Court Cases

Mullin v. Dahlia Doe challenged the Trump administration’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for thousands of Syrian immigrants living and working legally in the United States while it is unsafe for them to return to their home country. The case was consolidated with Trump v. Miot, a case concerning Haitian TPS holders. The Supreme Court expedited the case for judicial review, granting certiorari before judgment based on a preliminary ruling from the district court. In its Supreme Court’s June 25, 2026 6-3 ruling, the Court allowed the TPS terminations of Syria and Haiti to proceed, resulting in the loss of legal status and the right to work for over 350,000 people. The Supreme Court held that there was no judicial review for the plaintiffs’ statutory claims; and that the constitutional equal protection claim was unlikely to succeed on the merits. TPS is a program established by Congress in 1990 to protect individuals who cannot safely return to their home country due to war, natural disaster, or other emergencies. TPS holders are mothers, fathers, workers, and contributing members of their communities. They rely on this humanitarian protection regime for safety. The Supreme Court’s ruling impacts not only Syrian and Haitian TPS holders but all 1.3 million individuals from 17 countries designated for TPS. At the time the Supreme Court heard this case on April 29, 2026, the Trump administration had terminated TPS for 13 countries—despite ongoing wars and undisputed humanitarian crises. Alongside our co-counsel the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), Muslim Advocates, Van Der Hout LLP, and the National ACLU, the ACLU of Northern California represents seven Syrian nationals with TPS or pending applications in Mullin v. Dahlia Doe, a class action lawsuit originally filed in October 2025. Cancelling TPS designation for Syria subjects nearly 6,100 Syrian TPS holders, along with 800 Syrians with pending applications, to immigrant detention and possible deportation to an unsafe country. The Miot case, consolidated with Doe, affects 350,000 Haitian TPS holders. The plaintiffs argued that the DHS Secretary does not have the legal authority to unilaterally override the TPS statute enacted by Congress, and that it is the role of the judiciary to review the government’s legally dubious actions. The Supreme Court adopted the government’s extreme position that even lawless decisions that violated clear statutory mandates were not reviewable.

The Coalition on Homelessness and several individual plaintiffs sued San Francisco over its punitive practice of seizing and destroying unhoused residents’ belongings during encampment sweeps in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the city’s own policies.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a lawsuit to block Sonoma County code inspectors from using drones to conduct surveillance of people's homes without a warrant.

The ACLU’s lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court seeks to protects tenants' privacy rights from landlords who force renters to allow AI-powered surveillance technology in their homes. In multiple residential buildings across San Francisco, landlords have forced tenants to accept so-called “smart home” systems that monitor their comings and goings and other behavior. They're using tenants’ personal information to track them, potentially even profiling their behavior with AI tools built specially for landlords.

The ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit in Santa Clara County Superior Court against the City of San Jose and others to challenge San Jose police officers’ practice of searching for location information collected by automated license plate readers (ALPRs) without first getting a warrant.

We filed a motion in federal court to prevent Meta from complying with the Department of Homeland Security’s demand that the tech giant turn over the name, email address, and phone number associated with an Instagram account that reposted a video naming a Border Patrol agent. We argue that the government’s administrative subpoena violated First Amendment protections for anonymous political speech.

We filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's policy of re-arresting and re-detaining immigrants the government previously had released from custody after concluding they were neither dangerous nor a flight risk.

National TPS Alliance v. Noem (NTPSA II) is a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s unlawful efforts to dismantle the statutorily mandated Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua, which provides humanitarian protection for people who cannot safely return to their home countries.

On February 19, 2025, the National TPS Alliance and seven Venezuelan TPS holders sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to challenge the vacatur of the previously ordered extension of TPS for Venezuela, and the subsequent termination. On March 20, 2025, the plaintiffs amended the complaint to also challenge the vacatur of the full TPS extension for 500,000 Haitians, with four Haitian TPS holders joining as plaintiffs. The plaintiffs are represented by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the ACLU Foundations of Northern California and Southern California, the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at UCLA School of Law, and the Haitian Bridge Alliance.