Court Cases

The ACLU of Virginia filed a case challenging Virginia Department of Correction's (VADOC) refusal to award expanded sentence credits to people with certain convictions, unlawfully extending their incarceration.

Amica Center for Immigrants’ Rights (formerly CAIR Coalition), the National Immigration Project, and the ACLU of Virginia sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), for arbitrarily detaining people in Virginia after they won immigration cases that protected them from deportation to their countries of origin where they face persecution, torture, or death.

The Virginia Department of Corrections denies equal services to people who are blind or visually impaired. So we sued.

The ACLU of Virginia filed an amicus brief in support of Connor Bleakley and Sami Alsawaf seeking to allow Brandon Bleakley to perform the rites of their wedding ceremony, arguing that the Virginia code sections that govern their choice of officiant is unconstitutional.

The ACLU of Virginia filed Prease v. Clarke in the Virginia Supreme Court, challenging the continued incarceration of Steven Prease and demanding his immediate release from Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) custody.

The ACLU of Virginia filed Anderson v. Clarke in the Albemarle County Circuit Court, challenging the continued incarceration of Antoine Anderson and demanding his immediate release from Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) custody. The petition for a writ of habeas corpus asserts that VDOC officials wrongly interpreted the Governor’s Amendment 19 to the 2022 Budget Bill to apply retroactively, negating the sentence credits earned by Mr. Anderson prior to the budget going into effect.

The ACLU of Virginia joined the ACLU in filing an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, brief before the Supreme Court of Virginia in the case of Vlaming v. West Point School Board, arguing that public schoolteacher Peter Vlaming does not have an unfettered right to exercise free speech in the classroom when doing so results in discrimination against transgender students.

On behalf of Virginia bookstores & others, we urged a Virginia court to dismiss obscenity proceedings that would block two books from being sold & distributed in Virginia. Baseless claims of obscenity should not be allowed to override our First Amendment rights.

ACLU of Virginia and Muslim Advocates filed an emergency complaint on behalf of Dwayne Law, Jr., a Muslim man incarcerated at a state prison in Baskerville, VA. The complaint asks a federal court to force the facility to provide him with meals before sunrise and after sunset so that he may observe the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. By refusing to allow Mr. Law to eat with other fasting Muslims during non-daylight hours, Baskerville Correctional Center staff and Warden David Zook are unconstitutionally forcing him to choose between eating to survive during the day or adhering to his deeply-held religious beliefs.