News & Commentary

Despite the historic judicial defeat for civil rights in Trump v. Hawaii, the fight against the Muslim ban continues. Floridians should mobilize again to tell their representatives in Congress to rescind the Muslim ban.

U.S. citizens cannot be deported or held by immigration authorities. And yet we know that federal agents working for U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, or ICE, have been indiscriminately targeting them on a regular basis. SB 168 would lead to countless U.S. citizens being held for ICE.

If the Department of Labor issues a final rule that encourages states to drug test the unemployed, states should know better. We successfully challenged Florida’s mandatory drug testing for those seeking Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

Gov. Rick Scott’s drug testing crusade comes to an end as state decides not to challenge appeals court ruling finding mandatory suspicionless government searches of TANF applicants unconstitutional

By Nate Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology ProjectIn a tremendous step forward for our right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has held in United States v. Quartavious Davis that police need a warrant to obtain historical cell phone location information from a cell service provider. The ACLU filed an amicus brief in the case, along with the ACLU of Florida, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy & Technology, and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In April, I argued the cell phone tracking issue before a three-judge panel of the court.This ruling is the first time a federal appeals court has held that the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant when police seek cell phone location records from carriers. As the court concluded: “In short, we hold that cell site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy. The obtaining of that data without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation.”