Arcane laws banning people from wearing masks in public are now being used to target people who wear face coverings while peacefully protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. That’s a big problem.

In the 1940s and 50s, many U.S. states passed anti-mask laws as a response to the Ku Klux Klan, whose members often hid their identities as they terrorized their victims. These laws were not enacted to protect those victims, but because political leaders wanted to defend segregation as part of a “modern South” and felt that the Klan’s violent racism was making them look bad.

Now these laws are being used across the country to try and clamp down on disfavored groups and movements, raising questions about selective prosecution. Just this month, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sent a letter to the state’s 14 public universities alerting them that protesters could be charged with a felony under the state’s little-used anti-mask law, which carries penalties of between six to 18 months in prison. An Ohio legal expert, Rob Barnhart, observed that he’d never heard of the state’s law being applied previously, even to bank robbers wearing masks. While Yost framed his letter as “proactive guidance,” Barnhart countered that “I find it really hard to believe that this is some public service announcement to students to be aware of a 70-year-old law that nobody uses.”

America's Mask Bans in the Age of Face Recognition Surveillance

American laws should allow people the freedom to cover up their faces in protests or anywhere else.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Ohio officials aren’t the only ones who seem to be selectively enforcing anti-mask laws against student protestors. Administrators at the University of North Carolina have warned protesters that wearing masks violates the state’s anti-mask law and “runs counter to our campus norms and is a violation of UNC policy.” Students arrested during a protest at the University of Florida were charged with, among other things, wearing masks in public. At the University of Texas at Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott and university officials called in state troopers to violently break up pro-Palestinian protests after the school rescinded permission for a rally on the grounds that protesters had a “declared intent to violate our policies and rules.” One of the rules the administrators cited was a university ban on wearing face masks “to obstruct law enforcement.”

At a time when both public and private actors are increasingly turning to invasive surveillance technologies to identify protesters, mask-wearing is an important way for us to safeguard our right to speak out on issues of public concern. While the ACLU has raised concerns about how anti-mask laws have been wielded for decades, we are especially worried about the risk they pose to our constitutional freedoms in the digital age.

In particular, the emergence of face recognition technology has changed what it means to appear in public. Increasingly omnipresent cameras and corrosive technology products such as Clearview AI allow police to easily identify people. So, too, can private parties. The push to normalize face recognition by security agencies threatens to turn our faces into the functional equivalent of license plates. Anti-mask laws are in effect a requirement to display those “plates” anytime one is in public. Humans are not cars.

Of course, mask-wearing is not just about privacy — it can also be an expressive act, a religious practice, a political statement, or a public-health measure. The ACLU has chronicled the mask-wearing debate for years. As recently as 2019, anti-mask laws were used against Occupy Wall Street protesters, anti-racism protesters, and police violence protesters. The coronavirus temporarily scrambled the mask-wearing debate and made a mask both a protective and a political act.

Today, one question that remains is whether and how the authorities distinguish between those who are wearing a mask to protect their identities and those who are wearing one to protect themselves against disease. That ambiguity opens up even more space for discretionary and selective enforcement. In North Carolina, the state Senate is currently considering an anti-protest bill that would remove the exception for wearing a mask for health purposes altogether, and would add a sentencing enhancement for committing a crime while wearing a mask.

For those speaking out in support of the Palestinian people, being recognized in a crowd can have extreme consequences for their personal and professional security. During the Gaza protests, pro-Israel activists and organizations have posted the faces and personal information of pro-Palestine activists to intimidate them, get them fired, or otherwise shame them for their views. These doxing attempts have intensified, with viral videos showing counterprotesters demanding that pro-Palestinian protesters remove their masks at rallies. Professionally, employers have terminated workers for their comments about Israel and Palestine, and CEOs have demanded universities give them the names of protesters in order to blacklist them from jobs.

