Court Cases

Since Fall 2023, college campuses across the country have seen a spike in protests in support of Palestinian human rights. At the University of Michigan, administrators have responded to political speech and protests related to Palestine with increasingly repressive policies and actions, including shutting down email listservs on which the war was being discussed, removing anti-war posters from graduate students’ office windows, canceling a student election on competing resolutions about the crisis, and heavy-handed police responses to organized protests. In particular, the University began to increasingly “trespass”—i.e., ban—students and other community members from its entire campus based on a single allegation of misconduct at a single protest. In December 2023 and April 2024, the ACLU of Michigan sent public letters to the University of Michigan expressing its concern about these escalating patterns of the University stifling its students’ speech and advocacy. But the University’s repressive actions continued. In February 2025, the ACLU of Michigan, the Sugar Law Center, and cooperating attorneys at Schulz Ghannam sued the University on behalf of five protestors who were banned from all University of Michigan property after participating in a protest. The lawsuit challenges the University’s practice of liberally issuing trespass bans to protestors, alleging that the practice violates the plaintiffs’ First Amendment and Due Process rights. The lawsuit was amended in August 2025 to include other protestors who were banned from campus in a similar fashion after participating in a protest related to the University’s plan to build a data center affiliated with the military. The lawsuit is ongoing. (Zou v. Grasso; ACLU Attorneys Ramis Wadood, Phil Mayor, Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio, Syeda Davidson, and Dan Korobkin; Co-counsel Liz Jacob and John Philo of Sugar Law Center, and Amanda Ghannam and Jack Schulz of Schulz Ghannam PLLC).

Every court in Michigan makes video or audio recordings of many of its proceedings. However, unlike many other states, Michigan lacks a statewide rule requiring those recordings to be made available to the public, even though they are produced using taxpayer dollars. Dr. Hallman is a university instructor, researcher, and an advocate for judicial transparency who, from 2021 onwards, has sought to obtain recordings of a number of proceedings that occurred in Michigan’s 52nd district court (Rochester and nearby communities) and its 6th Circuit Court (Oakland County). Both courts denied her requests in part or whole because of local administrative orders that restricted public access to recordings of court proceedings. Dr. Hallman wishes to use these recordings to educate herself and the public, about what happens in local courts; to inform herself and others in voting on local judges, as Michigan voters are called upon to do in almost every election; and to lobby statewide elected officials to adopt stronger measures to promote judicial transparency. In April 2025, the ACLU filed a complaint in federal court against officials at both courts that denied Dr. Hallman’s requests, arguing that restricting Michiganders’ access to recordings of open court proceedings violates the First Amendment. In June 2025, the government moved to dismiss; in July we filed response briefs; and in August the government filed a reply. We are awaiting a decision. (Hallman v. Reeds; ACLU Attorneys Phil Mayor, Dan Korobkin, and Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio.)