Court Cases

Carlos Chang is detained in the immigrant detention facility in McCook, Nebraska. He is one of many immigrants nationally who have been denied a bond hearing based on the recent adoption of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy that asserts nearly all detained immigrants are subject to mandatory detention and ineligible for release on bond. Despite a federal judge declaring the mandatory detention practice unlawful in a class action lawsuit brought by the national ACLU, the Southern California ACLU affiliate, and other immigrants’ rights advocates, Chang and other immigrants continue to face indefinite detention with no opportunity for a bond hearing while their immigration cases proceed. We filed a lawsuit on his behalf, seeking a court order directing immigration officials to either release Chang or schedule a bond hearing.

Sabina Carmona-Lorenzo had been in the United States for more than 20 years when she was detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents in the June 2025 raid at Glen Valley Foods in Omaha. She and her husband have five children, all of whom are U.S. citizens. The oldest is serving in the military. Although an immigration court judge granted Carmona-Lorenzo release on bond in July, she remained in detention due to an automatic stay issued by ICE . We filed a lawsuit on her behalf, arguing that her continued detention extended beyond ICE's legal authority and violated her right to due process. At a September hearing, a federal judge ruled from the bench, siding with our arguments and granting Carmona-Lorenzo release on bond. She is now back with her family.

Yurenia Genchi Palma has been in the United States for more than 20 years. She is the single mom of three children, all of whom are U.S. citizens. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained her in the June 2025 Omaha Glenn Valley Foods worksite raid. In July, an Omaha immigration court judge set her bond at $7,000. When family members and the Prairielands Freedom Fund tried to post bond for her, they received multiple denials. ICE had issued an automatic stay on her release, blocking Genchi Palma's bond from being posted. We are turning to the court ayarwm to seek her release on bond that an immigration court judge has already granted. Genchi Palma v. Trump argues that ICE's automatic stay unlawfully violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and extends beyond ICE’s authority.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Maria Reynosa Jacinto in the June 2025 Omaha Glenn Valley Foods worksite raid. In July, an Omaha immigration court judge set Reynosa Jacinto’s bond at $9,000. When the Prairielands Freedom Fund tried to post bond for her, they learned ICE had issued an automatic stay on her release, blocking her bond from being posted. Reyosa Jacinto v. Trump argued that ICE's automatic stay unlawfully violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and extended beyond ICE’s authority by overriding an immigration court judge’s individualized decision on bond, making any considerations of danger or flight risk meaningless, and allowing lengthy and potentially indefinite detention. A judge sided with our client, ruling that she was being held unlawfully and must be released on bond.

Less than four months before the 2024 presidential election, Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen issued a directive that barred access to the ballot for eligible Nebraskans with past felony convictions. The directive followed recent progress. Since 2005, Nebraskans with past felony convictions had been legally able to vote two years after completing all terms of their felony sentence. In 2024, the Nebraska Legislature passed a law that removed the two-year wait. Before the law could go into effect, Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers issued a non-binding opinion declaring that only the state Board of Pardons can restore voting rights, putting tens of thousands of voters' rights into question. Evnen used this opinion to unlawfully order officials to refuse to follow the law and refuse to register eligible voters with past felony convictions regardless of how much time had passed their sentence. The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Nebraska, and Faegre Drinker LLP filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in the Nebraska Supreme Court, challenging the directive on behalf of affected individuals and Civic Nebraska, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group. On October 16, 2024, the Nebraska Supreme Court issued a writ of mandamus ordering the Secretary of State and election commissioners to follow the law and allow eligible Nebraskans to register and vote.

Marcus Pennell, then a senior at Northwest Public High School, was a student reporter for the school’s newspaper called the Viking Saga. In the paper’s June 2022 issue, Pennell wrote an editorial on the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, or what’s been popularly called the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, discussing the history of LGBTQ+ rights and the harm of erasure. Days after publication, the school shuttered the newspaper and terminated its newspaper class. We launched a lawsuit against Grand Island Northwest Public Schools on behalf of the Nebraska High School Press Association and student journalist Marcus Pennell for claims that school officials shut down the school newspaper for publishing articles on LGBTQ+ topics. Our lawsuit argued that school officials’ decision to shutter the newspaper violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment free speech rights on three counts: their right to be free of viewpoint discrimination, their right to be free of retaliation and their right to receive information. The case was unfortunately dismissed because Pennell was no longer a current student, but the judge noted “school administrators would be wise to remember that policies and decisions to restrict speech in student newspapers [...] may run afoul of the First Amendment if they reflect ‘an effort to suppress expression merely because public officials oppose a speaker’s view.’”

In August of 2018, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided several businesses in and around O’Neill, Nebraska. Authorities took 133 people into custody in a raid based on warrants for 17 people. At the time of the raid, we criticized the operation for glaring failures to provide detainees with adequate food, water, shelter and language interpretation services. Our concerns led the Office of the Inspector General to open an investigation and interview affected community members, but officials never shared the results of that investigation. When officials ignored a public records request seeking more information on the OIG’s investigation, we turned to the court system. Shortly after we sued, federal officials turned over 77 pages of partially redacted documents, including memos of interviews with ICE agents and immigrants who had been detained. Ultimately, the OIG found that concerns of civil rights violations were unsubstantiated, a position we contend.

In May 2022 the Lincoln city council approved a plan to build the Wilderness Crossing housing development near Wilderness Park. Several Native American community members, along with the Indian Center, Inc., appealed the city council’s decision citing religious freedom concerns.

Crista Eggers tried for years to qualify a ballot initiative to de-penalize the use and possession of medical cannabis. As Eggers and Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana sought to qualify for the ballot in 2022, they turned to the ACLU of Nebraska for help challenging a provision of the state constitution that requires a certain threshold of signatures from 38 counties to qualify for the statewide ballot. Eggers v. Evnen argued current law treats ballot signatures as unequal based on geography, violating the principle of “one person, one vote” that’s protected under the 14th Amendment.  For example, a single Douglas County voter has less than a thousandth of the power of an Arthur County voter in determining whether their county meets its signature threshold. A district court judge initially issued an order temporarily blocking the enforcement of this provision. A month later, however, the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay on the earlier order, effectively overturning it and upholding the ballot qualification requirement. Our litigation ended with a split decision in the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals that keeps the rule in place on the basis that our equal protection argument did not apply to state ballot initiative processes. One dissenting judge noted that “if the right to vote is fundamental, I see no reason why it should not apply equally to the initiative process at the heart of Nebraska’s electoral and legislative system.”