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On July 28, 2017, the U.S. District Court blocked an Alabama law that imposed severe barriers on a minor’s ability to get abortion care in the state. The law, which was passed in 2014, applied to minors who sought a judicial bypass of the state’s parental consent requirement for abortion. It went beyond any other parental consent law in the country and forced minors seeking abortion care to stand trial if they were unable to obtain a parent’s consent for the procedure.

The ACLU is representing four people being sued for defamation because they exercised their right to free speech and voiced opposition to a coal ash landfill in their small town. The defendants, all residents of Uniontown, Alabama — a poor, predominantly Black town with a median per capita income of around $8,000 — are being sued for $30 million by Georgia-based Green Group Holdings because the residents are fighting the hazardous coal ash that the company keeps in a residential landfill. The ACLU asked a federal court to dismiss the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds. In February 2017, the parties reached a settlement in which the company dropped the lawsuit and agreed to better environmental protections at the landfill.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Alabama, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Planned Parenthood Southeast, have filed a lawsuit challenging a state law that places onerous and medically unnecessary restrictions on abortion providers and would force most of the state’s clinics to stop providing abortions.