Court Cases

This case challenges one congressional district and three State House districts in South Florida as racially gerrymandered in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Legislature drew these districts along racial lines to form non-compact shapes, connect disparate neighborhoods, and divide established communities. In doing so, lawmakers ignored the nuanced, multifaceted, and diverse nature of the region’s Hispanic and Latino community, treating Hispanic voters as a monolithic group based on false and stereotypic assumptions, which dilutes their influence. The use of race to draw these districts was not justified by the Voting Rights Act or the minority-protection provisions of Florida's Fair Districts Amendments. We filed the case in May 2024. In November 2025, the court permitted our claims over Congressional District 26 and House Districts 115, 118, and 119 to proceed to trial, which was held in January 2026.

This case challenges the Daytona Beach City Commission’s redistricting map, adopted in October 2025, as racially gerrymandered in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. In drawing the map, the City Commission set an arbitrary and unjustified racial target for two districts. To achieve their desired racial composition, commissioners connected disparate neighborhoods, divided established communities, and ignored citizen input. The use of race to draw these districts was not justified by the Voting Rights Act. We filed our complaint in October 2025.

We filed suit on behalf of two transgender women and one transgender man who were state employees denied coverage for gender-affirming care in their state healthcare plans. All of the state healthcare plans, including those provided to the Plaintiffs, explicitly exclude coverage of “gender reassignment or modification services or supplies.” These plans single out transgender employees for unequal treatment by categorically depriving them of coverage for gender-affirming care through their exclusions. Other state employees who are not transgender do not face categorical exclusions barring coverage for medically necessary health care. We filed the case in January 2020 with claims arising under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We amended our complaint in April 2020. Summary-judgment briefing was completed in March 2021. In August 2024, the judge granted partial summary judgment for plaintiffs, holding that the categorical exclusions violate Title VII. Supplemental briefs were ordered on the effect of a related decision pending in the Eleventh Circuit (Lange v. Houston County, Georgia). On November 3, 2025, the Defendants filed a motion to reconsider the partial summary judgment in light of the full Eleventh Circuit’s en banc decision in Lange.

The ACLU represents all prisoners at the Broward County Jail, challenging inadequate mental healthcare. In 1995, a consent decree was approved that acknowledged that the living conditions of the inmates were unconstitutional, set a population cap for the jail, and established a system for compliance monitoring. The ACLU then joined as counsel in 2001 to oppose the Broward County Sheriff’s efforts to terminate the consent decree. In 2004, two stipulations for settlement were entered that dismissed the medical claims and narrowed the scope of monitoring. The stipulations also limited judicial oversight of the jail to issues “relating to mental health services, inmate rules and discipline, inmate safety and security, facility capacity, and inmate access to religious publication and services and access to legal material.” In 2010, a significant increase in the jail population led to overcrowding. The Court then appointed a population management expert to produce a report examining the processes and policies affecting the population at the jail. In 2014, two prisoners filed motions asserting the consent decree had been violated. In 2016, the Court held a hearing on whether to dissolve the consent decree and later preliminarily approved a settlement. Later, a 2018 report by a mental health expert described the conditions of the jail as “absolutely inhumane.” In 2018, the parties reached a comprehensive settlement agreement that would result in improvements throughout the jail’s mental-healthcare system. The settlement will result in termination of the consent decree and a dismissal of the case when the jail has maintained substantial compliance with each of the substantive provisions of the agreement for one year. In December 2020, we filed an expert report explaining the jail’s lack of compliance. Another expert report was filed in May 2023, January 2024, August 2025 and January 2026. We continue to monitor progress towards compliance and we are pleased that the jail is making progress.

This case challenges Tallahassee’s fire services fee, a flat monthly charge per household that disproportionately impacts low-income households, and Black and Hispanic residents, students, and renters. Because each household pays the same, regardless of income, property value, or ability to pay, the fee is a regressive tax. The case argues the city lacks the authority under the Florida Constitution to levy this fee. The suit was filed with the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Citizens for Government Accountability and three Tallahassee residents.

We and our partners are challenging Section 10 of SB 1718 (2023), which unconstitutionally criminalizes the act of transporting into Florida any immigrant who state and local officials with no competence in immigration law arbitrarily tag as having not been properly “inspected” by the federal government. This law threatens Floridians with up to fifteen years in jail just for traveling with family members, coworkers, and others–without exception. We filed our complaint in July 2023 and sought a preliminary injunction. On December 21, 2023, the court dismissed Governor DeSantis from the case, which left the attorney general and state prosecutors as the remaining defendants. The court granted our motion for a preliminary injunction in May 2024 and applied the injunction statewide, but the court then asked for briefing on the scope of the remedy and ultimately (on March 11, 2025) narrowed the injunction to just include our clients.

