At any given time, the ACLU of Wisconsin has thirty to forty active matters on its litigation docket. From municipalities infringing on individuals' free speech rights, to schools not taking race-based bullying seriously, to broader statewide issues.
Among the issues we work on are freedom of speech, freedom of religion, privacy, discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation or disability, police misconduct, censorship in school or libraries, fairness in application of school discipline, access to government documents, inhumane jail and prison conditions, and other issues of fair treatment by government.
When Black and biracial students faced racial harassment and disparate punishment in the Oshkosh Area School District (OASD), the ACLU of Wisconsin took the case to the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR).
In February 2020, several parents anonymously sued the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin state court.
The ACLU of Wisconsin vigilantly defends First Amendment rights in schools. We believe in an educated citizenry and a society where ideas are openly disseminated and discussed.
Since 2020, we have been involved in two racial harassment cases in the Burlington Area School District.
We filed a lawsuit in the Wisconsin Supreme Court seeking the release of elderly and vulnerable people from state prisons in order to avoid a dangerous outbreak that would further strain the state’s health care capacity and put public health at risk.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin, and the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of Milwaukee over its police department’s vast and unconstitutional stop-and-frisk program.