When President-elect Trump takes office later this month, CAC will be ready to hold him and his administration accountable to the Constitution and federal law, just like we did during the first Trump administration. Indeed, during the first Trump administration, we, among other things, took Trump to court (on behalf of over 200 members of Congress) over his violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause, supported challenges to his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban, and fought back against efforts to undermine the census. Given comments made by the President-elect and his advisers, there’s every reason to think that efforts to hold Trump accountable in the courts will be even more important this time around. As CAC Chief Counsel Brianne Gorod explained in NBC News, the courts are “on notice that their role as a vital check in our constitutional system will be tested.”

While we are preparing to hold Trump and his administration accountable, we also know that the battle for constitutional accountability has many fronts, and we plan to keep fighting on all of them. Indeed, we expect that CAC’s text-and-history approach advocating for the progressive promise of our Constitution will be front and center across a wide range of issues this year.

CAC’s groundbreaking scholarship on police accountability will be before the Supreme Court this month in Barnes v. Felix. In Barnes, a police officer stopped a motorist in a rental car for toll violations tracing back to a different driver, jumped onto the moving car, then used the fact that he was on the moving car to justify his decision to shoot the driver. CAC’s brief explains that the Supreme Court should reject a “moment of threat” doctrine that would only judge reasonableness in the instant an officer used lethal force, and should instead zoom out to the full context of the situation. Our brief draws on scholarship from our own David H. Gans, Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program at CAC. David’s paper, “‘We Do Not Want to Be Hunted’: The Right to Be Secure and Our Constitutional Story of Race and Policing,” argues that the authors of the Reconstruction Amendments were explicitly concerned with unaccountable police brutality in the South, and understood the freedoms protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to include a freedom from police violence. Other amici in the case, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Due Process Institute, Restore the Fourth, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, all cited David’s work on this issue. We’re proud that CAC’s research has been at the fore of this critical debate about the Constitution’s meaning.

We’re also proud of our voting rights work. Notably, the fight for voting rights doesn’t stop when election season ends. In early January, the Fifth Circuit heard a challenge to the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in Nairne v. Landry. In Nairne, the State of Louisiana defended its legislative maps, which a lower court found had unlawfully diluted the voting power of Black communities, by arguing that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was no longer justified by the Constitution. CAC’s amicus brief explained that the Framers of the Fifteenth Amendment gave Congress sweeping authority to pass legislation to stamp out every conceivable attempt by states to deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race. The freedom to vote is under attack across the country, but CAC is prepared: we’re defending the constitutionality of the VRA in the Eleventh Circuit, too, and in the Fifth Circuit, we filed a brief explaining that states cannot disqualify voters over immaterial typos in their vote-by-mail applications. Courts will be hearing oral argument in these cases in the coming month.

CAC knows that the fight for “a more perfect Union” is a long-term one, and we’re ready to face the challenges of this moment.

• Ortega v. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — The Fifth Circuit is considering a challenge to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s authority to issue penalties and enter other supervisory orders. CAC filed a brief in support of the OCC that explains why the “public rights doctrine,” which allows legal remedies and civil penalties such as those at issue here to be sought in an administrative tribunal, applies in this instance. Fifth Circuit, filed December 23.

• Louisiana v. Callais — The Supreme Court is considering whether to reverse a district court decision that held unconstitutional the remedial map the Louisiana legislature enacted to protect the voting power of Black voters in accordance with the Voting Rights Act. CAC filed a brief in support of the remedial map, arguing that the lower court erred in concluding that the map was a racial gerrymander. As our brief explains, the district court’s decision is contrary to Supreme Court precedent and undermines effective enforcement of Section 2 and the Fifteenth Amendment. Supreme Court, filed December 20.

• Banyee v. Garland — Following a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that detention during deportation proceedings is constitutionally valid, even when the government has not demonstrated the need for detention in a bond hearing, Banyee asked the full Eighth Circuit to rehear the case en banc. CAC filed an amicus brief urging the court to grant the petition and reconsider the panel’s ruling. Eighth Circuit, filed December 12.

• Environment Texas Citizen Lobby v. ExxonMobil — The en banc Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment that the plaintiffs had established traceability for 3,651 days of Exxon’s violations of the Clean Air Act. Judge Davis issued a concurrence joined by six other judges that echoed our brief, noting that citizen suits do not violate separation-of-powers principles and arguing that adopting a heightened standing analysis for citizen suits would subvert congressional authority. Fifth Circuit, decision rendered December 11.

• December 30: CAC’s Deputy Chief Counsel Brian Frazelle’s article on City of Grants Pass v. Johnson was listed in The Regulatory Review as one of their top articles of the year. “Top Contributor Essays of 2024”

• December 18: CAC’s brief in Nestlé USA, Inc. v. John Doe I/Cargill, Inc. v. John Doe I was cited in an article from Slate discussing what the Department of Justice will look like under the upcoming Trump administration. “Meet the Terrifying Line of Shock Troops Likely to Make Up the New Trump DOJ”

• December 13: The article by CAC Equal Justice Works Fellow Anna Jessurun, David Gans, and CAC Chief Counsel Brianne Gorod on the independent state legislature theory was featured on Election Law Blog as one of the top voting rights downloads on SSRN. “Top Recent Downloads in Election Law on SSRN”

• December 12: CAC’s brief in SpaceX v. NLRB was mentioned in an article on the case from Law Street Media. “SpaceX Challenges Agencies, Government Contracts, and More”

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