First Amendment Rights

The Souderton Area School District has agreed to create an area for individuals to hold demonstrations at school board meetings and to livestream and archive its meetings after an ACLU-PA lawsuit.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania has been an advocate for these privacy protections since the inception of H.B.2771 and fought hard to ensure that the final version of the legislation delivered on its promise to protect Pennsylvanians from the mass surveillance enabled by ALPRs.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated a lower court ruling that ordered the University of Pennsylvania to compile and disclose a list of Jewish employees, staff, and students to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

In February of this year, the ACLU of Pennsylvania submitted a request to ICE under the Freedom Of Information Act, seeking records of unmasking subpoenas from 2024 to the present. ICE did not respond to our request, nor did they confirm receipt, despite a statutory obligation to do so.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania has filed a complaint in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain more information about the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) use of administrative subpoenas to unmask the identities of people online and intimidate individuals who are critical of the federal government. ACLU-PA has represented two clients who have been targets of DHS subpoenas. In both cases, DHS ended its investigations once they were challenged in court. In February of this year, the ACLU of Pennsylvania submitted a request to ICE under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking records of “unmasking” subpoenas from 2024 to the present. ICE did not respond to this request, nor did the agency confirm receipt or request an extension. Our case states that ICE has a statutory obligation under FOIA to respond to our request and asks the court to order ICE to immediately make a complete search for all responsive records and fulfill our request.

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.