While wearing a mask can make it harder to identify a person, it’s important for protesters to know that it’s not always effective. Masks haven’t stopped the Chinese government or Google, for example, from identifying protesters and taking action against them. Technologies that can be used to identify masked protesters range from Bluetooth and WiFi signals, to historical cell phone location data, to constitutionally dubious devices called IMSI Catchers, which pretend to be a cell tower and ping nearby phones, prompting phones to reply with an identifying ping of their own. We may also see the development of video analytics technologies that use gait recognition or body-proportion measurements. During Covid, face recognition also got much better at identifying people wearing partial face masks.

Protecting people’s freedom to wear masks can have consequences. It can make it harder to identify people who commit crimes, whether they are bank robbers, muggers, or the members of the “violent mob” that attacked a peaceful protest encampment at UCLA. Like all freedoms, the freedom to wear a mask can be abused. But that does not justify taking that freedom away from those protesting peacefully, especially in today’s surveillance environment.

Anti-mask laws, undoubtedly, have a significant chilling effect on some protesters’ willingness to show up for causes they believe in. The bravery of those who do show up to support a highly-controversial cause in the current surveillance landscape is admirable, but Americans shouldn’t have to be brave to exercise their right to protest. Until privacy protections catch up with technology, officials and policymakers should do all they can to make it possible for less-brave people to show up and protest. That includes refusing to use anti-mask laws to target peaceful protestors.

Nyynkpao Banyee remembers vividly the first time he saw the United States. He was six years old, flying high above New York City. “If I close my eyes right now, I go back to seeing, just being above New York and seeing those lights for the first time. It was nighttime. And there was snow. I remember seeing that for the first time, just a little bit, but it was beautiful,” he recalled recently.

Mr. Banyee, his mother and younger brother came to the U.S. in 2004 as refugees fleeing the civil war in Côte D’Ivoire. His father died in Côte D’Ivoire shortly after the family arrived in the States. They resettled first in rural Pennsylvania, then moved to Philadelphia and later became lawful permanent residents. When he was about 17, the family moved to North Dakota, where he has been living for nearly a decade and now lives with his mother and his two younger half-siblings. His mother’s two sisters live nearby, as does his brother.

An inquisitive and observant child, Mr. Banyee was fascinated by drawing and comic books. Today, at 26, he is a restaurant-worker who aims to use that creativity to turn his interest in music into a career. He has ambitious plans for building up his own business. He supports his family, although he says his family is really his support system, especially his mother. “Me and my siblings talk about this among ourselves: we’ve never seen a woman or a person as strong as our mother,” he said.

A dark shadow hangs over Mr. Banyee’s bright future. He’s facing the possible loss of his liberty – deportation to a country he has never been back to since he fled as a child refugee and permanent separation from his family and the only home he’s ever known.

In 2017, when he was just 19, Mr. Banyee was arrested for robbery and later sentenced to four years in prison. He experienced a lot of fear upon being incarcerated but was inspired to turn over a new leaf. “A lot of different things kept me motivated, but I would say primarily, from the core, it was my family,” he said.

While incarcerated, Mr. Banyee worked on himself and was motivated to learn as much as he could.He read an enormous selection of novels, finance books, magazines, and worked in the prison. His favorite job was working in the library. He voluntarily completed numerous programs in peer support, mental wellness, and practical skills like budgeting and CPR.

“I just got into learning, learning, learning. I just couldn’t allow myself to be defeated [by the system].”

He wrote letters to his family and sent them the poems he’d written. He wrote so much his family couldn’t keep up. Although his family wanted to visit him as much as possible, he wanted to spare them the burden of driving the long distance from their home to the prison, and the emotional toll of seeing him in prison. They still talked on the phone frequently.

After spending years working on himself, Mr. Banyee’s release date was finally approaching: March 31, 2021. He was expecting to go home, but when March 31 came, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were waiting for him at the prison. They took him into custody, and he was transferred from North Dakota to a Minnesota jail.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Banyee said. “I’ve been [in the U.S.] my entire life. I had no idea – no clue – what ICE was and what this department was capable of, or what in the world was going on.” He called his mother from the jail to tell her he was in detention again – not for a criminal reason, but because of immigration.

