Court Cases

People should not have to pay exorbitant fees to access their right to information about Delaware public institutions. On December 22, 2025, ACLU of Delaware filed a complaint challenging excessive fee charges in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from Delaware school districts. Most school districts in Delaware have historically not charged extensive fees for fulfilling FOIA requests. However, for the first time in 2025, Cape Henlopen, Christina, and Woodbridge quoted charges of approximately $3,438, $1,934, and $2,000 respectively for the requests. The prior year all three school districts fulfilled similar requests at no charge. Charging thousands of dollars for information requests creates a substantial barrier to the average Delawarean seeking information about their local school district. This greatly undermines the intention of Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act, which is meant to give the public greater access to information about public-serving institutions in the state. At ACLU-DE, we are strong proponents of government transparency and accountability. We will continue to work to break down any barriers to information that the public has a right to know about the institutions that serve them.

It is vital to our democracy for Delawareans to be able to easily access public records for public institutions in our state. On April 7, 2025, the ACLU of Delaware submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Delaware Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking various records, including invoices the private law firm Saul Ewing charged DOJ for representation as special counsel on two different cases. Even though both cases are currently pending before the same court, DOJ only released records for one case without explaining why they claimed identical records for the second case were subject to a litigation exception. ACLU-DE submitted a second FOIA request to DOJ on May 15, 2025. To this request, DOJ responded that they had "no responsive records," despite the fact that some of the requested records not only exist but were disclosed in prior FOIA requests. DOJ's inadequate and inaccurate responses to FOIA requests impedes the public's access to information they are rightfully entitled to have. As an organization that values government transparency, we will always fight to uphold the spirit of FOIA and the right of the people to be informed.

Violence by correctional officers isn’t just a moral failing – it’s unconstitutional. People living in prisons have the constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. We're fighting a legal battle to shed light on and end a pattern of abuse at the Sussex Correctional Institution.

Cruel and unusual punishment is blatantly unconstitutional – especially when combining prolonged solitary confinement with a mental illness. We're fighting this third-circuit case to bring justice for the late Angelo Clark, and to bring an end to this cruel practice.