Court Cases
Featured Cases
Jun 25, 2026
O’Hara v. Beck – Defending the Right To Protest the National Guard
In Star Wars, the Imperial March is the music that plays when Darth Vader and his storm troopers enter the scene. It’s also the soundtrack of Sam O’Hara’s protest against the National Guard’s presence in D.C.
National Guard troops arrived in the District after President Donald Trump deployed them to support local police—an act that Mr. O’Hara views as a violation of centuries-old norms against militarizing domestic law enforcement and a threat to individual freedom.
To highlight the surreal danger of the deployment, Mr. O’Hara began walking behind Guard members when he saw them in the community, playing The Imperial March on his phone, and recording. Most community members got the point of the protest, and so did several members of the Guard, who either smiled or laughed in response.
Ohio National Guard Sgt. Devon Beck, however, was not amused by the satire. He threatened to call MPD if Mr. O’Hara didn’t stop his protest. When Mr. O’Hara persisted, Sgt. Beck recruited MPD officers to the scene, and the officers proceeded to detain and handcuff Mr. O’Hara, ending his demonstration.
The First and Fourth Amendments (not to mention D.C. law) bar government officials from detaining people just because of their speech. Mr. O’Hara is suing to vindicate that principle.
Sgt. Beck moved to dismiss the claims against him, arguing among other things that he is entitled to the defense of qualified immunity because he did not violate rights that were “clearly established.” That motion remains pending.
Meanwhile, in June 2026, the remaining defendants — the D.C. government and its officers — agreed to compensate Mr. O’Hara in exchange for dismissal of the claims against them.
Press Release
Jan 12, 2026
Fell v. Trump (formerly Stainnak v. Trump) – Challenging Purge of DEI-Associated Federal Workers As Discriminatory and Retaliatory for Perceived Political Beliefs
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.
Mar 4, 2026
Escobar Molina v. Dep’t of Homeland Security – Challenging Warrantless Immigration Arrests Without Probable Cause in D.C.
On September 25, 2025, four Washington, D.C. community members and the national immigration organization CASA sued the Trump administration to end its policy and practice of making immigration arrests in D.C. without a warrant and without probable cause. The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, American Civil Liberties Union, Amica Center for Immigrants’ Rights, CASA, National Immigration Project, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and the law firm of Covington & Burling.
Since August, federal officers from multiple agencies have made hundreds of immigration arrests in the District. The officers frequently patrol and set up checkpoints in neighborhoods where a large number of immigrants live and stop and arrest people as they go about their daily lives.
The law typically requires an agent to have a warrant when arresting someone for an immigration violation. One exception to the warrant requirement is when the agent has probable cause both that a person is in the United States in violation of the law and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.
According to the lawsuit, the Trump administration has a policy and practice of making immigration arrests without a warrant and without an individualized determination of probable cause that the person is in the country unlawfully and that the person is a flight risk.
Each plaintiff in the case was arrested, detained, and released. The lawsuit was filed as a class action. The plaintiffs seek a court ruling to prevent the government from conducting such unlawful arrests against them and others in the future.
On October 3, 2025, Plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification and a motion for a preliminary injunction, to stay agency action, and for provisional class certification to ask the Court to order Defendants and their agents to stop making warrantless immigration arrests without probable cause for flight risk, as required by the Immigration and Nationality Act.
On November 19, 2025, the district court heard oral argument on Plaintiffs’ motions. On December 2, 2025, the district court denied without prejudice Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification and granted in part and denied in part Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, to stay agency action, and for provisional class certification. It issued an order preliminarily enjoining the government from enforcing its policy or practice of making warrantless civil immigration arrests in D.C. without a pre-arrest individualized determination by the arresting agent of probable cause that the person being arrested is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. It also provisionally certified a class consisting of “[a]ll persons who, since August 11, 2025, have been or will be arrested in this District for alleged immigration violations without a warrant and without a pre-arrest, individualized assessment of probable cause that the person poses an escape risk” for purposes of the preliminary injunction. The court further ordered the government to document the facts supporting an arresting agent’s probable cause to believe a person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained and to periodically provide such documentation to Plaintiffs’ counsel.
On February 19, 2025, Plaintiffs filed a motion to enforce the preliminary injunction, arguing that Defendants are not complying with the preliminary injunction based on the arrest records they produced for warrantless civil immigration arrests in D.C. after the district court’s December 2 order as well as recent public statements made by high-ranking DHS officials on the legal standard for arrests and an internal ICE memorandum that was issued on January 28. The relief Plaintiffs seek includes training for Defendants’ agents on the correct legal standard to apply when making warrantless civil immigration arrests and additional reporting requirements regarding warrantless civil immigration arrests in D.C. The district court has set argument on the motion for March 11 at 10:00AM.