Why was Mr. Banyee taken into immigration detention the moment he was released from prison?

It was because of a law that Congress passed in 1996 that requires the mandatory detention of noncitizens facing possible deportation for criminal conduct. Under this law, ICE can detain noncitizens slated for deportation for a range of criminal convictions, including convictions for nonviolent, minor, or old offenses, and even if the noncitizens have already served their time and are long rehabilitated. While their deportation cases are pending – a process that can take years – noncitizens could sit behind bars indefinitely, without the right to a bond hearing, even if they pose no danger or flight risk.

Nielsen v. Preap

Whether the government can require that certain people are detained for the duration of their deportation proceedings — without a hearing —...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Since the mandatory detention law was enacted in 1996, the ACLU has taken the lead in challenging it in the courts. My Khanh Ngo, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project (IRP), said immigration detention is not supposed to be about punishment. The only legitimate government interests in immigration detention are if a person poses a flight risk or a danger to the public. But the mandatory detention statute allows the government to detain a person without showing why it’s necessary – violating a basic principle of due process. Ngo recently appeared as counsel for Mr. Banyee before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, where she argued that the mandatory detention statute was unconstitutionally applied to him.

“The problem with mandatory detention is that there is no individualized consideration,” Ngo said, “Our argument has always been the government needs to bear the burden of showing this person needs to be detained either by [showing they’re a] flight risk or danger.”

After nearly 13 months in detention, Mr. Banyee and his volunteer immigration counsel, the Advocates for Human Rights (AHR), won a habeas petition – a request to a court or judge to determine whether a person’s detainment is legal or just – and was granted a bond hearing. An immigration judge released him on bond in April 2022. He had been incarcerated for over five years, four for the criminal conviction, and one for mandatory immigration detention.

His family and friends celebrated his release with a big feast. Every moment of freedom has been special. “I had five years taken away from a lot of our time together,” Mr. Banyee said of his family. “I’m trying to spend as much time with them.”

Today, the federal government is appealing Mr. Banyee’s habeas decision, arguing that it has a right to detain him with no limit, as long as his deportation case is proceeding. The ACLU has joined AHR to defend the habeas grant, supporting Mr. Banyee’s right to have a bond hearing and be free while he challenges his deportation case.

Mandatory detention significantly impacts a person’s ability to defend against deportation and win relief to which they might be entitled. Even though immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment, people are often detained in criminal detention settings and subject to the same rules and limitations as people who are incarcerated.

Ngo explains there is no right to government-appointed immigration counsel, so a person in immigration detention is much less likely to be represented because they can’t work and are less likely to be able to afford a lawyer. People in immigration detention also have limited phone or email access and limited language services, preventing them from engaging with the outside world, including legal services. Often, they are isolated and unable to gather evidence to defend themselves.

The United States’ immigration detention system is the largest in the world, Ngo notes. “The conditions of immigration detention are so horrific,” she said. “No other country holds this many immigrants to try to deport them.”

Like many noncitizens, Mr. Banyee has deep roots in the U.S. and has already served his time for crimes he committed. Yet, he and many others are again deprived of their liberty through mandatory immigration detention, and face the possibility of deportation.

Some, like Mr. Banyee, are arrested immediately after their term of incarceration ends. Others are arrested years after they complete any sentence for their convictions, even though they have reintegrated into their communities and have not had any legal troubles. For many, it feels like double punishment.

“You shouldn’t be defined by one thing that took place in your history, and that shouldn’t consign you to a life of permanent banishment from the United States,” Ngo said.

Mr. Banyee has had significant success defending against deportation in his immigration court proceedings. An immigration judge and three members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) have determined that he deserves cancellation of removal, meaning that if he wins his case, he can keep his lawful permanent resident status and one day become a U.S. citizen. His immigration case is currently on appeal for the second time, before the BIA, where it can take years to resolve. At the same time, he is waiting for the Eight Circuit to decide if he can remain free on bond while he awaits a decision on the deportation case.

