endangers essential infrastructure like the Public Radio Satellite System, which reaches 99 percent of the U.S. population and plays a critical role in national emergency communications. As of August 2025, there has been no ruling in either case.

A coalition of civil rights orgs sued President Trump and high-level officials for tear-gassing protesters outside the White House on June 1, 2020.

Federal employees filed a complaint against the Trump administration for targeting workers, especially people of color, women, and non-binary workers, for participating in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities, violating their First Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court has long recognized that public school students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” The District of Columbia recognized the same when it promulgated the D.C. Student Bill of Rights, which provides that “[e]ach student shall have the right to exercise his or her constitutional rights of free speech, assembly, and expression without prior restraint, so long as the exercise of these rights does not substantially interfere with the rights of others.” Yet Jackson-Reed High School refuses to allow the exercise of these rights by its Arab Student Union. The Arab Student Union is a recognized student club at Jackson-Reed High School, a public high school in the District of Columbia that is one of the most diverse high schools in the country. For the past four months, the club and its members have been trying to engage in expressive activities at the school—showing a documentary film, putting up posters, distributing literature, presenting a cultural program—but have been stopped at every turn by the school administration. Specifically, the school has denied the club permission to hold voluntary lunchtime meetings to screen a film critical of the Israeli government, and the school has refused even to consider alternative films proposed by the club. The school has censored handouts the club sought to distribute and prohibited them from distributing certain materials entirely. And the school has prevented them from holding a cultural event and then heavily curtailed what they could say at such an event. The Arab Student Union’s activities would not be disruptive; they are the same kinds of activities in which other student clubs engage. Their speech has been suppressed because the school does not want their viewpoint—which concerns the ongoing war in Gaza and its effects on the Palestinian people—to be heard. Representing the club, we sued D.C. and the principal of the school for violating the Arab Student Union’s (and its members’) First Amendment rights and their rights under the federal Equal Access Act and the D.C. Student Bill of Rights. We seek a court order that the students be allowed to show their film before the end of the school year and more generally to be permitted to express their views with their fellow students like any other student club at the school. A hearing on our motion for a preliminary injunction was scheduled for May 10, 2024. But on May 7, with the court’s strong encouragement, we began conversations with the defendants to see if we could reach an agreement about what the Arab Student Union could do during the remaining weeks of the spring semester. We eventually reached an agreement that allows the club to show one of the movies it had requested and to distribute its printed material, including one of the pages that had been censored. Principal Brown also agreed to send an email to all faculty and administrators reiterating that the standards for expressive activities apply equally to all student groups. The lawsuit will continue, so that we can clearly establish the right of the ASU and all student groups to exercise their First Amendment rights in D.C. Public Schools.

A Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (“SLAPP”) is a term for a legal action that is of little merit but is filed anyway for the purpose of stopping someone from engaging in (usually constitutionally protected) speech by burdening them with a costs of a lawsuit. In December of 2010, the D.C. Council passed, with our support, an Anti-SLAPP Act that provides a special procedure for people engaged in advocacy on public interest issues to have a court dismiss SLAPP suits quickly. One of the provisions of the Anti-SLAPP Act limits the discovery (that is, court-ordered exchange of information among the parties in a lawsuit) that can occur when the Anti-SLAPP Act’s protections are invoked. This is because discovery can be costly and time-consuming, so that even speakers who should obtain dismissal of a SLAPP might be chilled from speaking in the first place if they knew they could be forced to undergo discovery before dismissal. In this case, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the discovery limitations of the Anti-SLAPP Act were invalid because they modified D.C. court procedures in a manner inconsistent with the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973, by which Congress granted the District limited powers of self-government. Together with many other public interest groups, we filed an amicus brief in support of reconsidering this decision, in the hope that the court will restore the discovery protections for speakers hit with SLAPPs. For more information on Washington D.C.’s Anti-SLAPP Act, click on the following link: http://www.anti-slapp.org/your-states-free-speech-protection/ In January 2024, the court granted the petition for rehearing. In April 2024, we joined with other public interest groups once again to file an amicus brief on the merits discussing the importance of the Anti-SLAPP Act and its protections for public advocacy.

In this case, we argue that WMATA’s advertising guidelines violate the First Amendment, which prohibits government agencies from discriminating against private speech based on its viewpoint or from applying rules that so vague they can’t be applied consistently.