Court Cases

The ACLU of Pennsylvania joined lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) to file a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Dylan Lopez Contreras, a New York City high school student and asylum seeker who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. Mr. Lopez Contreras, who is from Venezuela, entered the United States legally in 2024 after receiving humanitarian parole. Despite having no criminal record and a pending application for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, which would have put him on a pathway to a green card, Mr. Lopez Contreras was detained at a courthouse by ICE during a routine immigration hearing on May 21, 2025, after ICE moved to dismiss his asylum case. Mr. Lopez Contreras does not speak English and had no attorney at this hearing. As a result, he did not understand that dismissing his case would allow ICE to place him into expedited removal, a summary deportation process with little judicial review or oversight. Mr. Lopez Contreras also suffers from a severe medical condition that doctors were attempting to diagnose before ICE detained him; in detention, he had no access to the specialized care he needs. The ACLU-PA habeas petition challenged Mr. Lopez Contreras' unlawful detention and sought to prevent him from being moved by ICE to another jurisdiction and to ensure he was given full due process as guaranteed by the 5th and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution. On March 18, 2026, Dylan was released from ICE detention in Pennsylvania after being held for 10 months in captivity.

In October 2021, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of six plaintiffs, challenging the unconstitutional incarceration of people facing probation and parole revocation proceedings in Montgomery County. The lawsuit alleged that the county continued to violate both the Pennsylvania Constitution and the United States Constitution by incarcerating nearly every person accused of violating the conditions of their supervision for months until their revocation hearing and asked that Montgomery County hold prompt revocation hearings to assess probable cause and whether detention is necessary and appropriate, and that the court provide whatever relief it deems necessary to the class of plaintiffs named in the challenge. In January 2026, the ACLU and ACLU-PA dismissed the lawsuit in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania against Montgomery County after the county implemented a number of reforms to its probation and parole system. Since the lawsuit was announced, Montgomery County has created a Detention Hearing Officer ("DHO") program that has addressed many of the violations that prompted the lawsuit. Although Montgomery County’s policies on criminal legal reform are by no means perfect, a review of county data since the implementation of the DHO program shows that Montgomery County has provided detention hearings within five business days for 95% of cases with a scheduled detention hearing — a significant improvement from where the county was before.

On September 25, 2024, 10 organizations filed a suit in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, asking the court to stop enforcement of the commonwealth’s requirement that voters include a handwritten date on the return envelope of their mail ballot packets.

On May 28, 2024, ACLU-PA filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the commonwealth’s requirement that voters who submit mail ballots include a handwritten date on the voter declaration on the outside of the return envelope.

On May 20, 2020, the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic at Villanova University filed a federal lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seeking documents under the federal Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA).

Voting rights groups filed a motion to intervene in the federal lawsuit, Judicial Watch v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. By filing a motion to intervene, the groups seek to protect eligible Pennsylvania voters who are at risk of being wrongfully purged from the rolls.

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?