Court Cases

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.