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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. As of 2024, the ACLU's budget is $383 million.
SourceRoe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected the right of pregnant women to choose to have an abortion before the point of fetal viability. The decision struck down many state abortion laws, and it sparked an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be.
SourceDistrict of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. It ruled that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms—unconnected with service in a militia—for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia's handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee.
SourceThe following landmark court decisions changed the interpretation of existing law in the United States. Such a decision may settle the law in more than one way: establishing a new legal principle or concept; overturning precedent based on its harmful effects or flaws in its reasoning; distinguishing a new principle that refines an existing principle, thus departing from prior practice without violating the rule of stare decisis; establishing a test or a measurable standard that can be applied by courts in future decisions. In the United States, landmark court decisions come most frequently from the Supreme Court.
SourceObergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) ( OH-bər-gə-fel), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The 5–4 ruling requires all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Insular Areas under U.S. sovereignty to perform and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples on the same terms and conditions as the marriages of opposite-sex couples, with equal rights and responsibilities.
SourceThe following timeline represents formal legal changes and reforms regarding women's rights in the United States except voting rights. It includes actual law reforms as well as other formal changes, such as reforms through new interpretations of laws by precedents.
SourceThe second administration of U.S. president Donald Trump has taken unprecedented actions targeting American law firms and lawyers that had previously represented positions adverse to Trump. This targeting of political opponents includes issuing executive orders (EOs) and presidential memoranda limiting the ability of attorneys to obtain access to government buildings, stopping any consideration for future employment with the government, canceling government contracts, and preventing any company that uses such a firm from obtaining federal contracts. President Trump signed memoranda and orders that both threatened attorneys in general and targeted certain law firms and lawyers in particular.
SourceTrump v. Barbara, 609 U.S. ___ (2026) is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which held that children born in the United States, including to parents unlawfully or temporarily present, are "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1868). The Court invalidated President Donald Trump's Executive Order 14160 (2025), which would have effectively denied birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children whose parents lacked U.S. citizenship or permanent residency.
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