Following the hearing on March 11, both parties submitted supplemental briefing focused on the January 28th ICE memorandum, arguing that the memo misinterprets the probable cause standard for escape risk and asking the court to order Defendants not to rely on the probable cause standard or analysis in the memo. On May 7, 2026, the district court granted Plaintiffs’ motion and ordered that “when conducting civil immigration arrests without a warrant in this District, defendants shall not rely on the probable cause standard or analytical approach set forth in the five-page memorandum from former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons[.]”
All Cases
298 Court Cases
Jun 30, 2026
Accountability NOW USA v. Griess, et al. – Defending the Right to Display Signs Accusing President Trump of Sex Crimes
Accountability NOW is a group of volunteers who have been holding a permitted, 24/7 anti-Trump vigil on National Park Service (NPS) land in Washington, D.C., for months. After they erected signs saying “Trump raped little girls,” and “Kids, if your parents are MAGA, they love child rapists,” NPS demanded they remove the signs because they are “obscene,” and therefore, not protected by the First Amendment. But the signs are not obscene.
Legal obscenity is an extremely narrow exception to the First Amendment’s protection and does not apply to signs like these. For example, the media has extensively covered Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes on TV and online, but those reports do not satisfy the legal test for obscenity, which is designed to capture things like hardcore pornography that have no artistic or other value. This case shows why the test is so strict: If politicians could stop you from accusing them of sexual misconduct by saying that the accusation is obscene, they could avoid accountability. That’s what the First Amendment prevents.
We are asking the court to prohibit NPS from revoking its demonstration permit on this trumped-up ground. We hope that this lawsuit will remind government officials to take Americans’ First Amendment rights seriously.
After seeking unsuccessfully to persuade the government that it should reverse its position, we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction on May 26.
At 5 a.m. the next morning, Park Police officers came to our client’s demonstration and informed them that a flag they were flying, which said “8647,” was a threat to the President and must be removed or they would be violating their permit. That afternoon we filed an application for a temporary restraining order, asking the court to prohibit the government from taking action against the demonstration if it resumed displaying that flag.
On May 28 the court heard argument on our motion, and on Monday June 1 it was granted, ordering the government not to take action against the demonstration for flying an “8647” flag. That temporary order can last only 28 days, so on June 10 we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, seeking an order that will last through the litigation of the case prohibiting the government from retaliating against the demonstration for flying the flag or displaying the posters about Trump’s alleged sex crimes.
On June 29, the court issued a final decision in the case, finding that the facts were undisputed and no further proceedings were needed. The court concluded that “both sets of materials represent core protected speech, and, as a result, the NPS may not compel their removal or condition Plaintiff’s continuing entitlement to a demonstration permit on Plaintiff’s refraining from that speech.” Accordingly, the court issued a permanent injunction protecting Accountability NOW’s right to display the rape signs and the 8647 flag.
Jun 29, 2026
Trump v. Cook – Protecting the Rule of Law and Separation of Powers by Urging the Supreme Court to Apply the Correct Standard for Claims that the Government is Acting Without Legal Authority
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 heard oral argument in this case on January 21, 2026.
On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court denied the government’s application in a 5-4 decision. The Court did not accept the government’s argument that the heightened standard applies to Governor Cook’s ultra vires claim. It instead applied the ordinary, default standard described above and in our amicus brief—whether the challenged action was authorized by law—to hold that President Trump failed to provide Governor Cook the procedural protections required by statute. Two Justices wrote concurring opinions, and four Justices dissented. Justice Thomas in his dissent listed the requirements of the heightened standard for ultra vires claims and noted that “[t]he Court also waives these requirements for Cook,” confirming that the majority did not apply the demanding standard for which the government advocated. The majority also rejected Justice Thomas’s objection to the lack of a statutory cause of action, noting that “[w]e have often held that plaintiffs may sue ‘in equity’ without a congressionally-provided cause of action ‘to prevent an injurious act by a public officer.’” Op. n.2 (quoting Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., 575 U. S. 320, 327 (2015)).
