Landmark case

In a sweeping decision that should tear down barriers to justice for students with disabilities across the country, the ACLU of Michigan won a unanimous victory in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Ehlena Fry, a young girl with cerebral palsy who was barred from bringing her service dog to school. Because of her disability, Ehlena needs assistance with many of her daily tasks. Thanks in part to the contributions of parents at Ehlena’s elementary school, Ehlena’s family raised $13,000 to acquire a trained, hypoallergenic service dog named Wonder.

Wonder performed several tasks for Ehlena, assisted her with balance and mobility, and facilitated her independence. Nonetheless, her school district refused to allow Wonder in the school. In 2012 we filed a federal lawsuit. Judge Lawrence Zatkoff dismissed the case, reasoning that the Frys could not bring a lawsuit because they did not first exhaust administrative remedies, and in 2015 the Sixth Circuit affirmed. The Supreme Court agreed to hear our appeal, and in 2017 the Supreme Court reversed, ruling 8-0 in favor of Ehlena. The case was then remanded to the trial court for further proceedings.

Judge Sean Cox denied both parties’ motions for summary judgment and referred the case to mediation. The case settled in November 2019.

(Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools; Cooperating Attorney Samuel Bagenstos of U-M Law School; ACLU of Michigan Attorney Michael J. Steinberg; National ACLU Attorneys Susan Mizner and Claudia Center; Cooperating Attorneys Peter Kellett, James Hermon, Jill Wheaton, Ryan VanOver and Brandon Blazo of Dykema, and Gayle Rosen and Denise Heberle.)

Read additional background on Ehlena Fry's case here.

In the age of smart phones, information that is automatically collected by cell phone towers has the potential to reveal an enormous amount of personal information about our whereabouts, including the types of doctors we see, how often we attend church, and whose houses we sleep in at night. 

In 2015 the ACLU led a coalition of public interest groups in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the Sixth Circuit, arguing that such information should not be available to law enforcement unless it is obtained through a search warrant signed by a judge.  In 2016 the Sixth Circuit issued a split decision rejecting our argument, holding that the government did not conduct a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes when it obtained cell phone location information from wireless carriers, and therefore did not need a warrant.  We then assumed direct representation of the defendant and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. 

In June 2018, the Supreme Court reversed, holding for the first time that citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data that tracks their cell phone location over time. This pathbreaking decision will finally help usher the Fourth Amendment into the 21st century.

(Carpenter v. United States; ACLU of Michigan Attorneys Dan Korobkin and Michael J. Steinberg; National ACLU Attorneys Nathan Freed Wessler, Ben Wizner, Brett Kaufman, Cecillia Wang, Jennifer Granick, and David Cole; co-counsel Harold Gurewitz.)

Read more case background here.