A Virginia public school system has announced its plan to adopt what has been likened to a precrime surveillance program in order to monitor and deter social media threats, hate speech, bullying and harassment by students. Pointing out that the social media monitoring program being developed and considered by Fairfax County Public Schools (“FCPS”) raises significant concerns about government surveillance and its chilling effect on the lawful speech of students, parents, and other community members, The Rutherford Institute also warned that such a program could give rise to one-size-fits-all zero tolerance policies regarding expressive activity that is misconstrued as negative, critical or hateful.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the Sixth Amendment right of criminal defendants to confront and cross-examine witnesses. The Rutherford Institute, along with the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union, had filed an amicus brief in Hemphill v. New York, arguing that judge-made exceptions to the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause are unconstitutional.

Despite warnings from civil liberties advocates that its actions risk violating the First Amendment, a North Carolina County Board of Commissioners has unanimously adopted a policy prohibiting criticism at public meetings. The policy also threatens a criminal offense for anyone who willfully interrupts, disturbs, or disrupts a meeting and refuses to leave. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a blow to police accountability and the First Amendment right of eyewitnesses to film and photograph police activity in public without fear of retaliation. In refusing to hear an appeal in Crocker v. Beatty, the Supreme Court has let stand a lower court ruling which granted qualified immunity to a police officer who confiscated a bystander’s cell phone, arrested him for resisting an officer, then allegedly punished him for trying to film police activity by locking him in a police car with the air conditioning turned off on a hot Florida afternoon. 

In a pair of mixed rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily halted the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine-or-test mandate imposed on the nation’s largest employers while allowing a similar vaccine mandate to proceed for healthcare workers.

Twenty years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional, The Rutherford Institute is challenging a Georgia law that puts people with intellectual disabilities at greater risk of execution. In an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Young v. Georgia, Rutherford Institute attorneys argue that a Georgia law, which places a heavy burden on defendants in capital punishment cases to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they have an intellectual disability in order to be exempt from the death penalty, effectively nullifies their Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.

The Rutherford Institute is warning that Americans are being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals. Weighing in before the U.S. Supreme Court in Hammond v. U.S., The Rutherford Institute is challenging the government’s unconstitutional practice of warrantlessly tracking people’s location and movements through their personal cell phones in violation of the Fourth Amendment. 

The Rutherford Institute is challenging government efforts to sidestep accountability and avoid paying legal fees for constitutional violations. The issue arose in connection with a 2016 lawsuit in Stinnie v. Holcomb that sought to stop the Commonwealth of Virginia from automatically suspending driver’s licenses for unpaid court fines and fees, an unconstitutional act lacking in due process which the Justice Department denounced as “unlawful practices that punish poverty at every stage of the justice system and that trap vulnerable residents in cycles of debt from court fines and fees.”

The Rutherford Institute is sounding the alarm over attempts by Boston officials to use the “government speech doctrine” to censor or discriminate against expressive activities by Christians that take place in public which may be perceived as unpopular or politically incorrect.

Attorneys affiliated with The Rutherford Institute have filed suit against the governor of Delaware in the hopes of preventing him from using his emergency powers again in the future to restrict religious gatherings and practices. The preemptive legal action in Hines v. Carney, which was brought on behalf of a Delaware pastor, comes a year after The Rutherford Institute reached a settlement with the State of Delaware over its First Amendment lawsuit challenging discriminatory COVID-19 restrictions that applied to churches but not big-box shopping stores, liquor stores, and guns shops.

Challenging attempts by the government to carry out around-the-clock, year-long, warrantless surveillance on Americans, The Rutherford Institute and the Cato Institute have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to find that the use of hidden cameras mounted on utility poles, aimed at private homes, and used to record activity at the home violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against warrantless, unreasonable searches. 

Warning against the rising threat to free speech posed by the government’s collusion with large technology companies in order to regulate and control what ideas can be shared on the internet and through social media, The Rutherford Institute has asked a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court ruling in Children’s Health Defense v. Facebook and prohibit Facebook from censoring and de-platforming critics of the COVID-19 vaccine in violation of the First Amendment.

In a case that pits the spiritual requests of death row inmates against prison protocols, the U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to decide the extent to which, if at all, a prisoner’s right to religious freedom should be accommodated in the execution chamber. The case of Ramirez v. Collier, which involves a Texas death row inmate’s request to have his pastor touch him and pray out loud at the moment of his execution, highlights the disparate treatment regarding how spiritual care in the death chamber is administered, which has varied widely depending on the religion of the prisoner. 

The U.S. Supreme Court will not hold government officials liable for shootings and other violent behavior by off-duty police officers equipped with service weapons. The case of First Midwest Bank v. City of Chicago arose after a drunk, off-duty police officer with a history of complaints for off-duty violence, for which he had not ever been disciplined by the Chicago Police Department, shot someone in the back of the head using his service weapon, leaving the man severely and permanently disabled.

Privacy should not depend on your home’s square footage. Unfortunately, in refusing to affirm that the hallways outside apartments are protected curtilage which police may not invade without a warrant or a resident’s consent, the U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a lower court ruling in Sorenson v. Massachusetts that leaves apartment dwellers vulnerable to warrantless police surveillance and arrests.  

The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand a lower court ruling in Edwards v. Harmon that justifies the use of excessive force by police on people who don’t understand police orders. In rejecting the appeal in Edwards v. Harmon, the Court refused to hold police responsible for brutalizing an African-American man who, despite complying with police orders during an arrest, was subjected to excessive force and brutality, including being thrown to the ground, tasered, and placed in a chokehold that rendered him unconscious and required his hospitalization for three days. 

The Rutherford Institute has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to protect the First Amendment right of all Americans to speak out against government misconduct, corruption and abuse of power without fear of retaliation. In an amicus brief in Houston Community College  System v. Wilson, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute, the ACLU and the Institute for Free Speech are challenging the power of legislative bodies to censure and penalize their members for speaking out about matters of public concern, especially when such punitive actions result in tangible losses. 

The Rutherford Institute as part of a coalition of more than 150 groups is calling on Congress to curb executive branch power, prevent future presidential abuses of power, restore checks and balances, and protect elections from foreign interference.

Delaware officials are attempting to evade a lawsuit challenging the state’s “evict first, ask questions later” policy after police mistakenly evicted a blind man and his family during a snowstorm and in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the family stranded and forced to seek lodging at a homeless shelter. The lawsuit in Murphy v. Delaware alleges that Delaware violated the American with Disabilities Act and the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

The Rutherford Institute has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to safeguard the right of citizens and journalists to record police in public without fear of retaliation. The brief in Frasier v. Evans was filed in support of Colorado resident Levi Frasier, who sued Denver police for violating his civil rights after he was detained, questioned, and threatened with arrest in an effort to force him to turn over a video he captured of the police violently punching and head-slamming a suspect.