Supreme Court Term 2023-2024

Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured.   Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions.

On December 5, 2024, the ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan filed an amicus brief in Woodruff v. Oliver, a wrongful arrest lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, arguing that the Detroit Police Department’s (DPD) reliance on flawed facial recognition technology (FRT) impermissibly tainted the investigation and failed to establish probable cause for the plaintiff’s arrest.

Every night, thousands of veterans sleep without shelter on the streets of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs owns hundreds of acres of land in prime West Los Angeles—land directly adjacent to a VA medical facility that was once earmarked to house veterans, but today is instead home to private school sports fields and an oil well.   In November 2022, a group of unhoused veterans and a non-profit organization filed suit alleging that the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) failed to provide adequate housing and health care to veterans with severe disabilities in Los Angeles. These failures have significantly undermined veterans’ abilities to access the benefits they are entitled to by law, leaving many stranded on the streets after serving our country. The veterans sued the VA under the Rehabilitation Act, a federal statute that prohibits federal agencies from discriminating against people with disabilities. As a remedy, the plaintiffs seek the construction of significant units of permanent supportive housing on the   The VA argued that a provision of the Veterans’ Judicial Review Act (“VJRA”)— a federal statute that prohibits federal district courts from second-guessing VA’s individualized benefits determinations—bars federal district courts from hearing the veterans’ Rehabilitation Act claims. Should the court accept this position, it would deprive veterans of a meaningful opportunity to have their rights under the Rehabilitation Act and other generally applicable nondiscrimination statutes enforced.

Four families of transgender youth and two doctors have challenged an Arkansas law that would prohibit healthcare professionals from providing or even referring transgender young people for medically necessary health care. The law would also bar any state funds or insurance coverage for gender-affirming health care for transgender people under 18, and it would allow private insurers to refuse to cover gender-affirming care for people of any age. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges that House Bill 1570 is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.