“Everybody makes mistakes,” Mr. Banyee said. “In my case, [I] served time, [I] actually went through the process of giving back that adhered to the principles of the society.” He feels deportation would be an extreme consequence for people, like him, who arrived in the U.S. as children, whose lives are here, and who have already served their time for past mistakes.

Mr. Banyee wants to stay in the U.S., with his family, in the country he calls home. The U.S. is the country that has molded him, that has provided him security and allowed him to have ambitious dreams while supporting his family. “I’m willing to put in the work,” he said, “just to be allowed to live that dream.”

The Supreme Court’s docket this term includes many of the complex issues American society is currently facing, including gun control, free speech online, race-based discrimination in voting, reproductive rights, presidential immunity from criminal accountability, and more.

The ACLU has served as counsel or filed friend-of-the-court briefs in all of the cases addressing these hot-button issues. The court will decide all its cases by the beginning of July. Here are eight undecided cases to watch, and what they mean for the future of our civil liberties.

The Facts: Anti-abortion doctors, who do not prescribe medication abortion, are asking the Supreme Court to force the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to impose severe restrictions on mifepristone – a safe and effective medication used in this country in most abortions and for miscarriage management – in every state, even where abortion is protected by state law.

Our Argument: The FDA approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago, finding that it is safe, effective, and medically necessary. Since its approval, more than 5 million people in the U.S. have used this medication. Our brief argued that the two lower courts – a district court in Texas and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – relied on junk science and discredited witnesses to override the FDA’s expert decision to eliminate medically-unnecessary restrictions on an essential medication with a stronger safety record than Tylenol. We urged the Supreme Court to protect access to medication abortion and reverse the lower courts’ rulings.

Danco Laboratories, LLC, v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine; U.S. FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

The American Civil Liberties Union joined over 200 reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Why it Matters: Today, with abortion access already severely restricted, the ability to get medication-abortion care using mifepristone is more important than ever. If the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is allowed to stand, individuals would be blocked from filling mifepristone prescriptions through mail-order pharmacies, forcing many to travel, sometimes hundreds of miles, just to pick up a pill they can safely receive through the mail. Healthcare professionals with specialized training, like advanced practice clinicians, would also be prohibited from prescribing mifepristone, further limiting where patients can access this critical medication. The American Cancer Society and other leading patient advocacy groups are also sounding the alarm that overturning the FDA’s decision would upend drug innovation and research, with consequences well beyond reproductive health care.

The Last Word: “As this case shows, overturning Roe v. Wade wasn’t the end goal for extremists. In addition to targeting nationwide-access to mifepristone, politicians in some states have already moved on to attack birth control and IVF. We need to take these extremists seriously when they show us they’re coming for every aspect of our reproductive lives.” – Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.

The Facts: Idaho politicians want the power to disregard the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) that requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in emergency situations, including abortion where that is the appropriate stabilizing treatment. If the state prevails, it would jail doctors for providing pregnant patients with the necessary emergency care required under this federal law.

Our Argument: The ACLU and its legal partners filed a friend-of-the-court brief explaining that the law requires hospitals to provide whatever emergency care is required; there is no carve-out for patients who need an abortion to stabilize an emergency condition. All three branches of government have long recognized that hospitals are required under EMTALA to provide emergency abortion care to any patient who needs it.

Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States

Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Idaho politicians seeking to disregard a federal statute — the...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Why it Matters: Because Idaho’s current abortion ban prohibits providing the emergency care required under EMTALA, medical providers have found themselves having to decide between providing necessary emergency care to a pregnant patient or facing criminal prosecution from the state. Depending on how the court rules, medical providers and patients in several other states with extreme abortion bans could find themselves in a similar position.

The Last Word: “If these politicians succeed, doctors will be forced to withhold critical care from their patients. We’re already seeing the devastating impact of this case play out in Idaho, and we fear a ripple effect across the country.” – Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project

The Facts: In 2018, Maria Vullo, New York’s former chief financial regulator, in coordination with then-Mayor Andrew Cuomo, threatened to use her regulatory power over banks and insurance companies to coerce them into denying basic financial services to the National Rifle Association (NRA) because she and Cuomo disagreed with its pro-gun rights advocacy. The NRA argued that Vullo’s alleged efforts to blacklist the NRA penalized it for its political advocacy, in violation of the First Amendment.

