In The Courts

On June 24, 2024, a multi-faith group of nine Louisiana families with children in public schools filed a federal-court lawsuit in Louisiana, challenging House Bill No. 71 (“H.B. 71”), a new state law that requires every elementary, secondary, and postsecondary public school in the state to permanently display an official version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The families are represented by the ACLU, the ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The complaint alleges that H.B. 71 violates both the separation of church and state, as protected by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

Robinson challenged the congressional map that Louisiana enacted after the 2020 Census. ACLU and partners represented Plaintiffs the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP, Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, and several impacted voters, and argued that the enacted plan violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In June 2022, the district court found Louisiana's congressional map unlawfully denied Black voters a second district in which Black voters had an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. After appeals, the legislature passed a new map containing two majority Black districts in January 2024.

Decarceration has always been an emergency, a life and death proposition, but COVID-19 makes this effort intensely urgent. The ACLU has been working with our partners to litigate for the rights of those who are incarcerated and cannot protect themselves because of the policies of the institutions in which they are jailed.

Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit’s decision upholding Louisiana’s law requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital conflicts with the Supreme Court’s binding precedent in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, where the Court invalidated a similar statute in Texas in 2016.