ACLU: Takeaways from the Supreme Court's Term

Takeaways from the Supreme Court's Term

On the last day of the term, the Supreme Court took hard right turns in two major First Amendment cases, lashed out at so-called “universal injunctions” in cases challenging President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, and punted on a major congressional redistricting case. Over the broader course of the term, the conservative 6-3 majority made a show of force—to the detriment of LGBT Americans’ rights, free speech on the internet, and longstanding precedents on the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. But the court also sided with civil-rights plaintiffs and criminal defendants in consequential lower-profile cases.

In its emergency docket, the court fulfilled its core constitutional role as a check on the president’s abuses at critical moments during the term. In two ACLU cases challenging the invocation of an 18th-century wartime statute to deport people without due process, the court unanimously rejected President Trump’s extremist arguments that his actions are unreviewable by the courts, and a majority blocked the deportations pending further litigation. In many other cases, however, the court overrode lower courts to let Trump administration policies proceed.

The ACLU brought three cases before the court this term. We lost two, and the court set the third—Louisiana v. Callais, which considers the constitutionality of Louisiana’s congressional redistricting map—for re-argument next term. The ACLU also filed friend-of-the-court briefs in 11 cases and was on the winning side in six of those cases.

Losses in Major Cases on LGBTQ Rights, Free Speech on the Internet, and Religion

In perhaps the biggest case of the term, Skrmetti v. United States, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a 6-3 majority, upheld a Tennessee law, SB 1, that bans gender-affirming health care for transgender adolescents. Both the U.S. Justice Department and the ACLU challenged SB 1 on the grounds that it discriminates on the basis of sex and violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The court upheld SB 1, refusing to apply the constitutional standard that has long applied in sex discrimination cases.

The court’s decision in Skrmetti has devastating consequences for our clients—three Tennessee families with trans teens whose essential medical care has been stripped away by their state legislature—and countless other families in Tennessee and 25 other states that have enacted similar health care bans. The ACLU has challenged 11 of those laws. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a powerful dissent, the majority’s analysis “invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight. It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them.”

One silver lining in the Skrmetti decision, however, is that the court did not reach the question of whether laws discriminating against transgender people are subject to less scrutiny from courts than other forms of sex discrimination. Chief Justice Roberts avoided that question on the rationale that SB 1 categorizes based on age and medical use, and not sex or transgender status. This means challenges to other state and federal laws that discriminate against transgender

Americans will continue, including the ACLU’s lawsuits against President Trump’s anti-trans executive orders.

ACLU attorney Chase Strangio speaks to the media outside the U.S. Supreme Court after arguing against the ban gender-affirming health care for transgender children in Skrmetti v. the United States.

WILL OLIVER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The court slashed civil liberties again in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a First Amendment case in which the ACLU challenged a Texas law that requires users to verify their age to access websites whose content is more than one-third sexually explicit and considered obscene for minors. The law deters adults from accessing vast amounts of First Amendment-protected content, including not just pornography but other materials state officials might deem obscene for minors, such as information on sexual health or LGBTQ issues. In upholding the Texas law, the 6-3 majority opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas upended settled precedents in prior ACLU cases—Ashcroft v. ACLU and Reno v. ACLU—in which the court held that laws that limit adults’ access to First Amendment-protected, sexually explicit materials must meet the highest constitutional standard of strict scrutiny, even if the government’s stated purpose is to protect minors. The court’s decision paves the way for more state legislatures—and Congress—to enact laws that limit free speech online.

The court also partially abandoned longstanding precedents on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment in Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which parents with religious objections sued for the right to opt their children out of parts of a public school district’s English Language Arts curriculum that was designed to foster an inclusive learning environment for all students and help them work across differences. The ACLU’s friend-of-the-court brief argued that the school district’s no-opt-out policy—issued after an initial period of opt-outs led to rampant absenteeism and stigmatizing of students who are LGBTQ or have LGBTQ family members—did not violate the Free Exercise Clause. In a 6-3 majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the court held for the first time that parents may pick and choose from a secular public-school curriculum based on their religious objections. This ruling will undoubtedly sow chaos, stigmatize marginalized students, and interfere with educators’ ability to achieve their secular educational goals.

Quiet Wins for Civil Rights Plaintiffs and Criminal Defendants

While the court took a hard right turn in its marquee constitutional cases this term, it quietly issued common-sense rulings in favor of civil rights plaintiffs in lower-profile cases in which the ACLU filed briefs.

