We’re committed to creating a Virginia for all – but we can’t do any of it without your support. Check out our annual report to see how you helped us build our collective power to fight for our rights in Virginia in 2024, and what’s ahead in 2025.
Table of Content
Looking Back
Looking Ahead
Looking Back
We are humbled to represent clients like Ellenor Zinski, who stood up to hold Liberty University accountable for discriminating against her for being transgender, and “Janie Doe,” an 11-year-old trans student who simply wished to play on the girls' tennis team.
LGBTQ+ Rights
This year we saw attacks on LGBTQ Virginians of all ages, including on one of our youngest-ever clients: an 11-year-old whose school board banned her from participating on a girls’ sports team just because she’s trans.
That’s against the law, and thanks to our lawsuit, a federal judge ruled Hanover County School Board could no longer stop her from trying out for the team. After all, trans kids should have access to the same educational opportunities as other students – and it shouldn’t take a lawsuit to guarantee that.
But it’s not just transgender students who are experiencing discrimination in school environments: this summer, we also filed a case against Liberty University on behalf of a transgender employee who was fired because of her gender identity.
That’s illegal. No one should be fired because of who they are, and we’re committed to making sure that in the Commonwealth, no one is.
Getting there will take more than just lawsuits. It takes organizing on the ground, like we did this fall in Virginia Beach around the importance of electing school boards that will create safe, inclusive schools for all students. It takes building grassroots support for LGBTQ+ rights at the local level, like we did this summer at Pride celebrations across the Commonwealth. And it takes fighting in the halls of power, like we did in the 2024 General Assembly session this year to stop a slew of anti-LGBTQ+ bills – from trans athlete and gender-affirming care bans, to forced outing and resolutions to define "biological sex.”
Along with our partners, we defeated every single one. We’re gearing up to do the same thing in 2025.
Our first-ever Virginia Needs A Second Chance exhibit would not have been possible without our eight storytellers, who are returned citizens, loved ones of people who are incarcerated, and faith leaders whose stories changed the narrative to create a safer, more inclusive Virginia for all.
Centering People. Not Prisons.
Virginia is a single state, but it locks up a higher percentage of its people than any independent democratic country on earth. Too often, people who are in prison are out of sight, out of mind. That’s why we created a first-of-its-kind exhibit this fall centering the voices of people impacted by it.
With black-and-white portraits of eight Virginians who were formerly incarcerated, whose loved ones were incarcerated, or who are community advocates, “Virginia Needs a Second Chance” told the story of our prison system according to those most impacted by it.
We invited family members, advocates, people with convictions, and grassroots groups to give workshops on everything from restoring voting rights to supporting loved ones during their incarceration. All in all, more than 150 people attended the three community events we threw as part of the exhibit, and countless more attended on their own.
One particularly special element of our exhibit was a celebration of people who earned their release through something called the earned sentence credit (ESC) program. Earning sentence credits isn’t easy: it takes hard work over a long period of time. But even though lawmakers passed a law in 2020 increasing how many credits incarcerated people can earn toward their release, for two years, Virginia’s Department of Corrections (VDOC) chose to withhold credits from people who’d already done the work to earn them.
That meant thousands of people were stuck in prison even after they'd earned their release. We fought hard on their behalf, filing FOUR different cases against VDOC, and working with lawmakers, impacted people, and advocates to force VDOC to follow the law.
J.J.'s hard work through the ESC program meant families like his could finally be reunited, and he could give his father a long hug beyond prison walls without shackles or the watchful eyes of the guards.
This summer, that hard work finally paid off. The ESC program was finally and FULLY implemented on July 1, reducing the number of people in Virginia prisons by 3.5 percent in a single day. More than 7,000 people who’d been told they couldn't receive earned sentence credits became eligible to get them applied retroactively. To celebrate, we brought impacted people to the capitol to tell lawmakers what ESC means for them and their families, and why we worked so hard to implement this program – together.
Today, every single one of our clients is free, reunited with their children and spouses, parents and communities. We were proud to celebrate their hard work, and we’ll keep building on this enormous victory in 2025.
We're honored to represent immigrants across the Commonwealth, from survivors of domestic violence and abuse in Roanoke County to detainees in ICE detention centers in Farmville and Caroline County.
Protecting Immigrants’ Rights
We took on another carceral system this year: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If you win your immigration case in Virginia, ICE is supposed to let you go.
But that’s not what its local office has been doing. In Virginia, ICE has been unlawfully detaining dozens of people for months after they won their immigration cases.
That’s a violation of ICE’s own policies, and it’s against the law. Now, thanks to our class action lawsuit, ICE will have to prove there are exceptional circumstances to justify keeping immigrants in its custody after a judge rules they should be let go.
