Amicus Briefs

Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Prosperity Foundation frequently write amicus curiae briefs to support other litigants and present important issues to courts. Please contact us at amicus@afphq.org if you would like amicus support for your case.

Year

Issue Area

Court

2025
Ream v. U.S. Department of Treasury
Question Presented

Whether a federal ban on at-home distilling of spirits—even for personal use—exceeds constitutional limits on the federal government’s powers.

2025
Center for Arizona Policy, Inc. v. Arizona Secretary of State
Question Presented

Whether Arizona’s Prop 211, which requires multi-layer donor disclosure for issue advocacy, violates the First Amendment.

2025
Stovall v. Jefferson County Board of Education
Question Presented

Whether the Copyright Act allows for the withholding of public records under the Kentucky Open Records Act.

2025
Chiles v. Salazar
Question Presented

Whether a law that censors certain conversations between counselors and their clients based on the viewpoints expressed regulates conduct or violates the Free Speech Clause.

2025
Express Scripts v. FTC
Question Presented

Whether the FTC’s administrative prosecution—where it acts as prosecutor and judge of its own cause, invariably ruling for itself—violates the U.S. Constitution, including Article III, and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and whether it is therefore void ab initio and must be enjoined.

2025
Wilcox v. Trump
Question Presented

Whether the President has authority under Article II of the Constitution to remove a Member of the National Labor Relations Board without first having to bear the burden of establishing neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.

2025
Harper v. O’Donnell
Question Presented

Does the Fourth Amendment permit warrantless searches of customer records held by third-party service providers if the records are contractually owned by the customer, or if those records enable surveillance of future behavior? If not, does the third-party doctrine need to be discarded or modified to prevent such searches?

2025
Aaron Richards et al. v. Administration for Children’s Services
Question Presented

Does a family court order, which authorizes Child Services to enter and search an innocent mother’s home and supervise her parenting, violate the mother’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches?

2025
Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond
Question Presented

1. Whether the academic and pedagogical choices of a privately owned and run school constitute state action simply because it contracts with the state to offer a free educational option for interested students.
2. Whether a state violates the Free Exercise Clause by excluding privately run religious schools from the state’s charter-school program solely because the schools are religious, or whether a state can justify such an exclusion by invoking anti-establishment interests that go further than the Establishment Clause requires.

2025
Mahmoud v. Taylor
Question Presented

Whether public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out.

2025
Texas Top Cop Shop v. Bondi
Question Presented

Whether the Corporate Transparency Act exceeds constitutional limits on the federal government’s powers.

2025
First Choice v. Platkin
Question Presented

Where the subject of a state investigatory demand has established a reasonably objective chill of its First Amendment rights, is a federal court in a first-filed action deprived of jurisdiction because those rights must be adjudicated in state court.

Amicus Commentary

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Ryan Mulvey on WBNA TV 21 Kentucky’s Voice Discussing the Misuse of Copyright Law to Block Records Requests

AFP Foundation’s Ryan Mulvey appeared on WBNA’s Kentucky’s Voice to discuss AFP Foundation’s coalition brief urging Sixth Circuit to protect public access and rein in abuses of copyright law.

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AFP Foundation Leads Coalition Brief Urging Sixth Circuit to Protect Public Access and Rein in Abuses of Copyright Law

ARLINGTON, VA – Today, a coalition of organizations led by Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP Foundation) filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Stovall v. Jefferson County Board of Education, a pivotal case concerning government transparency and the misuse of copyright law to block access to public…

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AFPF Files Amicus Brief Applauding President Trump’s Effort to Spur The End of The De Facto Fourth Branch of Government  

The separation of powers is badly distorted. Today, there are many administrative bodies within the Executive Branch that Congress has tried to shield from presidential control, and in doing so, set up a veritable Fourth Branch of government.  President Trump recently has taken several actions to assert his proper control over these extraconstitutional administrative bodies. …

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New York Appellate Court Strikes Down A State Practice Allowing Intrusive Surveillance Of Innocent Families

In a significant win for the liberty interests of parents in the care and custody of their children, yesterday a New York appellate court vacated and held unlawful a longstanding state practice that subjected parents who were never accused of any wrongdoing to ongoing supervision by local child services officers.  That supervision allowed state authorities…

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D.C. Circuit Rules “Clawback” Orders Foreclosed by the FOIA 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit released a noteworthy decision today in Human Rights Defense Center v. U.S. Park Police, a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) case in which the federal government sought a court order requiring the return or destruction of “inadvertently disclosed” records.  Such relief is commonly known…

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NetChoice and the “Informational Interest”: Can the Government Ensure You Listen to the Right Message?

The Supreme Court’s decision in NetChoice v. Moody, the much-anticipated challenge to Texas’s regulation of social media companies, was not the barnburner many had anticipated. Instead of deciding the First Amendment question directly, the Court found that neither lower court did the proper facial analysis, meaning they must not only find a First Amendment violation…

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Americans for Prosperity Foundation releases summary of engagement for Supreme Court October 2023 term

Arlington, VA – Americans for Prosperity Foundation today released a report of its amicus engagement during the October 2023 Supreme Court term.  AFPF Chief Policy Counsel James Valvo said: This term the Supreme Court upheld protections for free expression, ruling the government cannot coerce companies to stop doing business with organizations based on their speech. The…

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Have you heard of these cases before the Supreme Court? Here’s why they should matter to you

UPDATE: On 5/30/2024, in a win for the First Amendment, the Supreme Court unanimously decided in NRA v. Vullo that government officials cannot pressure or otherwise coerce organizations to terminate certain business relationships when doing so infringes the First Amendment rights of the third party. This Supreme Court term has been full of high-profile cases.…

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Congress, not bureaucrats, should make federal criminal law

By Michael Pepson Would it surprise you to know that Congress has granted the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) unfettered power to write its own criminal code governing one-tenth of the land in the United States? A Nevada federal court ruled that Congress unconstitutionally transferred its legislative power to write crimes to the BLM. Last…

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