In Martin v. United States, the court rejected the government’s immunity defense and held that a couple who were the victims of a violent wrong-house raid by the FBI could proceed with their claim for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act. In another pair of cases, the court rejected defendants’ Kafkaesque arguments seeking to block civil-rights plaintiffs from pursuing justice in the courts. In Williams v. Reed, plaintiffs sued in state court under a federal civil rights statute, Section 1983, claiming that the state labor agency illegally delayed decisions on their unemployment claims. Putting plaintiffs in a Catch-22 situation, the state court rejected the claims on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not sue about their delayed unemployment claims until the agency decided the claims. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for a 5-4 majority, held that state courts cannot use this state-law rule to shield state officials from lawsuits.

In Perttu v. Richards, an incarcerated mansued a prison officer for sexually abusing him and then retaliating against him for attempting to file an administrative grievance about the abuse. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5-4 majority, rejected the prison officer’s argument that the plaintiff’s claim should be dismissed for failure to file an administrative grievance first, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Instead, the court ruled that the plaintiff had the right to a jury trial because the facts concerning his access to the grievance process were intertwined with his retaliation claim.

In two other cases where the ACLU filed briefs, the court ruled in favor of criminal defendants. In Glossip v. Oklahoma, the court reversed Richard Glossip’s conviction and death sentence on the grounds that prosecutors hid evidence suggesting that another man had committed the crime and that prosecution witnesses testified falsely. Our brief argued that this prosecutorial misconduct violated due process and that such misconduct is a systemic problem in death penalty prosecutions in Oklahoma.

In Hewitt v. United States, the court sided with criminal defendants in a case about how to interpret the First Step Act, a federal-sentencing reform law enacted during Trump’s first term. The court held that the First Step Act, which reformed grotesquely unfair federal mandatory minimum sentences, applies to individuals who are re-sentenced after their original sentences are vacated on appeal. This decision is enormously consequential. For example, Timothy Carpenter, the ACLU’s client in a 2018 Supreme Court case ruling that Fourth Amendment protections apply when the police obtain cell phone location records from cell phone service providers, would have the mandatory minimum portion of his sentence reduced from 105 to 25 years on resentencing under the First Step Act.

The Ascendancy of the Emergency Docket

In time, this term might be best remembered not for the court’s major merits cases, but for the eclipsing importance of its emergency docket—cases that reach the court through a request to temporarily block a lower court’s decision from going into effect, or order relief the lower court denied, while the litigation continues. Appellate courts generally issue these emergency orders when they find that the lower court’s decision is likely incorrect and the party asking for the order will be irreparably harmed if the lower court's decision remains in place. The emergency docket was particularly fraught this term because of the large number of cases challenging the Trump administration’s actions.

At least three themes emerge from these cases: First, the court is leaning into the emergency docket and brushing aside concerns that weighty issues should not be decided on rushed briefing and a limited record. For example, on the last day of the term, the court issued an order in Trump v. CASA, where the Trump administration asked the court to partially block three of the many lower court opinions that have unanimously ruled that the president’s effort to undo birthright citizenship violates the 14th Amendment. The government did not argue that Trump’s executive order was constitutional. Instead, it made the limited argument that the lower court rulings should apply only to the plaintiffs in the case—22 states, several membership organizations, and individuals. For everyone else, the government said, the executive order should still apply, denying U.S. citizenship to babies born in other states.

In CASA, the 6-3 majority disapproved of “universal injunctions”—a term used to criticize court orders that broadly block the defendant from taking some illegal action without a finding that the scope of the order is necessary to protect the plaintiffs in the case. While some justices and commentators on the left and the right have long criticized such injunctions, the birthright citizenship case was an odd vehicle for the court’s ruling. Indeed, the majority opinion did not actually hold that President Trump’s executive order could go into effect and instead ordered at least an additional 30-day pause on the executive order and sent the cases back to the lower courts, leaving it to them to re-decide the scope of their injunctions. The CASA decision also leaves untouched other mechanisms for people harmed by the executive orders to win nationwide protection—and the ACLU filed a new proposed nationwide class action lawsuit within two hours of the Supreme Court’s decision.

Notably, Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion suggesting that the Supreme Court should jump into even more cases through its emergency docket, generally deciding on a nationwide basis whether challenged federal actions should continue, or be blocked, during the long course of litigation.