Our Argument: The ACLU, representing the NRA at the Supreme Court, argued that any government attempt to blacklist an advocacy group and deny it financial services because of its viewpoint violates the right to free speech. Our brief urges the court to apply the precedent it set in 1963 in Bantam Books v. Sullivan, which established that even informal, indirect efforts to censor speech violate the First Amendment.

National Rifle Association v. Vullo

On January 9th, 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union filed its opening brief on behalf of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in National...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Why it Matters: While the ACLU stands in stark opposition to the NRA on many issues, this case is about securing basic First Amendment rights for all advocacy organizations. If New York State is allowed to blacklist the NRA, then Oklahoma could similarly penalize criminal justice reformers advocating for bail reform, and Texas could target climate change organizations advancing the view that all fossil fuel extraction must end. The ACLU itself could be targeted for its advocacy.

Why is the ACLU Representing the NRA Before the US Supreme Court?

The ACLU has always stood up for free speech – no matter the speaker.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

The Last Word: “The right to advocate views the government opposes safeguards our ability to organize for the country we want to see. It’s a principle the ACLU has defended for more than 100 years, and one we will continue to protect from government censorship of all kinds, whether we agree or disagree with the views of those being targeted.” – David Cole, ACLU legal director

The Facts: Motivated by a perception that social media platforms disproportionately silence conservative voices, Florida and Texas passed laws that give the government authority to regulate how large social media companies like Facebook and YouTube curate content posted on their sites.

Our Argument: In a friend-of-the-court brief, the ACLU, the ACLU of Florida and the ACLU of Texas argued that the First Amendment right to speak includes the right to choose what to publish and how to prioritize what is published. The government’s desire to have private speakers, like social media companies, distribute more conservative viewpoints–or any specific viewpoints–is not a permissible basis for state control of what content appears on privately-owned platforms.

Why it Matters: If these laws are allowed to stand, platforms may fear liability and decide to publish nothing at all, effectively eliminating the internet’s function as a modern public square. Or, in an attempt to comply with government regulations, social media companies may be forced to publish a lot more distracting and unwanted content. For example, under the Texas law, which requires “viewpoint neutrality,” a platform that publishes posts about suicide prevention would also have to publish posts directing readers to websites that encourage suicide. .

The Last Word: “Social media companies have a First Amendment right to choose what to host, display, and publish. The Supreme Court has recognized that right for everyone from booksellers to newspapers to cable companies, and this case should make clear that the same is true for social media platforms.” — Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, & Technology Project

The Facts: In 2022, South Carolina adopted a racially-gerrymandered congressional map. The state legislature singled out Black communities, “cracking” predominantly Black communities and neighborhoods across two districts to reduce their electoral influence in the state’s first congressional district.

Our Argument: The ACLU and its legal partners sued on behalf of the South Carolina NAACP and an affected voter to challenge the constitutionality of the new congressional map. We argued that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the sorting of voters on the basis of their race, absent a compelling interest, which the state failed to provide.

Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP (Congressional Map Challenge)

South Carolina unlawfully assigned voters to congressional districts based on their race and intentionally discriminated against Black voters in...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Why it Matters: This racially-gerrymandered congressional map deprives Black South Carolinians the political representation they deserve in all but one of seven districts, limiting the power and influence of more than a quarter of the state’s population just before the 2024 election.