Jun 29, 2026
Horani, Sohayla
In March 2026, Dr. Sohayla Horani, a surgical resident went to the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles (“DMV”) to obtain a D.C. driver’s license. What should have been a routine appointment turned into a violation of the fundamental right to religious freedom: In order to receive her driver’s license, DMV staff forced Dr. Horani to pull back her hijab to reveal her hair, in violation of her religious beliefs. In doing so, DMV staff violated a federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (“RFRA”), and D.C.’s own policy stated on the DMV’s website that hair does not need to be shown in ID photographs.
When DMV staff told Dr. Horani she needed to pull back her hijab and show her ears or some of her hair at the hairline for her driver’s license photograph, Dr. Horani resisted. She explained that she is not allowed to show any hair as a matter of religious conviction, and she showed her U.S. passport and Oregon ID photographs where she was not required to show any hair at all as evidence that she had never been asked to do this before for any other government-issued ID. The employee responded that it did not matter, that “these are our rules,” and that they do this every day, including to other women who wear a hijab. The employee’s supervisor confirmed that if Dr. Horani refuses to pull back her hijab and show her hair for the photograph, she would not get an ID.
After all of Dr. Horani’s objections were rejected and left with no other choice, she ultimately complied, resulting in a driver’s license that was completely useless to her because it shows her hair and it is strictly against Dr. Horani’s religious beliefs to show her hair to any man who is not her husband or close blood relative.
We submitted a pre-suit settlement demand letter to D.C. on Dr. Horani’s behalf. In the letter, we explained that Dr. Horani is considering pursuing a lawsuit under RFRA and that she would successfully state a RFRA claim because she would be able to show that the District substantially burdened her exercise of religion by requiring her to violate her sincerely held religious beliefs in order to obtain an ID. The letter stated that Dr. Horani is willing to refrain from filing a lawsuit if the District agrees to take steps to rectify the situation, including permitting Dr. Horani to retake her driver’s license photograph free of charge, destroying all electronic and paper copies of the photograph showing her hair, and training DMV employees on D.C.’s policy.
The same day we sent the letter, D.C. responded favorably, agreeing to each of these conditions. D.C. DMV noted that it “takes this matter seriously and will require additional training on the issuance of credentials without violating an individual’s religious beliefs.”
Jun 2, 2026
National Association of the Deaf v. Trump (ASL Interpretation During White House Press Briefings) – Protecting the Rule of Law and Separation of Powers by Urging the D.C. Circuit to Apply the Correct Standard for Claims that the Government is Acting Without Legal Authority
For four years, the White House provided American Sign Language (“ASL”) interpretation for its press briefings. It stopped doing so, however, in January 2025 when President Trump returned to office. This excluded deaf Americans, including Plaintiffs Derrick Ford and members of the National Association of the Deaf, from access to the White House press briefings. Plaintiffs sued and moved for a preliminary injunction to order the government to resume providing ASL interpretation during press briefings, arguing that the government’s failure to do so discriminates against deaf Americans in violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The district court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, holding that it established a likelihood of success on the merits of its Rehabilitation Act claim.
The government appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. It contends that Plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed because, among other reasons, the court lacks power to enforce Section 504. Specifically, according to the government, Congress precluded judicial review of a Section 504 claim; and even if it didn’t, Plaintiffs should nonetheless lose because they do not satisfy the heightened standard for “ultra vires” claims—which the government describes as a “Hail Mary pass” and one that requires the agency to have acted contrary to a specific prohibition in a statute, rather than simply showing that the project is unauthorized by the relevant statutes.
On June 2, 2026, we filed an amicus brief in support of Plaintiffs to refute Defendants’ objections regarding the enforceability of Section 504. We first argue that federal courts have inherent equitable power to enforce Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act based on courts’ historical powers, recognized by the Supreme Court, to prevent the government from violating the law, and that nothing about the Rehabilitation Act suggests that Congress intended to foreclose judicial review of Plaintiffs’ Section 504 claim.
We also argue that a plaintiff bringing an ultra vires claim is not generally 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. Because there is no statutory limitation on judicial review of Plaintiffs’ claim, the ordinary, default standard—rather than the heightened standard proposed by Defendants—applies.
Whether courts can enforce laws duly enacted by Congress even in the absence of a statutory cause of action and the standard courts apply to ultra vires claims are important issues because they can determine the Executive Branch’s ability to get away with violating the law and 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 reject the government’s sweeping position and apply the ordinary, default standard to Plaintiffs’ Rehabilitation Act claim.
The D.C. Circuit has not yet scheduled oral argument.