Second, over the course of the term, the Supreme Court issued critical emergency orders checking abuses of executive power, including in two of the ACLU’s cases challenging President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rationalize the detention and deportation of Venezuelan nationals without due process. In Trump v. J.G.G., the court granted the Trump administration’s request to pause a lower court order that had blocked deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, agreeing that the case should have been filed in the districts where our clients were detained, not in Washington, D.C. Critically, however, the court unanimously rejected the government’s argument that the courts are powerless to review the president’s decision and held that due process requires giving people a fair chance to challenge their detention and deportation in court. After that order, the ACLU brought 10 new cases in district courts around the country.

A little over a month later, the court granted the ACLU’s emergency application in one of those follow-up cases, A.A.R.P. v. Trump. In an order issued at almost 1:00 A.M. ET, just hours after we filed our request, the court (by a 7-2 vote) issued a temporary order blocking the Trump administration from hastily deporting our clients under the Alien Enemies Act. It later issued an opinion extending that order pending further order of the court.

These two emergency orders prevented the plaintiffs from being sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process, and demonstrated that the president is not above the law.

Third, later in the term, the Supreme Court sided more often with the Trump administration on its emergency applications, allowing the government to move forward with actions the lower courts had held unlawful. In an ACLU case, Noem v. National TPS Alliance, the court permitted the Trump administration end temporary protected status (TPS) for Venezuelans. The court’s order (over Justice Jackson’s lone dissent) puts 350,000 people at risk of deportation and strips their work authorization.

The court also sided with the Trump administration in another immigration case (not involving the ACLU), Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., a challenge to the Trump administration’s deportations of individuals to countries not designated in a deportation order, and without due process. Notably, in D.V.D., the Trump administration had deported individuals in defiance of a federal district court order. Thus, as Justice Sotomayor wrote a dissent in D.V.D., the majority’s order “reward[s] lawlessness,” and undermines the “foundational principle” that “ours is a government of laws, not of men.”

While the court stood firmly as a check against the executive branch at critical moments, its overall record was mixed and the term ended with several orders in favor of the president. Some commentators saw the “very real possibility that at least some of the justices . . . are worried about how much capital they have to expend in confrontations with President Trump.” Time will tell, as undoubtedly the Trump administration will continue to push against constitutional limits next term, both on the emergency and merits dockets. The ACLU will be there to fight for civil rights and civil liberties, and the American people will be watching.

Published July 7, 2025 at 08:50PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/WMTvYw1

ACLU: Takeaways from the Supreme Court's Term

Takeaways from the Supreme Court's Term

On the last day of the term, the Supreme Court took hard right turns in two major First Amendment cases, lashed out at so-called “universal injunctions” in cases challenging President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, and punted on a major congressional redistricting case. Over the broader course of the term, the conservative 6-3 majority made a show of force—to the detriment of LGBT Americans’ rights, free speech on the internet, and longstanding precedents on the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. But the court also sided with civil-rights plaintiffs and criminal defendants in consequential lower-profile cases.

In its emergency docket, the court fulfilled its core constitutional role as a check on the president’s abuses at critical moments during the term. In two ACLU cases challenging the invocation of an 18th-century wartime statute to deport people without due process, the court unanimously rejected President Trump’s extremist arguments that his actions are unreviewable by the courts, and a majority blocked the deportations pending further litigation. In many other cases, however, the court overrode lower courts to let Trump administration policies proceed.

The ACLU brought three cases before the court this term. We lost two, and the court set the third—Louisiana v. Callais, which considers the constitutionality of Louisiana’s congressional redistricting map—for re-argument next term. The ACLU also filed friend-of-the-court briefs in 11 cases and was on the winning side in six of those cases.

Losses in Major Cases on LGBTQ Rights, Free Speech on the Internet, and Religion

In perhaps the biggest case of the term, Skrmetti v. United States, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a 6-3 majority, upheld a Tennessee law, SB 1, that bans gender-affirming health care for transgender adolescents. Both the U.S. Justice Department and the ACLU challenged SB 1 on the grounds that it discriminates on the basis of sex and violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The court upheld SB 1, refusing to apply the constitutional standard that has long applied in sex discrimination cases.

The court’s decision in Skrmetti has devastating consequences for our clients—three Tennessee families with trans teens whose essential medical care has been stripped away by their state legislature—and countless other families in Tennessee and 25 other states that have enacted similar health care bans. The ACLU has challenged 11 of those laws. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a powerful dissent, the majority’s analysis “invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight. It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them.”

