Court Cases

The “MontCo Community Watch” Facebook and Instagram accounts aim to spread awareness of immigration enforcement activity in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and to share alerts, documentation, and resources to help inform residents within Montgomery County - regardless of their immigration status-of their rights, due process, and the human dignity all their neighbors inherently hold. Additionally, the accounts inform the local community where ICE agents are publicly conducting immigration enforcement activities within Montgomery County. On September 11, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued two administrative Summonses to Meta Platforms, Inc., citing a federal statute, 19 U.S.C. § 1509, focused on customs investigations relating to merchandise. In the Summonses, DHS demanded constitutionally protected information far outside the scope of the statutory authority—including the identity of the Meta users associated with the MontCo Community Watch social media accounts and IP addresses from which each account had been accessed. The Summonses included no substantiating allegations and did not mention any specific crime or potential customs violation that might trigger an inquiry under the cited statute. In October, we filed an urgent motion to quash the administrative subpoenas on behalf of our client "J. Doe," the account manager, arguing that the subpoena was unlawful on both constitutional grounds, as it violated Doe’s First Amendment rights, and statutory grounds. Our motion sought to protect the identities of those associated with MontCo Community Watch from being exposed to a government agency targeting the community watch group for simply exercising their rights to free speech and association. DHS agreed to withdraw the subpoenas following our legal challenges. In February, we filed a motion for the federal government to cover legal fees for their baseless attempts to access our clients' data. This action comes on the heels of a troubling pattern of similar abusive administrative subpoenas issued by DHS that seek to chill constitutionally protected speech. We're seeking to hold DHS accountable and curb the use of these unlawful subpoenas. See our related case here.

In October 2025, our client, “Jon Doe,” read an article in the Washington Post detailing questionable conduct by DHS attorneys attempting to deport an Afghan asylum seeker. In order to express his concern with the government’s actions, Doe sent a short email to the lead DHS attorney named in the Washington Post article, whose official DHS email address he found via a simple Google search. In his email, Doe urged the attorney to “[a]pply principles of common sense and decency” in the asylum seeker’s case. Four hours later, DHS issued an Immigration Enforcement Subpoena to Google, seeking a variety of private information about Doe, his email account, and his use of Google services. Google notified Doe of the subpoena, and he was shocked and frightened by the government’s demand for his personal information. Several weeks after DHS issued the subpoena, two DHS agents and a police officer showed up at Doe’s home and interrogated him about the email he sent. In February, we filed a motion to quash, arguing that the subpoena is unlawful on both constitutional and statutory grounds. Doe’s email to a government official on a matter of public concern is protected under the First Amendment’s free speech and petition clauses. The issuance of the subpoena constitutes unconstitutional retaliation by the government, and has impermissibly chilled Doe’s expression. Our brief also argues that 8 U.S.C. § 1225(d), the federal statute DHS relied upon to issue the subpoena, does not grant authority to issue subpoenas outside the scope of immigration enforcement investigations—meaning that this subpoena retaliating against Doe for his lawful speech lacks statutory grounds.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Public Interest Law Center, and ACLU’s Voting Rights Project have filed a motion to intervene in a federal lawsuit over the federal government’s demand that Pennsylvania turn over its entire voter registration rolls, including with voters’ sensitive personal data such as drivers’ license numbers and partial social security numbers. The motion to intervene was filed on behalf of seven Pennsylvania voters, many of whom were the target of baseless mass challenges to their mail ballots during the 2024 election cycle that resulted from faulty data-matching techniques. The voters’ experiences have heightened their concerns about the privacy of their voting data. Other plaintiffs are two non-partisan, good government organizations dedicated to voter engagement: the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and Common Cause. If intervention is granted, the civil rights groups will seek to prevent the federal government from forcing Pennsylvania to turn over the entirety of its voter registration database and to protect sensitive data within the voter rolls.

On October 4, 2021, the ACLU of PA filed a motion to intervene on behalf of three advocacy organizations and eight individual voters in a lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania attorney general challenging subpoenas issued by a state Senate committee for personally identifying information of voters.

On March 11, 2020, the Law Offices of Timothy P. O’Brien and the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed a class action lawsuit against the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Allegheny County on behalf of Cherell Harrington, a resident of the county.

If a defendant in a criminal case refuses to disclose the password to his encrypted computer, does either the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution or Article 1, Section 9 of the Pennsylvania Constitution protect him so that he does not have to reveal it?