Court Cases

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. On March 31, 2026, Judge Randolph D. Moss ruled in favor of NPR and PBS. He explained: “The President may, of course, engage in his own expressive conduct, including criticizing the views, reporting, or programming of NPR, PBS, or any other news outlet with whom he disagrees. The government may also fund its own speech and may fund government programs that promote specific perspectives on issues of public importance, and it may decide which views or perspectives to convey—and which not to convey—in any such government speech or program. And it may impose limits on federal grants to ensure that they are deployed to further the legitimate purposes of the program and may pick and choose among applicants based on legitimate criteria. But the First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power—including the power of the purse—“to punish or suppress disfavored expression” by others. … As the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit have observed on more than a dozen occasions, the government “may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected . . . freedom of speech even if he has no entitlement to that benefit.” … Executive Order 14290 crosses that line.” He issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the Trump administration “from implementing or enforcing Executive Order 14290’s instruction to cease funding NPR and PBS.” As a practical matter, the injunction will not restore all government funding to NPR and PBS, because Congress has defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provided a great deal of financial support. Some support comes from other agencies, however, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Department of Education, and even FEMA. Those agencies can no longer withhold funds pursuant to the Executive Order.

In March 2025, President Trump issued an order directing “every executive department and agency head . . . to revoke any active security clearances held by” a group of named individuals “and to immediately rescind their access to classified information.” That list included Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Cheney, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former President Joseph Biden, “and any other member of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s family.” That list also included Mark Zaid, an attorney who represents national security whistleblowers and other clients in cases involving classified information—significantly including the intelligence community whistleblower whose disclosures resulted in President Trump’s first impeachment. President Trump has called Mr. Zaid a “sleazeball,” and has said “he should be sued and maybe for treason.” Mr. Zaid sued, and in December 2025 won a preliminary injunction restoring his clearance. The government appealed, and on March 27, 2026, we filed an amicus brief supporting him, together with the National ACLU, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Rutherford Institute. Argument is scheduled for May 14, 2026.

In February 2026, we joined with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the National ACLU to file an amicus brief in this First Amendment case, supporting Media Matters for America. Media Matters for America is a research and journalistic nonprofit dedicated to monitoring and correcting misinformation in U.S. media. After Elon Musk purchased Twitter and renamed it X, Media Matters published articles reporting on increased “extremist and racist rhetoric” on X and about how advertisements for major companies were appearing adjacent to “pro-Nazi content.” Mr. Musk took offense and promised “a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters.” X Corp. made good on Musk’s threat, suing Media Matters in Texas federal court and (through subsidiaries) in Ireland and Singapore. A California federal court preliminarily enjoined X Corp.’s lawsuit campaign, recognizing that it appeared designed more to bully Media Matters and inflict financial hardship than to pursue legitimate claims. Meanwhile, President Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller urged state attorneys general to focus on Media Matters, and the Texas and Missouri attorneys general answered his call and launched civil investigations, making onerous demands of Media Matters. Federal courts here in D.C. preliminarily enjoined both investigations on the ground that they likely amounted to First Amendment retaliation. Piling on, the new Trump-appointed Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, announced that the FTC would investigate purported “tech [platform] censorship” and “advertiser boycotts.” In numerous public statements, he and others made clear that the investigation was partisan and retributive, aimed at “progressives” and “leftists” who were allegedly seeking to “silence conservative voices.” The FTC issued a broad Civil Investigative Demand to Media Matters in May 2025 demanding information on a wide variety of expressive matters, including information about newsgathering and editorial decisions, programs. policies and objectives, financial material, and much more. Media Matters sued again, initiating this lawsuit, and again obtained a preliminary injunction. In a thorough opinion, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan concluded, “[t]his case presents a straightforward First Amendment violation.” The FTC appealed and is asking the court of appeals to allow it to continue its “investigation.” Our amicus brief shows how government investigations can be used to intimidate media outlets through procedural burdens and threats that themselves punish exercises of First Amendment rights. Allowing the FTC to pursue its investigation during the pendency of this case would continue to chill speech and journalism. Our brief also points out that this case is not an outlier. The FTC itself is currently using the same playbook in a series of burdensome “investigations” of advertising agencies and news rating organizations to censor speech the Commission doesn’t like. And government officials nationwide increasingly use burdensome investigations to target publications, platforms, and others for their views. The courts should be vigilant to protect legitimate media from such sham investigations.