One silver lining in the Skrmetti decision, however, is that the court did not reach the question of whether laws discriminating against transgender people are subject to less scrutiny from courts than other forms of sex discrimination. Chief Justice Roberts avoided that question on the rationale that SB 1 categorizes based on age and medical use, and not sex or transgender status. This means challenges to other state and federal laws that discriminate against transgender

Americans will continue, including the ACLU’s lawsuits against President Trump’s anti-trans executive orders.

ACLU attorney Chase Strangio speaks to the media outside the U.S. Supreme Court after arguing against the ban gender-affirming health care for transgender children in Skrmetti v. the United States.

WILL OLIVER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The court slashed civil liberties again in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a First Amendment case in which the ACLU challenged a Texas law that requires users to verify their age to access websites whose content is more than one-third sexually explicit and considered obscene for minors. The law deters adults from accessing vast amounts of First Amendment-protected content, including not just pornography but other materials state officials might deem obscene for minors, such as information on sexual health or LGBTQ issues. In upholding the Texas law, the 6-3 majority opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas upended settled precedents in prior ACLU cases—Ashcroft v. ACLU and Reno v. ACLU—in which the court held that laws that limit adults’ access to First Amendment-protected, sexually explicit materials must meet the highest constitutional standard of strict scrutiny, even if the government’s stated purpose is to protect minors. The court’s decision paves the way for more state legislatures—and Congress—to enact laws that limit free speech online.

The court also partially abandoned longstanding precedents on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment in Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which parents with religious objections sued for the right to opt their children out of parts of a public school district’s English Language Arts curriculum that was designed to foster an inclusive learning environment for all students and help them work across differences. The ACLU’s friend-of-the-court brief argued that the school district’s no-opt-out policy—issued after an initial period of opt-outs led to rampant absenteeism and stigmatizing of students who are LGBTQ or have LGBTQ family members—did not violate the Free Exercise Clause. In a 6-3 majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the court held for the first time that parents may pick and choose from a secular public-school curriculum based on their religious objections. This ruling will undoubtedly sow chaos, stigmatize marginalized students, and interfere with educators’ ability to achieve their secular educational goals.

Quiet Wins for Civil Rights Plaintiffs and Criminal Defendants

While the court took a hard right turn in its marquee constitutional cases this term, it quietly issued common-sense rulings in favor of civil rights plaintiffs in lower-profile cases in which the ACLU filed briefs.

In Martin v. United States, the court rejected the government’s immunity defense and held that a couple who were the victims of a violent wrong-house raid by the FBI could proceed with their claim for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act. In another pair of cases, the court rejected defendants’ Kafkaesque arguments seeking to block civil-rights plaintiffs from pursuing justice in the courts. In Williams v. Reed, plaintiffs sued in state court under a federal civil rights statute, Section 1983, claiming that the state labor agency illegally delayed decisions on their unemployment claims. Putting plaintiffs in a Catch-22 situation, the state court rejected the claims on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not sue about their delayed unemployment claims until the agency decided the claims. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for a 5-4 majority, held that state courts cannot use this state-law rule to shield state officials from lawsuits.

In Perttu v. Richards, an incarcerated mansued a prison officer for sexually abusing him and then retaliating against him for attempting to file an administrative grievance about the abuse. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5-4 majority, rejected the prison officer’s argument that the plaintiff’s claim should be dismissed for failure to file an administrative grievance first, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Instead, the court ruled that the plaintiff had the right to a jury trial because the facts concerning his access to the grievance process were intertwined with his retaliation claim.

In two other cases where the ACLU filed briefs, the court ruled in favor of criminal defendants. In Glossip v. Oklahoma, the court reversed Richard Glossip’s conviction and death sentence on the grounds that prosecutors hid evidence suggesting that another man had committed the crime and that prosecution witnesses testified falsely. Our brief argued that this prosecutorial misconduct violated due process and that such misconduct is a systemic problem in death penalty prosecutions in Oklahoma.

In Hewitt v. United States, the court sided with criminal defendants in a case about how to interpret the First Step Act, a federal-sentencing reform law enacted during Trump’s first term. The court held that the First Step Act, which reformed grotesquely unfair federal mandatory minimum sentences, applies to individuals who are re-sentenced after their original sentences are vacated on appeal. This decision is enormously consequential. For example, Timothy Carpenter, the ACLU’s client in a 2018 Supreme Court case ruling that Fourth Amendment protections apply when the police obtain cell phone location records from cell phone service providers, would have the mandatory minimum portion of his sentence reduced from 105 to 25 years on resentencing under the First Step Act.