Our settlement resulted in the release of dozens of people, and it means ICE will have to release more people from its custody for years to come.
Lawsuits like this are a big part of why we launched our new Immigrants’ Rights work last year. Since then, we’ve filed other litigation, like our lawsuit on behalf of an immigrant survivor of domestic violence, to reaffirm that immigrants DO have rights in Virginia.
Our goal is to stop the unacceptable civil rights violations immigrants experience in Virginia, plain and simple. By bringing our innovative mix of litigation, policy, and organizing capacity to the fight, we aim to make the Commonwealth a safe place for all of us – whether we’re immigrants, prison-impacted, LGBTQ+, or any other population that calls Virginia home.
It’s only thanks to YOU that we can integrate different tools like lawsuits, legislation, and people power into a single advocacy strategy. It takes resources to do this work, and it takes committed people like you to make sure we’re hitting the ground running.
The highlights above are just some of the work that your support enabled us to do in 2024. Continue to fuel the fight for our freedoms in 2025, and just imagine what we can do together!
Looking Ahead
Our lawyers filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit to challenge a Jim Crow relic that still prevents tens of thousands of Virginians from voting.
Guaranteeing Voting Rights
Leaders shouldn’t handpick their voters – people should vote for their leaders. That’s a basic tenet of democracy.
But too often in Virginia, our leaders get to do just that. We’re one of only three states whose constitutions permanently takes away the voting rights of people convicted of felonies. And we're the ONLY state whose constitution forces them to individually petition the governor to get their voting rights back.
That’s not right. But it’s happening for a reason: this racist system started after the Civil War. Former Confederate states tried to keep newly freed Black voters away from the ballot box by first targeting them with a growing number of criminal offenses, and then stripping people with a criminal conviction of their right to vote.
To finally put an end to this Confederate-era practice, we filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit called King v. Youngkin. It would limit the number of Virginians who lose their voting rights to begin with, drastically slashing the number of voters that Virginia’s governor gets to handpick.
Every year, people have to lobby the governor to get something back they never should have lost in the first place. When our case moves forward in 2025, it will bring us one step closer to securing democracy and voting rights for all.
A second Trump term means that our rights are under threat at the federal level -- making it even more crucial to protect them here at home in Virginia.
Protecting Reproductive Freedoms – and More
To fully safeguard Virginians’ rights will require amending Virginia’s constitution. In 2025, there are three core rights we’ll be working to protect: Virginians’ right to vote, their right to marry the person they love, and their right make their own reproductive healthcare decisions.
All together, that’s THREE amendments to Virginia’s constitution that we’re trying to advance this year. Passing them won’t be easy.
But enshrining those rights in Virginia’s constitution would mean that no matter what happens at the federal level, Virginians’ rights would be as secure as possible. Under Virginia law, the soonest we can possibly amend our constitution is November 2026, and that's what we intend to do.
To get there will take a few steps. The first is for lawmakers to pass the amendments’ language during the 2025 General Assembly, which we’ll push them to do alongside our partners like Equality Virginia, Planned Parenthood, NoLef Turns, the NAACP, and other advocates when lawmakers gavel into session.
In fact, we already got started in 2024 with a Reproductive Freedoms campaign to educate the public; you may have seen our billboards calling for a constitutional amendment around the Commonwealth. We’re proud to be a founding member of a brand-new coalition called Virginians for Reproductive Freedom – 16 organizations across the Commonwealth – committed to fighting for Virginians' reproductive rights.
Only when all three of those steps have been completed will it finally be up to Virginians to vote directly on the constitutional amendments themselves – the fourth and final step to making them a reality.
Amending Virginia’s constitution is ambitious. To do it three times? Even more so. But protecting our civil rights and civil liberties demands nothing less, and in 2025, we plan to do everything we can to create a Virginia that’s truly a place for us all.
We're putting organizers on the ground to rally the grassroots support we’ll need. And we’re working with all of our members and supporters – people like you – to fuel the fight for our freedom.
As anti-democracy forces have evolved, so has the ACLU of Virginia. We were made for this moment.
Our integrated approach is how we create systemic, lasting change in the Commonwealth. That won’t happen overnight: in fact, it requires meaningful, sustained resources. It requires people like you, people who educate your communities about how to get in the fight, and who help us build the collective power it will take to safeguard our civil rights and civil liberties.
We’re proud to have partners like you who understand the stakes. We know you’re committed to making Virginia a place for us all, no matter who is in office. And we’re committed to you: to fighting for you in the halls of power, to bringing you into community with people from across the Commonwealth, and most of all, to making the kind of systemic change it will take to finally realize a Virginia that protects everyone’s freedoms.
This work takes all of us. It takes you. It takes us.
Together, we can make a Virginia for all.
See you in 2025!
Membership & Financials
