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Mar 04, 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.
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.
Oct 23, 2025
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.
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Oct 22, 2025
Quiñonez v. United States - Seeking To Expand Federal Officer Accountability for Constitutional Violations
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.
Oct 20, 2025
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.
Oct 17, 2025
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.
Oct 16, 2025
AMERICANS FOR IMMIGRANT JUSTICE V. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND ICE
Immigrants have a right to legal representation in immigration proceedings, but do not have a right to government-appointed counsel. We filed this suit to challenge the failure to ensure compliance with constitutional requirements, federal law, and ICE’s own policies regarding access to counsel.
Oct 16, 2025
Associated Press v. Budowich - Opposing Government Retaliation Against News Outlet for Refusing To Parrot White House's Views
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.
Oct 09, 2025
Refugee And Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services V. Trump – Preventing President Trump from Summarily Expelling Refugees Seeking Asylum
Sep 09, 2025
Arab Student Union of Jackson-Reed High School v. District of Columbia - Challenging suppression of pro-Palestinian student speech
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.
Sep 08, 2025
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO v. TRUMP and PUBLIC BROADCASTING SYSTEM v. TRUMP – OPPOSING DEFUNDING OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING
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.
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