American Civil Liberties Union

Aimee Stephens, the Detroit-area funeral home worker whose firing led to a Supreme Court case that could decide the employment rights of millions of transgender and gender-nonconforming people, died Tuesday, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which was working on her case. She was 59. Stephens had kidney disease for several years and required lengthy dialysis treatments. According to a GoFundMe...

Trump administration agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras that allow U.S. immigration officials to send asylum seekers to the Central American nations violate the historic role of the U.S. as a humanitarian nation and should be blocked, according to a legal challenge filed Wednesday.

A U.S. judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration is operating within its authority when separating families stopped at the Mexico border, rejecting arguments that it was quietly returning to widespread practices that drew international condemnation.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups sued Customs and Border Protection Wednesday to release records concerning units they say are deployed at airports to “target, detain and interrogate innocent travelers.”

Amid their annual vigils for transgender homicide victims, trans rights activists in the U.S. are trying to maintain long-term optimism even as many hard-won protections are under threat. Just a few weeks ago, President Donald Trump’s administration argued before the Supreme Court that employers should be allowed to fire workers because they are transgender. The administration also has moved to...

Thousands more migrant families may have been separated than the government initially reported, a watchdog group said, possibly due to ongoing problems keeping track of children.

Five American journalists subject to controversial surveillance tactics at the border are now suing the Trump administration for allegedly violating their constitutionally-protected rights.

A federal court in Boston has ruled that warrantless U.S. government searches of the phones and laptops of international travelers at airports and other U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment. Tuesday’s ruling in U.S. District Court came in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of 11...

When lawmakers crafted the law legalizing marijuana in Illinois, they tried to make sure it would right what many see as past wrongs linked to the drug.

U.S. immigration authorities separated more than 1,500 children from their parents at the Mexico border early in the Trump administration, the American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday, bringing the total number of children separated since July 2017 to more than 5,400. The ACLU said the administration told its attorneys that 1,556 children were separated from July 1, 2017, to June...

The House approved legislation Wednesday to better protect the country’s elections from foreign interference, the third major bill the Democratic-controlled chamber has passed this year addressing problems that arose in the 2016 presidential election. The 227-181 vote comes as lawmakers pursue an impeachment inquiry centered on allegations that President Donald Trump improperly solicited election help from Ukraine ahead of the...

An effort by the U.S. Census Bureau to collect state driver’s license records as part of President Donald Trump’s order to gather citizenship information has been a bust so far. As of Wednesday, the vast majority of state motor vehicle agencies had not agreed to share their records with the bureau, according to an Associated Press survey of the 50...

The Trump administration is planning to collect DNA samples from asylum-seekers and other migrants detained by immigration officials and will add the information to a massive FBI database used by law enforcement hunting for criminals, a Justice Department official said. The Justice Department on Monday issued amended regulations that would mandate DNA collection for almost all migrants who cross between...

Jennifer Aniston, Ellen DeGeneres, Awkwafina and more stars overcame a dysfunctional teleprompter to toast one another and their charities at a women’s luncheon Friday in Beverly Hills.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a law that will make the state the first to allow employers, co-workers and teachers to seek gun violence restraining orders against other people.

Alyse and Elmer Sanchez were thrilled when they survived their “green card” interview, a crucial step in obtaining lawful status in the United States. She texted her family from the immigration office as relief washed over her: The officer had agreed that their marriage is legitimate. Moments later, Elmer was in shackles, detained pending deportation to his native Honduras, leaving...

The justices will hear on Tuesday the cases of three LGBT workers who were fired, including Gerald Bostock, a child welfare services employee for the Clayton County, Georgia juvenile court system. The other two individuals are Donald Zarda, a gay man who was fired from his job as a skydiving instructor after remarking on his sexual orientation to a female...

Abortion rights as well as protections for young immigrants and LGBT people top an election-year agenda for the Supreme Court. Its conservative majority will have ample opportunity to flex its muscle, testing Chief Justice John Roberts’ attempts to keep the court clear of Washington partisan politics. Guns could be part of a term with plenty of high-profile cases and at...

The Trump administration is planning to expand the collection of DNA from migrants who cross U.S. borders, and to include the information in a massive criminal database operated by the FBI. The effort is separate from and much broader than the rapid DNA testing done on families at the U.S.-Mexico border to help detect adults falsely posing as parents. Not...

A Missouri inmate was executed Tuesday for killing a man in 1996 in a string of violence that included several other crimes, despite concerns that the prisoner’s rare medical condition would cause a gruesome lethal injection. Russell Bucklew was put to death at the state prison in Bonne Terre. It was Missouri’s first execution since January 2017. Bucklew had twice...