The Ascendancy of the Emergency Docket

In time, this term might be best remembered not for the court’s major merits cases, but for the eclipsing importance of its emergency docket—cases that reach the court through a request to temporarily block a lower court’s decision from going into effect, or order relief the lower court denied, while the litigation continues. Appellate courts generally issue these emergency orders when they find that the lower court’s decision is likely incorrect and the party asking for the order will be irreparably harmed if the lower court's decision remains in place. The emergency docket was particularly fraught this term because of the large number of cases challenging the Trump administration’s actions.

At least three themes emerge from these cases: First, the court is leaning into the emergency docket and brushing aside concerns that weighty issues should not be decided on rushed briefing and a limited record. For example, on the last day of the term, the court issued an order in Trump v. CASA, where the Trump administration asked the court to partially block three of the many lower court opinions that have unanimously ruled that the president’s effort to undo birthright citizenship violates the 14th Amendment. The government did not argue that Trump’s executive order was constitutional. Instead, it made the limited argument that the lower court rulings should apply only to the plaintiffs in the case—22 states, several membership organizations, and individuals. For everyone else, the government said, the executive order should still apply, denying U.S. citizenship to babies born in other states.

In CASA, the 6-3 majority disapproved of “universal injunctions”—a term used to criticize court orders that broadly block the defendant from taking some illegal action without a finding that the scope of the order is necessary to protect the plaintiffs in the case. While some justices and commentators on the left and the right have long criticized such injunctions, the birthright citizenship case was an odd vehicle for the court’s ruling. Indeed, the majority opinion did not actually hold that President Trump’s executive order could go into effect and instead ordered at least an additional 30-day pause on the executive order and sent the cases back to the lower courts, leaving it to them to re-decide the scope of their injunctions. The CASA decision also leaves untouched other mechanisms for people harmed by the executive orders to win nationwide protection—and the ACLU filed a new proposed nationwide class action lawsuit within two hours of the Supreme Court’s decision.

Notably, Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion suggesting that the Supreme Court should jump into even more cases through its emergency docket, generally deciding on a nationwide basis whether challenged federal actions should continue, or be blocked, during the long course of litigation.

Second, over the course of the term, the Supreme Court issued critical emergency orders checking abuses of executive power, including in two of the ACLU’s cases challenging President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rationalize the detention and deportation of Venezuelan nationals without due process. In Trump v. J.G.G., the court granted the Trump administration’s request to pause a lower court order that had blocked deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, agreeing that the case should have been filed in the districts where our clients were detained, not in Washington, D.C. Critically, however, the court unanimously rejected the government’s argument that the courts are powerless to review the president’s decision and held that due process requires giving people a fair chance to challenge their detention and deportation in court. After that order, the ACLU brought 10 new cases in district courts around the country.

A little over a month later, the court granted the ACLU’s emergency application in one of those follow-up cases, A.A.R.P. v. Trump. In an order issued at almost 1:00 A.M. ET, just hours after we filed our request, the court (by a 7-2 vote) issued a temporary order blocking the Trump administration from hastily deporting our clients under the Alien Enemies Act. It later issued an opinion extending that order pending further order of the court.

These two emergency orders prevented the plaintiffs from being sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process, and demonstrated that the president is not above the law.

Third, later in the term, the Supreme Court sided more often with the Trump administration on its emergency applications, allowing the government to move forward with actions the lower courts had held unlawful. In an ACLU case, Noem v. National TPS Alliance, the court permitted the Trump administration end temporary protected status (TPS) for Venezuelans. The court’s order (over Justice Jackson’s lone dissent) puts 350,000 people at risk of deportation and strips their work authorization.

The court also sided with the Trump administration in another immigration case (not involving the ACLU), Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., a challenge to the Trump administration’s deportations of individuals to countries not designated in a deportation order, and without due process. Notably, in D.V.D., the Trump administration had deported individuals in defiance of a federal district court order. Thus, as Justice Sotomayor wrote a dissent in D.V.D., the majority’s order “reward[s] lawlessness,” and undermines the “foundational principle” that “ours is a government of laws, not of men.”

