Court Cases
Featured Cases
June 25, 2022
Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. State of Utah (2022)
The ACLU of Utah filed a lawsuit on behalf of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah against the State of Utah and its Trigger law.
January 6, 2026
Vonnegut v. Utah
The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah Foundation, Inc. (ACLU of Utah), alongside law firms Parr Brown Gee & Loveless and Spencer Fane, LLC, filed a lawsuit in United States District Court for the District of Utah on behalf of the Estate of Kurt Vonnegut, award-winning authors Elana K. Arnold, Ellen Hopkins, and Amy Reed, and two anonymous Utah public high school students. By disregarding the literary value of age-appropriate books and removing them, Utah is trampling on the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law, originally enacted in 2022 and amended in 2024, requires public schools and their libraries to remove a wide range of literature under unconstitutional, overbroad criteria imposed by the state legislature.
Among the books removed are major award-winning and best-selling works, including Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, a National Book Award winner and one of Time Magazine’s “100 Best English-Language Novels,” and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Many of the banned titles target voices that have historically been silenced, authors of color, women, and LGBTQ+ writers. These removals include Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner; Elana K. Arnold’s What Girls Are Made Of, a National Book Award finalist; and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a Pulitzer Prize nominee whose author received both the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
All Cases
59 Court Cases
June 24, 2026
Tucker, et al. v. Utah Department of Corrections, et al.
ACLU of Utah Foundation, alongside Lambda Legal and private law firms, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of five incarcerated transgender people in the custody of the Utah Department of Corrections (“UDC”) who have the disability of gender dysphoria and have been denied medically necessary care.
June 18, 2026
Southern Utah Drag Stars v. City of St. George
ACLU of Utah, ACLU national, and law firm Jenner and Block are representing Southern Utah Drag Stars File Lawsuit Challenging the City of St. George’s Censorship of Drag Performances
June 10, 2026
Disability Law Center v. Cox
The ACLU Disability Rights Program, the ACLU of Utah Foundation, Inc. (ACLU of Utah), Disability Law Center (DLC), and the Law Firm Arnold & Porter, Kaye, Scholer, LLP, bring this challenge to Senate Bill 199 (SB 199), which subjects people classified as having a “severe intellectual disability” to a separate, second-class guardianship system in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).
January 12, 2026
Fuja v. Stephens
This case asks whether government officials who intentionally violate the law are immune from damages suits under a state statute governing such suits, and if so, whether the statute itself violates the Open Courts Clause of the Utah Constitution.
Utah’s Open Courts Clause, like similar provisions in thirty-nine other states across the country, protects an individual’s right to seek judicial remedies for wrongs committed against them. It therefore serves as an important tool, absent in the U.S. Constitution, to hold government actors accountable.
August 6, 2025
State of Utah v. Maryon
On May 18, 2024, a police officer approached Maryon and said her name while she participated in a peaceful pro-Palestine protest. In January 2025, charges were brought against her—including walking in the road and disorderly conduct—which were both inflammatory and legally unsound.
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