This case at the Georgia Supreme Court involves the “independent source” doctrine, an exception to the exclusionary rule providing that evidence that is acquired through means genuinely independent of a prior unlawful search or seizure may be accepted by the court. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the ACLU of Georgia, filed an amicus brief arguing that the independent source doctrine does not apply in this case because the police relied on information acquired from a prior, illegal search when they applied for a warrant to search the defendant’s cell phone. The Court’s opinion vacated Tatum’s conviction and remanded to allow the trial court to determine whether the state’s decision to seek the search warrant was “prompted” by the prior unlawful search.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”) requires incarcerated plaintiffs to exhaust the prison’s internal grievance system before they can file suit in federal court. But these procedures may be difficult or impossible for people with mental disabilities to complete. The ACLU is working to ensure that the PLRA’s requirements don’t bar people with mental disabilities from court.

Civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on March 29, 2021, against Georgia’s sweeping law that makes it much harder for all Georgians to vote, particularly voters of color and voters with disabilities. This law spans all aspects of Georgia’s voting process, including imposing a criminal ban on providing food and water to voters waiting in line, limiting dropbox access and ballot return assistance, rejecting absentee ballots for forgetting to add a birthdate to an envelope or for failing to provide more restrictive identifying information or photo ID copies along with absentee ballots. Premised on low voter confidence and born out of the Big Lie about the 2020 election, this law targets methods of voting disproportionately used more and more by Black voters and others voters of color just as they began to exercise greater political power.

On November 4, 2022—the last day of early voting in Georgia and four days before the November 2022 midterm elections—Cobb County Elections Director Janine Eveler disclosed for the first time that approximately 1,036 absentee ballots marked as issued on October 13, 2022 and October 22, 2022 had never been mailed to voters, due to staff error. The ACLU and co-counsel sued on behalf of several affected voters to ensure that plaintiffs could vote in the 2022 midterm election and that no other voters were affected by Cobb County's error.