May 29, 2026
State Board of Election Comm’rs v. Miss. NAACP – Fighting To Preserve Enforceability of the Voting Rights Act
A unanimous three-judge panel concluded that Mississippi’s 2022 state legislative districting plan violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”) by cracking and diluting Black voting strength in three areas of the State. The state appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming that the injured voters here—and every Section 2 voter-plaintiff for the past sixty years—had no right to sue in the first place.
The ACLU-DC joined the case at the Supreme Court stage to help argue, together with the National ACLU, the ACLU of Mississippi, and other partners, that Section 2 of the VRA is enforceable by voters and not just (as the state claims) by the U.S. Attorney General. In the last four decades, private litigants, not the Attorney General, have brought the overwhelming majority of VRA Sec. 2 cases. Mississippi’s radical argument would transform voting rights law and reduce VRA enforcement to whatever suits the Justice Department had time — or was politically motivated to — to file.
In October 2025, we filed a motion to summarily affirm the decision of the district court and confirm voters’ ability to enforce Section 2 of the VRA.
In May 2026, the Supreme Court summarily reversed and remanded for reconsideration in light of Louisiana v. Callais, 146 S. Ct. 1131 (2026), which did not address enforceability but overhauled the substantive requirements for a successful Section 2 claim, making such claims much more difficult to win on the merits. Justice Jackson dissented from the remand order, pointing out that Callais was irrelevant to the question of enforceability. The case now heads back to the federal district court in Mississippi.
May 26, 2026
District of Columbia v. Trump – Opposing President Trump’s Militarization of Law Enforcement in D.C.
On August 11, 2025, President Trump invoked a section of the Home Rule Act permitting him to demand services from the D.C. police for federal purposes, and began flooding the District with federal agents, D.C. National Guard, and National Guard from other states. With a month, the D.C. government sued Trump twice — first to block him from taking over the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department entirely (a suit that induced Trump to back down from that attempt) and then to challenge the deployment of the National Guard.
The first case proceeded too quickly for us to file a brief. In the second (both are called District of Columbia v. Trump), we filed an amicus brief supporting the District’s lawsuit. Together with our co-counsel Washington Lawyers Committee, and joined by a broad coalition of D.C. nonprofits devoted to serving D.C. residents and fighting for D.C. autonomy (Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Bread for the City, Children’s Law Center, DC Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, Disability Rights DC, Legal Aid DC, School Justice Project, Tzedek DC, and Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless), we explained how this most recent attempt to impose on D.C. a law enforcement presence not democratically accountable to the people of D.C. is part of a long history, stretching back 200 years to the founding of the District and often tinged with implicit or explicit racism, of denying D.C. residents full self-governance. Although every other American city and state can take this basic element of representative democracy as a given, for D.C., it have been elusive and, even when obtained, only tenuously held. Setting loose American troops—locally unaccountable and not trained for domestic law enforcement—to police the streets of D.C. neighborhoods on the thin pretext of an “emergency,” is anathema to principles of democratic accountability and our longstanding norm of civilian, not military policing. Additionally, we explain how a locally unaccountable law enforcement presence is likely to be less trusted by the community and therefore less effective — thus showing that Trump’s move will make D.C. less safe, not more.
On November 20, 2025, the court held the deployment of the D.C. National Guard was unlawful in the absence of a request from the D.C. government because it is beyond the President’s power under Title 49 of the D.C. Code, enacted by Congress. The court further held that the deployment of other states’ National Guards to D.C. was not justified by the provision of federal law that the President invoked because it is limited to operations authorized by those states’ laws. Accordingly, the court granted a preliminary injunction but stayed it for 21 days to enable the government to appeal.
On December 17, 2025, the appeals court stayed the injunction pending the outcome of the federal government’s appeal. In May 2026, we filed an amicus brief in the D.C. Circuit supporting the D.C. government’s defense of the injunction on appeal.
May 22, 2026
Media Matters for America v. Federal Trade Commission – Protecting the Media from Sham Investigations
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.
The court of appeals heard oral argument on April 13. One week later, the FTC moved to dismiss its appeal on the ground that it had formally withdrawn its civil investigative demand. On May 4 the court dismissed the appeal.