While the court stood firmly as a check against the executive branch at critical moments, its overall record was mixed and the term ended with several orders in favor of the president. Some commentators saw the “very real possibility that at least some of the justices . . . are worried about how much capital they have to expend in confrontations with President Trump.” Time will tell, as undoubtedly the Trump administration will continue to push against constitutional limits next term, both on the emergency and merits dockets. The ACLU will be there to fight for civil rights and civil liberties, and the American people will be watching.

Published July 8, 2025 at 01:20AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/x5vpDaJ

ACLU: Live Coverage: Final SCOTUS Decision Day

Live Coverage: Final SCOTUS Decision Day


Published June 27, 2025 at 06:35PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/R1bVtym

ACLU: Live Coverage: Final SCOTUS Decision Day

Live Coverage: Final SCOTUS Decision Day


Published June 27, 2025 at 02:05PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/ic0gyGd

ACLU: The Supreme Court Dealt A Blow to Trans Rights. Here's How to Take Action

The Supreme Court Dealt A Blow to Trans Rights. Here's How to Take Action

Last week, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to trans youth, their families and the communities that support them. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Skrmetti v. U.S. that SB1— Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors —does not illegally discriminate against individuals on the basis of sex or transgender status. This allows Tennessee, and any other states that may choose to follow its discriminatory lead, to ban medically-necessary health care for minors.

As one of the Tennessee parents challenging this ban put it, “the Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday will make it even harder for our daughter to get lifesaving health care. It will harm the lawsuit’s unnamed families and those that come after us, with younger kids just starting to understand and express themselves.”

This is a blow for trans youth who simply want to grow up healthy, supported, and seen. It is not, however, where the legal battle ends. Importantly, the Supreme Court limited its ruling to just Tennessee’s law. It did not decide on the broader questions about the legality of discrimination against transgender people in other areas.

Below, the American Civil Liberties Union breaks down what the court’s ruling means for trans youth across the nation, how we can all fight back, and how we can best support ourselves and our communities in this moment.

What Does the Court’s Ruling Mean For Trans Youth?

The Supreme Court’s ruling does not impact youth in states that have not passed gender-affirming care bans. For young people in Tennessee and Kentucky, however, this ruling means that access to medical care that has been deemed essential by every major medical organization will be denied. In states like Indiana, Alabama, and Florida, where courts have upheld similar bans, this ruling may embolden lawmakers and courts to let those bans stay in place.

Does Skrmetti Limit Care for Trans Adults?

No. This case was specifically about minors in two states – Kentucky and Tennessee.

The ruling didn’t address an equally powerful claim raised in Skrmetti and other cases: that these bans violate the rights of parents to direct their children’s medical care. In this case parents, who are legal adults, can challenge whether denying their minor child health care is a violation of their rights. That fight continues in lower courts, including a major case in Arkansas where four transgender youth and their families are challenging a similar ban.

What Can State Courts Do to Protect Trans Rights?

Though the Supreme Court did not provide federal-level security for trans individuals to seek care, at the state-level, bans can still be challenged under state constitutions and laws, which in some cases offer stronger protections than federal law.

This work is already happening in states like Montana, where state courts have blocked gender-affirming care bans under state law, and medical care is still accessible. Kansas and Ohio are also challenging bans on gender-affirming care in their court systems.

Does the Skrmetti Ruling Impact Any of Trump's Anti-Trans Executive Orders?

No. U.S. v. Skrmetti does not resolve challenges to anti-trans executive orders from the Trump administration. This case was about medical care for transgender minors in two states—it does not speak to broader attacks on transgender rights.

The ACLU, our nationwide affiliate network, and other LGBTQ rights organizations are challenging many of Trump’s attacks on transgender people’s rights and health care, including his orders restricting our ability to update passports and his order attempting to coerce doctors to drop their transgender patients.

How Can We Support the Trans Community Today?

Transgender youth deserve to be safe, loved, and respected—everywhere. You can help by taking action:

• Connect with your state ACLU affiliate, PFLAG, or local LGBTQ organizations.
• Support the Trans Youth Emergency Project, a nationwide effort by the Campaign for Southern Equality helping families access the care their children need.
• Contact your members of Congress and demand they stand with transgender people and families—rejecting laws that let politicians dictate our personal health care decisions.

Every action, every voice, every ally matters. The fight for trans lives isn’t over—and it needs you.

Published June 26, 2025 at 07:55PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/lrKAdfU

ACLU: The Supreme Court Dealt A Blow to Trans Rights. Here's How to Take Action

The Supreme Court Dealt A Blow to Trans Rights. Here's How to Take Action

Last week, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to trans youth, their families and the communities that support them. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Skrmetti v. U.S. that SB1— Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors —does not illegally discriminate against individuals on the basis of sex or transgender status. This allows Tennessee, and any other states that may choose to follow its discriminatory lead, to ban medically-necessary health care for minors.

