COURTS

 ACLU - More than 98 percent of court cases filed in the United States are in state courts, and state courts play an outsized role in certain areas of the law, including the rights of criminal defendants and families. But state courts’ ability to guard our liberties depends in significant part on whether those courts adopt transparent processes that allow members of the public to learn about, monitor, and participate in important state court cases.

As federal courts have grown increasingly hostile to the protection of civil liberties, state supreme courts play an especially important role in protecting — and expanding — our rights. Each state has its own constitution, which can — and often does — go further than the U.S. Constitution to protect our rights. State Supreme Courts also have the final word on interpreting a state’s constitution — without threat of U.S. Supreme Court intervention.

Accordingly, state Supreme Court decisions — much like those of the U.S. Supreme Court — have an enormous impact on our lives. State supreme courts have, for example, relied on state law to recognize the right of same-sex couples to marry, hold the death penalty unconstitutional despite contrary federal law, protect access to reproductive health care post-Dobbs, and offer more robust protection to people who have or could be subject to unreasonable searches and seizures.

When community groups know early that a state high court is reviewing a case, they can prepare to file “friend-of-the-court” briefs educating justices about the implications of the case. We see dozens of these “friend-of-the-court" briefs in many U.S. Supreme Court cases, but they are far less common in state Supreme Court proceedings. Similarly, a state Supreme Court case docket tells the public what has happened in the case so far, and what to expect in terms of future filings. This kind of information helps citizen journalists and other media who are covering a legal issue to educate the public about the twists and turns of litigation in real time.

Importantly, in many states, Supreme Court justices are elected. Voters deserve to know not only a justice’s ultimate views on a case, but also whether the justice’s views fairly respond to the arguments from, for example, criminal defendants, employees who were fired for being Black or gay, or protestors who experienced retaliation for speaking their minds. A full assessment is only possible if you can read the legal briefs in a case.