Once again, the Trump Administration is attempting to exert unconstitutional control over the content of expression—this time, by affording executive officials unbridled discretion to revoke Pentagon correspondents’ press access for receiving, soliciting, or reporting “unauthorized” information. In the fall of 2025, the Department of Defense promulgated a new policy granting Pentagon officials unbridled and standardless discretion to deem a journalist “a security or safety risk to [Department] personnel or property,” including on the basis of that journalist’s (or their news organization’s) receipt, publication, or “solicitation” of any information, classified or unclassified, that is not “authorized” by the Department. Under the Policy, such conduct—which is the bread and butter of independent journalism—is punishable by suspension of journalists' Pentagon access. Rather than subject themselves to these viewpoint-based restraints on their reporting and the limitless discretion of Administration officials to kick them out, New York Times reporters turned in their press credentials and sued, asserting violations of the First Amendment and due process. Thereafter, the new "Pentagon press corps" consisted of ideological allies of the Trump Administration. In January 2026, we and the National ACLU filed an amicus brief in support of the New York Times' motion for summary judgment. Our brief placed the Pentagon policy in historical and global context. We argued that 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, our country has regretted the moments it has faltered in protecting the free press. And we argued that developments in other democracies and former democracies highlight the dangers of allowing the government to infringe on 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. The lessons from history and other nations' experience should strengthen courts' resolve to apply the First Amendment rigorously, especially when the Trump Administration is relentlessly pursuing ideological conformity by attempting to punish or silence disfavored speech by lawyers, students, government employees, and universities, as well as journalists and media outlets. On March 20, 2026, the court ruled for the Times and held that the Pentagon's new rules violated both due process and the First Amendment, because the policy did not "provide fair notice of what routine, lawful journalistic practices will result in the denial, suspension, or revocation" of a press credential, and because the policy discriminated against journalists based on their viewpoint, "that is, whether the individual or organization is willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by Department leadership." The court's opinion began: "A primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription. Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech. That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now." Accordingly, the court enjoined the Pentagon's new rules. In response, the Pentagon promulgated a new policy that further closed off Pentagon access and used new language to restore a regime similar to the enjoined policy. On April 9, the court ordered the government to halt the new policy as well, explaining that it would not "permit such a blatant attempt to circumvent a lawful order of the Court to succeed." On April 10, the government appealed both orders to the D.C. Circuit.

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 November 2025, the en banc court unanimously upheld the Anti-SLAPP Act as consistent with the Home Rule Act, clearing the way for the Anti-SLAPP Act to play its intended role in protecting free speech.

On March 27, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order excluding the Federal Education Association and other unions representing educators who work in schools operated by the Department of Defense Education Activity (collectively, “Plaintiffs”) from coverage under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (“FSLMRS”), which protects federal employees’ collective bargaining rights. The plaintiff unions sued and moved for a preliminary injunction, arguing that the Executive Order violates the First and Fifth Amendments and is ultra vires (in excess of) the President’s authority under the FSLMRS. The district court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, holding that they established a likelihood of success on the merits of their ultra vires claim. The government appealed the district court’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. It contends that Plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed for three reasons: first, that the district court lacked jurisdiction because the FSLMRS requires Plaintiffs to submit their claims to the Federal Labor Relations Authority (“FLRA”); second, that the district court lacked jurisdiction over Plaintiffs’ ultra vires claim because the FSLMRS commits exclusion decisions to the President’s unreviewable discretion; and third, that even if Plaintiffs’ ultra vires claim were reviewable, Plaintiffs would face a demanding standard—a “Hail Mary pass”—to win on their claim. Specifically, the government argues that to prevail on their ultra vires claim, Plaintiffs must show that the President’s decision to exclude Plaintiffs from the statute’s coverage was contrary to a specific prohibition in a statute, rather than simply that the President’s action was unauthorized by the statute. On November 12, 2025, we filed an amicus brief in support of Plaintiffs to refute the government’s argument that such a demanding standard applies categorically. We argue that the standard that the government proposes is a narrow exception to the default standard for ultra vires claims. Under the default standard, a plaintiff bringing an ultra vires claim is not required to show that a government official’s action was contrary to a specific prohibition in a statute. Instead, the plaintiff only needs to show that the official’s action was unauthorized by law. This default standard is over a century old and well-established in the Supreme Court’s precedents and supported by the D.C. Circuit’s precedents. By contrast, the demanding standard the government proposes for ultra vires claims should apply only where Congress has limited judicial review. The standard courts apply to ultra vires claims is important because it can determine whether the party challenging unlawful executive action will win or lose its claim. Under the government’s position, any time a party alleges that a government official is acting without legal authority and there is no private right of action in a statute, the party would need to satisfy the heightened “Hail Mary” standard, making it highly unlikely it will win. Such a rule would undermine rule of law and separation of powers principles and improperly hamper courts’ ability to review executive action for compliance with federal law. We therefore urged the D.C. Circuit in our amicus brief to apply the ordinary, default standard to Plaintiffs’ ultra vires claim if the FSLMRS does not limit judicial review of the President’s exclusion decision. The D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear oral argument in this case on December 15, 2025.

