Action Report

The ACLU of Massachusetts is at the forefront of defending immigrants’ rights. Since January, we have led key legal challenges to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. That includes two major lawsuits defending birthright citizenship, and due process victories for a wide range of people who have been detained unlawfully by ICE. In the face of escalating threats, ACLU of Massachusetts advocates continue to advance groundbreaking immigrants’ rights litigation every day.

In May, ACLU advocates secured freedom for Tufts PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk. She was picked up off the streets of Somerville and held in a Louisiana for-profit ICE prison for 45 days — in retaliation for writing an op-ed for her student newspaper. This is an affront to free expression, and we are proud to represent Ms. Öztürk in her ongoing federal case. ACLU advocates also successfully challenged the federal government’s censorship of medical research papers for including references to transgender patients.

In February, the ACLU of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s new policy that would deny accurate passports to transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans. After winning relief for our plaintiffs, we secured a class-wide injunction, ensuring that many people can still acquire accurate travel documents. This cruel policy is an attack on the fundamental right to privacy, dignity, and personal safety, and we will continue our fight for equality on appeal.

In 2025, we expanded our BIPOC the Ballot Box (B2BB) initiative from Brockton, Springfield, and Pittsfield to include Lawrence, Worcester, and the town of Randolph, building civic engagement in majority-minority communities. Led by our Racial Justice team, B2BB focuses on door knocking, candidate questionnaires, and youth education. Our goal: strengthening the right to vote for everyone. We also are pushing for same-day voter registration and other critical voting rights reforms.

The ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Program continues to be a national leader in the fields of data privacy and mass surveillance. With rapidly developing new threats like unregulated artificial intelligence, the sale of sensitive personal data, and location tracking, ACLU advocacy — covering everything from Flock license-plate readers to cellphone location data to ShotSpotter microphones — is essential to ensure privacy, associational rights, access to reproductive health care, and bodily autonomy in the Commonwealth and nationwide.

In October, we secured a preliminary injunction blocking the installation of two ten-foot-tall religious statues outside the entrance of a government building in Quincy. In the meantime, our lawsuit, filed on behalf of a multifaith group of residents, will continue in state courts. We argue that the City’s plan to install these statues — without any public input — is a clear violation of our state constitution, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another.