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This petition to the Supreme Court of Maryland asked the court to reconsider its adherence to Whren v. U.S., 517 U.S. 806 (1996), which declared that a traffic stop undertaken for pretextual reasons does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution so long as the police have probable cause to believe that a traffic violation occurred. The ACLU, alongside the ACLU of Maryland, filed an amicus brief in support of the defendant鈥檚 petition, in which the ACLU argued that the court should take up the question of whether pretextual stops violate the Maryland Constitution. In September 2024, the Court denied the petition.

This case in the North Carolina Supreme Court involves the question of whether the police violated the U.S. Constitution when they searched the defendant, Mr. Wright鈥檚, backpack even after he repeatedly said no to the search requests. The ACLU alongside the ACLU of North Carolina filed an amicus brief arguing that the search was unconstitutional because Mr. Wright鈥檚 eventual 鈥渃onsent鈥� was the result of police coercion. Our brief urges the court to consider the totality of the circumstances that make one more susceptible to coercion, including race and poverty.

This case in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asks whether flight from the police in a high-crime area, without more, can justify an investigative stop. The ACLU鈥檚 State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the ACLU of Pennsylvania, filed an amicus brief arguing that it does not. The brief argues that the Pennsylvania Constitution supports broader protections against investigative stops than those recognized under the U.S. Constitution, and that flight in high-crime areas is not inherently more suspicious than flight elsewhere.

On February 21, 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin, and the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of Milwaukee in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. This lawsuit challenged the Milwaukee Police Department鈥檚 unconstitutional stop-and-frisk program that targeted tens of thousands of people without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, primarily driven by racial profiling.