In August 2025, President Trump removed Governor Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors based on his determination that he had cause to do so. Governor Cook sued, arguing that the President’s decision to remove her violated her due process rights and was ultra vires (in excess of) the authority Congress granted the President because it was not “for cause” as required by the Federal Reserve Act. After the lower courts granted Governor Cook’s request for an injunction to prevent her removal, the government filed an application in the Supreme Court to stay (pause) the injunction. The government made two arguments in its stay application in response to Governor Cook’s ultra vires claim: first, that President Trump’s decision to remove Governor Cook is unreviewable in court because the determination of cause is committed to the President’s unreviewable discretion, and second, that even if a court could review President Trump’s decision, Governor Cook would face a demanding standard—a “Hail Mary pass”—to win on her claim. Specifically, the government argued that to prevail on her ultra vires claim, Governor Cook would need to show that that the President’s action was contrary to a specific prohibition in a statute, rather than simply that the President’s action was unauthorized by the statute. Together with the National ACLU and The Rutherford Institute, we filed an amicus brief in support of neither party to refute the government’s argument that such a demanding standard applies. We argue that the standard that the government proposes is a narrow exception to the default standard for ultra vires claims. Under the default standard, a plaintiff bringing an ultra vires claim is not required to show that a government official’s action was contrary to a specific prohibition in a statute. Instead, the plaintiff only needs to show that the official’s action was unauthorized by law. This default standard is over a century old and well-established in the Supreme Court’s precedents. By contrast, the demanding standard the government proposes for ultra vires claims should apply only where Congress has limited judicial review. The standard courts apply to ultra vires claims is important because it can determine whether the party challenging unlawful executive action will win or lose its claim. Under the government’s position, any time a party alleges that a government official is acting without legal authority and there is no private right of action in a statute, the party would need to satisfy the heightened “Hail Mary” standard, making it highly unlikely it will win. Such a rule would undermine rule of law and separation of powers principles and improperly hamper courts’ ability to review executive action for compliance with federal law. We therefore urged the Supreme Court in our amicus brief to apply the heightened standard the government proposes to Governor Cook’s ultra vires claim only if the Federal Reserve Act limits judicial review. The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral argument in this case in January 2026.

Rene Quiñonez owns a small print shop in Oakland, California. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic and the summer of civil rights activism following the murder of George Floyd, he received his biggest order ever, for thousands of cloth masks printed with protest slogans (like "Stop Killing Black People"). But a postal clerk seized the shipment, harming Mr. Quiñonez's business. Mr. Quiñonez sued, alleging that the clerk had no legitimate reason to seize the masks and violated his constitutional rights in doing so. The district court threw the case out, ruling that Mr. Quiñonez had not met the strict standards for suing federal officers. This case implicates a problem bigger than one shipment of masks: whether people whose rights are violated by federal officers can sue to obtain redress. State and local officers who violate the Constitution could be sued for it, because there's a specific federal law saying so. Because Congress didn't pass a similar law for federal officers, the Supreme Court has made it extremely difficult to sue federal officers — regardless of the merits of the case. So even if the Constitution was clearly violated, if the wrongdoer was a fed, the victims usually cannot bring a constitutional claim against him. This rule creates a major gap in constitutional enforcement, especially here in D.C., where there is a huge federal law enforcement presence. Because of the Supreme Court's special hostility toward claims against federal officers, for instance, our case seeking damages for the massive, unprovoked assault on peaceful civil rights demonstrators at Lafayette Square in the summer of 2020 is proceeding on very different terms against the federal officers than against the local officers involved in the same incident: whereas we were able to certify a class action and will be able to seek punitive damages against the D.C. police, we could proceed only on behalf of a handful of individuals (not a class) against the U.S. Park Police, Secret Service, and other federal defendants like former Attorney General William Barr, and we cannot seek punitive damages. Mr. Quiñonez appealed the dismissal of his case. Together with the ACLU of Northern California, we filed an amicus brief supporting Mr. Quiñonez's appeal, on the issue of federal officer accountability. We explained how, separate from the path to accountability that the Supreme Court has shut off under federal law, state and local laws still permit suits against federal officers for constitutional violations. Rights without remedies are not worth very much. It is our goal to establish a clear path by which federal officers can be held accountable for violations of constitutional rights.