As one of the Tennessee parents challenging this ban put it, “the Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday will make it even harder for our daughter to get lifesaving health care. It will harm the lawsuit’s unnamed families and those that come after us, with younger kids just starting to understand and express themselves.”

This is a blow for trans youth who simply want to grow up healthy, supported, and seen. It is not, however, where the legal battle ends. Importantly, the Supreme Court limited its ruling to just Tennessee’s law. It did not decide on the broader questions about the legality of discrimination against transgender people in other areas.

Below, the American Civil Liberties Union breaks down what the court’s ruling means for trans youth across the nation, how we can all fight back, and how we can best support ourselves and our communities in this moment.

What Does the Court’s Ruling Mean For Trans Youth?

The Supreme Court’s ruling does not impact youth in states that have not passed gender-affirming care bans. For young people in Tennessee and Kentucky, however, this ruling means that access to medical care that has been deemed essential by every major medical organization will be denied. In states like Indiana, Alabama, and Florida, where courts have upheld similar bans, this ruling may embolden lawmakers and courts to let those bans stay in place.

Does Skrmetti Limit Care for Trans Adults?

No. This case was specifically about minors in two states – Kentucky and Tennessee.

The ruling didn’t address an equally powerful claim raised in Skrmetti and other cases: that these bans violate the rights of parents to direct their children’s medical care. In this case parents, who are legal adults, can challenge whether denying their minor child health care is a violation of their rights. That fight continues in lower courts, including a major case in Arkansas where four transgender youth and their families are challenging a similar ban.

What Can State Courts Do to Protect Trans Rights?

Though the Supreme Court did not provide federal-level security for trans individuals to seek care, at the state-level, bans can still be challenged under state constitutions and laws, which in some cases offer stronger protections than federal law.

This work is already happening in states like Montana, where state courts have blocked gender-affirming care bans under state law, and medical care is still accessible. Kansas and Ohio are also challenging bans on gender-affirming care in their court systems.

Does the Skrmetti Ruling Impact Any of Trump's Anti-Trans Executive Orders?

No. U.S. v. Skrmetti does not resolve challenges to anti-trans executive orders from the Trump administration. This case was about medical care for transgender minors in two states—it does not speak to broader attacks on transgender rights.

The ACLU, our nationwide affiliate network, and other LGBTQ rights organizations are challenging many of Trump’s attacks on transgender people’s rights and health care, including his orders restricting our ability to update passports and his order attempting to coerce doctors to drop their transgender patients.

How Can We Support the Trans Community Today?

Transgender youth deserve to be safe, loved, and respected—everywhere. You can help by taking action:

• Connect with your state ACLU affiliate, PFLAG, or local LGBTQ organizations.
• Support the Trans Youth Emergency Project, a nationwide effort by the Campaign for Southern Equality helping families access the care their children need.
• Contact your members of Congress and demand they stand with transgender people and families—rejecting laws that let politicians dictate our personal health care decisions.

Every action, every voice, every ally matters. The fight for trans lives isn’t over—and it needs you.

Published June 27, 2025 at 12:25AM
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ACLU: Jose Antonio Vargas on What We Get Wrong About Immigration Reform

Jose Antonio Vargas on What We Get Wrong About Immigration Reform

This Mother’s Day was the first one that Jose Antonio Vargas celebrated with his mother in person in 32 years. It was also the first one his grandmother, who immigrated to the states in 1984 and helped raise Vargas from the age of 12, had celebrated with her daughter in as many years.

“I don’t have language for what [the reunion] was like,” says Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and immigrant rights activist. “There are just no words.”

Credit: Jose Antonio Vargas

Born in the Philippines, Vargas was sent to California to live with his grandparents, who were naturalized U.S. citizens. Though raised in America, Vargas remained undocumented and spent more than three decades without legal status. That changed this year after he took the significant risk of leaving the country to be processed for reentry with no guarantee he’d be allowed back in.

Christmas night 2024, Vargas drove from San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico. It was the first time he had left the U.S. since he arrived more than 20 years ago. After risking deportation by leaving, Vargas was eventually granted a temporary non-immigrant O visa for individuals with “extraordinary ability” — the same category once held by former First Lady Melania Trump.