May 22, 2026
Common Cause v. DOJ – Seeking to Block the Trump Administration’s Effort to Control Voter Registration Lists
The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an illegal and unprecedented quest to stockpile millions of Americans’ confidential voter data. DOJ has demanded that nearly every state and the District of Columbia turn over their unredacted statewide voter registration lists, which can include sensitive personal information such as Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, signatures, dates of birth, home addresses, places of birth, political party affiliation, and voter participation history. Never before has a federal agency centralized this volume of Americans’ voting data in a single record system. And in doing so, DOJ has flouted legal safeguards designed to ensure transparency and public participation in the federal government’s collection of Americans’ personal information. DOJ’s apparent purpose in collecting this data is to conduct its own state-by-state voter list maintenance operation and compel states to purge eligible voters from their voter rolls as part of the Trump Administration’s attempts to take over elections from states and subvert the 2026 midterm elections.
DOJ is using this highly sensitive data to build—without Congressional authorization—a sprawling new voter surveillance and purging system that endangers millions of Americans’ fundamental voting and privacy rights. Heeding President Trump’s repeated calls to “take over” and “nationalize” elections, DOJ is now compiling these state voter files in order to create a national voter registration record system. DOJ is moving rapidly to interfere with the States’ lawful authority over elections and impose its own secretive “verification procedures” for identifying “ineligible voters” and then requiring states to remove those individuals from their voter rolls.
DOJ has told federal courts and state officials that it will run states’ entire voter registration lists through the Department of Homeland Security’s flawed Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (“SAVE”) system. In 2025, DHS haphazardly expanded SAVE—which was previously a limited tool to determine eligibility for certain benefits—to conduct mass “voter verification” citizenship checks using unreliable data. The faulty new system has already falsely identified significant numbers of U.S. citizens as non-citizens, endangering their fundamental right to vote. And the system has proven especially unreliable for citizens born outside of the United States (e.g., naturalized citizens), who are at great risk of being falsely identified as non-citizens.
Centralizing hundreds of millions of Americans’ state-level voter data in a single federal system also presents major cybersecurity risks, creating a new target for hackers and foreign actors who seek to undermine our elections and Americans’ data security. In addition to making bulk disclosures to DHS, DOJ plans to disclose voter registration lists data to unidentified private “contractors” to assist with its “list maintenance verification procedures.”
Most states have resisted DOJ’s unprecedented data demands. But at least 12 and, according to DOJ, as many as 19 states have acquiesced to DOJ’s demands for their Confidential Voter Lists, including Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. These states have disregarded the privacy and voting rights of millions of Americans who never consented to disclosing their sensitive personal data to the federal government for undefined purposes and without statutory authorization.
On April 21, together with the National ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Protect Democracy Project, and the Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, we filed this lawsuit on behalf of Common Cause, an organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy, and four of its individual members, to block the Trump Administration’s unlawful efforts to invade voters’ privacy and subvert our democratic elections.
On April 19, we filed a motion for partial summary judgment, asking the court to rule that the government’s plan violated several federal statutes and to order DOJ to cease collecting and using this voter information and to delete what it has already obtained.
May 4, 2026
Doe v. Mullin – Challenging DHS’s Use of Administrative Summonses to Unmask Social Media Critics
The Department of Homeland Security has ordered multiple Internet Service Providers and social media companies to disclose sensitive information about users who criticized DHS’s practices. DHS has issued these demands through administrative summonses or subpoenas, which require approval only by DHS itself and not a neutral judge.
This case challenges another instance of this disturbing trend. Plaintiff John Doe regularly criticizes President Trump and DHS on X and other social media platforms, with his posts collectively receiving well over 100,000 views. Now, DHS wants to obtain detailed information about Mr. Doe and his activities. The government sent an administrative summons to Google, ordering it to disclose “[a]ll records and other information” it possesses relating to the Gmail account Mr. Doe linked to his X account. DHS’s demand expressly includes Mr. Doe’s name, his location information, and data on his online activity—records that could allow the government to trace Mr. Doe’s physical movements and discern the things he reads online and the people with whom he communicates there.
Court cases challenging similar summonses have involved the U.S. government targeting people inside the U.S. This case represents a potentially new and troubling development, as Mr. Doe is a Canadian citizen and resident. If DHS can surveil him, it may be able to monitor any critic anywhere on the globe.
DHS’s actions in this case are unlawful. The government can act only based on authority conveyed via the Constitution or a statute and here, the statute DHS invoked provides no basis to issue the summons. Represented by the ACLU-DC and the ACLU of Northern California, Mr. Doe brings this case to stand up to DHS’s blatant abuse of government power.
Stay Informed
Sign up to be the first to hear about how to take action.
By completing this form, I agree to receive occasional emails per the terms of the ACLU’s privacy statement.
By completing this form, I agree to receive occasional emails per the terms of the ACLU’s privacy statement.