Court Cases

This case, brought by a class of people who are or will be on parole or supervised release in Washington, D.C., challenges the failure of the federal government’s post-conviction supervision system to accommodate individuals with disabilities as required by federal law.

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.

After various attempts by the Trump administration to prevent refugees from exercising their rights to seek asylum in the United States, the Biden administration is trying to do the same thing. In May 2023 the Department of Homeland Security issued a new immigration regulation called “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways,” which dramatically altered the process that Congress has mandated for people who enter the United States without visas and who express a fear of harm if they are removed. The new policy effectively eliminates access to asylum for most non-Mexicans who enter the United States at the southern border without permission. As part of the United States’ longstanding commitment to protect people fleeing persecution, Congress has guaranteed that any noncitizen who is physically present or arrives in the United States may apply for asylum. Even when it created the “expedited removal” process that permits the rapid removal of certain noncitizens who enter without permission, Congress sought to ensure that this process would not wrongfully return people to potential persecution. In service of that goal, Congress established a screening process called the “credible fear interview,” at which people who express fear of removal must show only a “significant possibility” that they could later establish eligibility for asylum after a full hearing in immigration court. The new regulation upends this system by requiring non-Mexican adults and families who do not enter the U.S. through approved channels at the southern border to show, at their credible fear interviews, that they are not in fact barred from asylum, thus eliminating the “significant possibility” standard at that Congress has mandated at those interviews. The new regulation likewise changes the screening standard for claims to other forms of protection—withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture—by applying a higher “reasonable possibility” standard to these claims in place of the “significant possibility” standard that has previously been used for these claims. The new regulation also reduces the time between a person’s apprehension and his or her credible fear interview to just 24 hours, leaving almost no opportunity for noncitizens to consult with anyone or to meaningfully prepare for these often life-or-death interviews. We filed this lawsuit in June 2023, together with the National ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, challenging the new regulation’s application to these credible fear interviews (other parts of the new regulation are being challenged in an ACLU lawsuit filed in California). The complaint asserts that the new regulation violates the Immigration and Nationality Act and is arbitrary and capricious and violates the procedural requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.

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.

When people in D.C. call 911 for a mental health emergency, it’s generally a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer who responds. The District’s reliance on police as its default first responders for mental health emergencies is not only unfair and unsafe but also unlawful.

In December 2022, we filed a complaint with the D.C. Office of Human Rights alleging discrimination based on family responsibilities and seeking compensation for our clients and changes to the DMV telework policy so it does not disadvantage parents and caregivers.

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.