“I would argue that all undocumented people in Trump’s America require extraordinary ability — and resilience — just to survive,” he says.

For Vargas, immigration isn’t just personal, it’s foundational to the American experience. In conversations with people across the country, he has encountered widespread misconceptions about how the immigration system works.

“People ask, ‘Why don’t you just get legal?’ as if it’s as simple as flipping a switch,” Vargas says. But legal pathways are narrow, costly, and often unavailable, even for those with U.S. citizen relatives or long-standing ties to the country.

Below, Vargas shares with the ACLU five common misconceptions that he’s encountered in his experience as an immigrant rights’ advocate – and how he’s fighting for change.

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Everyone Can Get a Green Card or Visa

The U.S. offers green cards through just a handful of narrow paths: refugee status, the diversity visa lottery, family or employer sponsorship, or for people with extraordinary skills or wealth. These options are either highly competitive, extremely limited, or out of reach for most people.

For example, the diversity lottery only accepts a small number of applicants and excludes many countries entirely. Most family sponsorships have decades-long wait times. Employer-based green cards are usually reserved for people with advanced degrees. And marriage to a U.S. citizen doesn’t bypass the system—it requires financial sponsorship and, for those who entered unlawfully, can mean a three- or 10-year bar from re-entering the country.

The reality is that even when someone qualifies, long backlogs and strict caps often make immigration impossible. It’s not just difficult; it’s often not an option at all.

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Being Undocumented Is a Choice

It’s a common assumption that people who are undocumented have ignored legal paths. But we know that many legal paths to citizenship are, in fact, blocked, crowded or impractical. When someone’s survival is at risk, waiting years for a visa isn’t realistic. Many come because they have no other option—and they often try to fix their status later, only to face bans, income requirements, or rejection.

Around one in five undocumented people are Dreamers—brought here as young kids, raised in the U.S., and often unaware of their status until they’re older. For them, and for many others, being undocumented isn’t about ignoring the rules, it’s about surviving a system that offers no real way in to the only place they’ve ever known as home.

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Marriage Guarantees Legal Status

There’s a common misconception that marrying a U.S. citizen automatically leads to legal residency. It doesn’t. The process is complicated, and for many, it’s filled with risks.

If someone entered the U.S. without a visa and stayed more than six months, they can be barred from returning for three or 10 years if they leave to attend their green card interview abroad. That puts families in an impossible situation: stay together without status, or be separated for years. Even when the bars don’t apply, the process takes time, money, and documentation. The citizen-spouse must prove they can financially support their partner, and both must go through background checks, interviews, and legal filings.

Marriage can be a path, but it’s not simple, fast, or guaranteed. For many mixed-status couples, it’s a stressful, uncertain process with no clear outcome.

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Immigration Policy Has Nothing to Do With Race

Much of today’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is rooted in fear of demographic change, especially when it comes to immigrants from nonwhite countries. After 2016, my nonprofit, Define American, studied top anti-immigration content on YouTube. Many of the most-watched videos promoted the “Great Replacement” theory: the idea that immigration is meant to undermine white political and cultural power. Once a fringe belief, it’s now echoed in mainstream political messaging.

Terms like “invasion” have been used widely in political campaigns and media coverage, fueling fear and dehumanization. This kind of rhetoric shapes public opinion and justifies harmful policies, including mass deportations and family separations. If we want fair and humane immigration policies, we have to address how racism continues to shape the conversation.

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"Too Many" Immigrants Saps Resources

Immigrants play a critical role in the U.S. economy and communities. They make up about 18 percent of the workforce, contribute more than $3 trillion to our gross domestic product, and pay more than $500 billion in taxes each year.

They also fill jobs in industries with ongoing labor shortages, like agriculture, construction, and elder care. In health care, immigrants make up a major share of doctors, nurses, and home health aides, keeping essential systems running, especially during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond the labor force, immigrants open businesses, create jobs, and support public services through taxes. As the U.S. population ages, we’ll increasingly rely on immigrants to sustain economic growth and meet basic workforce needs.

These are not people taking from the country—they’re helping it move forward. Policies that restrict their ability to stay and contribute don’t just hurt them—they hold all of us back.

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An updated edition of Vargas’ memoir, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen,” which reflects even more deeply on how the rise of mis- and disinformation is reshaping how we think about immigration and fanning of anti-immigration sentiment, is available now.

Published June 18, 2025 at 01:07AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/TzdIAiU