Michael James Jackson was sentenced to death in May 2023. If his resentencing had taken place just one month earlier, before Florida’s capital-sentencing law changed in April 2023, eight votes for death would have meant that he lived. If the trial judge had correctly applied the amended law to apply only prospectively, as the Legislature unambiguously commanded, only a unanimous jury vote could have resulted in death. In either case, the very same eight- to-four jury vote would have saved Mr. Jackson’s life. And even this on-the-cusp vote might have tilted in favor of life if the trial court had not failed to instruct the jury that, under Florida law, a life recommendation would be binding. A continuance would have allowed the court to confirm—with model jury instructions that came out shortly after Mr. Jackson was sentenced—the arguments Mr. Jackson’s attorneys were making all along: that the jury could not be lawfully instructed that its life vote would be a mere recommendation subject to the court’s approval rather than a binding determination that the court could not modify. The ACLU is assisting in the appeal and entered appearances in September 2023. Our briefing contends that the trial court’s improvised and inaccurate jury instructions violated state law and Supreme Court precedent and that Florida’s new statute allowing non-unanimity in capital sentencing violates the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Briefing was complete in September 2024, and oral argument took place December 2024. The court issued its decision in December 2025, and we filed a motion for rehearing in January 2026.

In 2023, the Florida Legislature passed SB 264, which unfairly restricts most Chinese citizens—and most citizens of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, and North Korea—from purchasing homes in the state. The law bars people who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and whose “domicile,” or permanent home, is in China, from purchasing property in Florida altogether. A similar but less restrictive rule would apply to citizens of Cuba, Venezuela, and other “countries of concern.” This law recalls similar efforts over the past century to weaponize false claims of “national security” against Asian immigrants and other marginalized communities. In the early 1900s, states across the country used similar justifications to pass “alien land laws” designed to prohibit Chinese and Japanese immigrants from becoming landowners. We and our partners filed a federal lawsuit on May 22, 2023, representing an Orlando-based real estate firm and four Chinese citizens who live, work, study, and raise families in Florida. The district court denied a preliminary injunction, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the denial in November 2025. The case was then voluntarily dismissed.

Timothy Burke, an investigative journalist with a history of breaking notable news stories, had his house raided and property confiscated by the FBI in May 2023 following his reporting on an interview between Tucker Carlson, at the time an anchor with Fox News, and Kanye West (Ye). Burke located and distributed an unedited livestream of the interview, in which Ye made antisemitic and racist comments that were previously unaired. Burke claims the livestreams were unencrypted, publicly accessible feeds that anyone who searched for the URL could access, even though they were not published on any search engine. Fox News reported to the FBI that the livestreams had been “hacked,” prompting an investigation. In the FBI search, Burke’s computers, hard drives, and cell phones were seized. Burke was later arrested in February 2024 and charged with one count of conspiracy and several counts of wiretapping. Burke and the Tampa Bay Times requested to unseal the affidavit and search warrant associated with his arrest, to which a district court responded by unsealing redacted versions of the warrant records but denying the motion to unseal the supporting affidavit to protect the details of the government’s investigation. The district court also rejected Burke’s motion for return of his property. Burke filed an interlocutory appeal in the Eleventh Circuit challenging the district court’s decision. The ACLU of Florida and partners filed an amici curiae brief in support of Burke on January 2, 2024 arguing that (1) the First Amendment protects modern journalism through publicly available sources online, including obscure URLs; (2) the breadth and vagueness of the CFAA and Wiretap Act can chill First Amendment protected newsgathering activities; (3) the government should return seized materials not related to the case and allow Burke access to newsgathering materials. In a per curiam opinion, the Eleventh Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. Back in the lower court, the district court invited amicus briefs concerning the application of the charges brought by the federal government. The ACLU and partners submitted an amicus brief on June 27, 2025, warning against the implications of the government’s legal arguments, which could open the floodgates to frivolous prosecutions that would have widespread chilling effects. On September 25, 2025, the district court dismissed several counts on the grounds that the government failed to plead and prove that any electronic communications that Burke allegedly intercepted were not readily accessible to the general public.