The Last Word: “South Carolina’s failure to rectify its racially-gerrymandered congressional map blatantly disregards the voices and the rights of Black voters. The ACLU is determined to fight back until Black South Carolina voters have a lawful map that fairly represents them.” – Adriel I. Cepeda Derieux, deputy director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project

The Facts: Zackey Rahimi was convicted under a federal law that forbids individuals subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing a firearm. Mr. Rahimi challenged the law as a violation of his Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Our Argument: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that individuals subject to domestic violence protective orders have a constitutional right to possess guns. It invalidated the federal gun law because it found no historical analogues in the 1700s or 1800s that prohibited those subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing a firearm. The ACLU argued that the Fifth Circuit’s analysis is a misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen because it effectively required a “historical twin” law in order to uphold a law today. There were no identical laws at the time of the Framing because there were no domestic violence protective orders then, but that should not be a basis for invalidating the laws today. We also argued that imposing time-limited firearms restrictions based on civil restraining orders is a critical tool for protecting those who have experienced domestic violence and face a threat of further violence.

United States v. Rahimi

Whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits the possession of firearms by persons subject to domestic-violence restraining orders, violates the...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Why it Matters: If the Fifth Circuit’s rationale is affirmed, then governments would lose the ability to prohibit gun possession by persons subject to restraining orders — and presumably even to run pre-acquisition background checks, which have stopped more than 77,000 purchases of weapons by individuals subject to domestic violence orders in the 25 years that the federal law has been in place. This “originalist” interpretation of the Second Amendment not only hinders our ability to protect individuals against newly recognized threats, but also tethers the authority to regulate gun possession to periods when governments disregarded many forms of violence directed against women, Black people, Indigenous people, and others.

The Last Word: “It would be a radical mistake to allow historical wrongs to defeat efforts today to protect women and other survivors of domestic abuse. The Supreme Court should affirm that the government can enact laws aimed at preventing intimate partner violence, consistent with the Second Amendment.” – Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project

The Facts: Grants Pass, Oregon, enacted ordinances that make it illegal for people, including unhoused persons with no access to shelter, to sleep outside in public using a blanket, pillow, or even a cardboard sheet to lie on. Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that punishing unhoused people for sleeping in public when they have no other choice violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Our Argument: In Oregon, and elsewhere in the United States, the population of unhoused persons often exceeds the number of shelter beds available, forcing many to sleep on the streets or in parks. The ACLU and 19 state affiliates submitted a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that it is cruel and unusual to punish unhoused people for the essential life-sustaining activity of sleeping outside when they lack access to any alternative shelter.

City of Grants Pass v. Johnson

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Why it Matters: When applied to people with nowhere else to go, fines and arrests for sleeping outside serve no purpose and are plainly disproportionately punitive. Arresting and fining unhoused people for sleeping in public only exacerbates cycles of homelessness and mass incarceration.

The Last Word: “There is no punishment that fits the ‘crime’ of being forced to sleep outside. Instead of saddling people with fines, jail time, and criminal records, cities should focus on proven solutions, like affordable housing, accessible and voluntary services, and eviction protections.” – Scout Katovich, staff attorney with the ACLU Trone Center for Justice and Equality

The Facts: Former President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to rule that he cannot be held criminally liable for any official acts as president, even after leaving office, and even where the crimes concern efforts to resist the peaceful transition of power after an election. This claim runs contrary to fundamental principles of constitutional accountability, and decades of precedent.

Our Argument: Our friend-of-the-court brief argues that former President Trump is not immune from criminal prosecution, and that the Constitution and long-established Supreme Court precedent support the principle that in our democracy, nobody is above the law — even the president. Our brief warns that there are “few propositions more dangerous” in a democracy than the notion that an elected head of state has blanket immunity from criminal prosecution.

Trump v. United States

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Why it Matters: No other president has asserted that presidents can never be prosecuted for official acts that violate criminal law. The president’s accountability to the law is an integral part of the separation of powers and the rule of law. If the President is free, as Trump’s legal counsel argued, to order the assassination of his political opponents and escape all criminal accountability even after he leaves office, both of these fundamental principles of our system would have a fatal Achilles’ heel.

The Last Word: “The United States does not have a king, and former presidents have no claim to being above the law. A functioning democracy depends on our ability to critically reckon with the troubling actions of government officials and hold them accountable.” – David Cole, ACLU legal director