Court Cases

On March 6, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order called “Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP.” Perkins Coie is a major national law firm, headquartered in Seattle. The President declared that Perkins Coie engaged in “dishonest and dangerous activity,” had “manufactured” evidence in connection with the Clinton 2016 presidential campaign, had engaged in “a pattern” of “egregious activity” by challenging (and defending) election laws, and had “racially discriminated against” its employees and applicants by pursuing diversity an inclusivity. To “address” these “risks,” he suspended the security clearances for all firm employees, ordered all federal agencies to terminate any contracts with the law firm’s clients, and ordered firm employees to be denied access to federal buildings and meetings or other engagement with federal employees—measures that would have the effect of putting the firm out of business. Perkins Coie filed suit on March 11 and on March 12 obtained a temporary restraining order enjoining the government from enforcing most of the Executive Order. The case was then scheduled for a prompt determination on the merits. On April 2, we and the National ACLU filed an amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie’s motion for summary judgment and in opposition to the government’s motion to dismiss the case. We were joined by a cross-ideological group of other amici, including the Cato Institute, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Institute for Justice, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, the Rutherford Institute, and the Society for the Rule of Law Institute. Our brief argues that the executive order unconstitutionally retaliates against Perkins Coie for its constitutionally protected advocacy, in violation of the First Amendment; that it violates the constitutional separation of powers and due process; and it violates clients’ rights to representation by the lawyers of their choice; and that it is fundamentally a frontal attack on the rule of law. The president has issued similar executive orders aimed at destroying other law firms with which he has grievances. Jenner & Block and WilmerHale have challenged the orders directed at them, and on April 11 we filed amicus briefs supporting them.

Curtrina Martin and her partner were injured and terrorized during a violent pre-dawn FBI raid on their suburban Atlanta home in 2017, all because the FBI agents went to the wrong address. Fifty years ago, in response to similar wrong-house raids, Congress enacted the "law-enforcement proviso" in the Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”). That provision, which enables people to sue the government for "assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or malicious prosecution" by "investigative or law enforcement officers of the United States Government," ensures that people like Ms. Martin have can go to court to seek a remedy for the harms the government inflicted on them. After the trial and appellate courts held that Ms. Martin's case could not proceed, the Supreme Court agreed to review it to consider the proper reading of the "law-enforcement proviso," which is a critical tool for holding the federal government accountable when federal officers injure people through unconstitutional physical force or arrests. Together with the National ACLU, the ACLU of Georgia, Public Accountability, and the Cato Institute, we filed an amicus brief to argue that "law-enforcement proviso" claims cannot be defeated by the government's argument that officials were acting in an area in which they had "discretion." We explain why the government's argument fails both as a matter of statutory interpretation and because the government never has "discretion" to commit a constitutional violation. Further, we argue that the Court should not accept the government's proposal to import into the FTCA a version of "qualified immunity" — the problematic rule (which we have opposed in a number of other cases) that officers' actions cannot result in liability unless their actions were not just unconstitutional but in violation of "clearly established" law. This unnecessarily high barrier to holding officials accountable dilutes the force of constitutional rights and has no basis in text, history, or policy.

We filed this lawsuit alleging that the Alien Enemies Act had no application in this situation and violated the immigration statutes, which are explicit that they provide “the sole and exclusive procedure” by which the government may determine whether to remove an individual.

This case concerns a ban on life-saving medical treatment for incarcerated people with gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria arises when someone experiences clinically significant distress based on an incongruence between their gender identity (that is, their internal sense of gender) and sex designated at birth. Everyone has a gender identity; however, for some people, it does align with their sex assigned at birth. That, in and of itself, is not a health disorder. Gender dysphoria arises when people experience clinically significant distress from the incongruence. If untreated, gender dysphoria can result in severe anxiety and depression, self-harm, and suicidality. The widely approved treatment for gender dysphoria resolves the distress by enabling individuals to live consistently with their gender identity. That can involve social transition (such as using a name, pronoun, and clothing associated with one’s gender identity), hormone treatment to masculinize or feminize the body, and surgeries to change certain sex characteristics. During the first Trump administration, and the Biden administration, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) provided gender affirming care to incarcerated people with gender dysphoria when a doctor concluded doing so was appropriate. On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order bans BOP from using federal funds for “any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” BOP responded to the order by banning incarcerated transgender people from obtaining accommodations (such as gender-appropriate undergarments) and terminating (or threatening to terminate) their hormone treatments. BOP restored at least some individuals’ hormone treatment, but only after this lawsuit was filed and a court intervened in a related case. Plaintiffs Alishea Kingdom, Solo Nichols, and Jas Kapule—all incarcerated transgender individuals with gender dysphoria—bring this case on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated in order to protect their basic right to crucial medical care and equal treatment under the law.

In 2018, President Trump signed into law the bipartisan First Step Act, which was designed to reform extreme criminal sentencing laws, reduce the population in federal prisons, and encourage people in prison to take advantage of educational, training, and rehabilitative programs by earning credits towards time off their sentences. The statute unambiguously provides that the Bureau of Prisons shall move people out of prison—into halfway houses, home confinement, or supervised release—when they meet certain requirements and when their earned credits are equal to their remaining sentences. But instead of following the law, BOP adopted a regulation providing that it may move people out of prison when their earned credits are equal to their remaining sentences. As a result, thousands of people who are legally entitled be back in their communities and with their families remain in prison. On December 20, 2024, we filed this class action lawsuit, together with the National ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, asking the federal court to order the Bureau of Prisons to obey the law. On January 14, 2025, we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction and provisional class certification, asking the court to order the Bureau of Prisons to transfer class members out of prison when their earned time credits were equal to the time remaining on their sentences.