On June 26, a federal judge issued a national injunction in the ACLU’s class action lawsuit against the Trump administration’s policy of separating children and parents at the border. He ordered the government to reunite all children under five with their parents by Tuesday, July 10, and all remaining children by July 26. 

Since then, the administration has been scrambling to create a plan and process to meet the court’s deadlines and reunite thousands of families. 

Here are the four things you need to know about where the reunification process stands: 

The judge did not extend deadlines for the government to reunite families, saying “These are firm deadlines. They’re not aspirational goals."

At the July 10 status conference, the court said that the government should reunite 63 children under the age of five on Tuesday. For each child whom the government does not reunite by Tuesday, the judge has ordered specific articulations of why. He invited the ACLU to respond as to whether it amounts to non-compliance on the government’s part and what relief we’re seeking as a result. At the status conference, the government said they were likely to reunite 34 of the children by the end of the day.

Children who are successfully reunited by Tuesday will first be transferred from the Office of Refugee Resettlement into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where their parents are being held. ICE will then release parent and child together. The families will not be held in detention together.

While the locations will not be publicly disclosed, the ACLU has asked the court to require the government to notify us, so that we can coordinate with local non-governmental organizations to ensure that they are onsite to meet families and assist with shelter, transportation, and other needs.

The government attempted to shirk responsibility for reuniting children with parents who had already been deported, but the court said no. 

On July 6, in a brazen attempt to shrink the number of children the government is obligated to reunite, the Justice Department attorney argued that parents whose children had been taken away but who had already been deported should not fall into the class of people affected by the lawsuit.

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney arguing the family separation class action, pushed back, pointing out that, “Those are the most acute situations, the most horrible situations, because then you have a parent far away wondering … what is happening to my child in a foreign country?”

The judge agreed, making it clear that deported parents are a part of the class and the government has the obligation to reunite them with their children.

However, the judge did stress that if the government does identify some children who technically fall outside the class, it should still “try to reunite, because that’s the spirit of the injunctive relief and what everyone is trying to do.”

The government’s attempt to abdicate responsibility for the reunion of toddler-age children with parents who they have deported to foreign countries remains deeply disturbing. In fact, it’s all the more troubling considering reports of a form that ICE is distributing that misleadingly presents parents with active asylum claims with two choices: Leave the country with their child, or leave the country without their child. It did not include the option of being reunited with their children and pursuing their asylum claims.

We asked that the court require the goverment to provide an alternative notice for class members, a request the judge granted. It clearly advises parents: “You do NOT need to agree to removal from the United States in order to be reunified with your child. You may continue to fight your case. You should NOT be pressured to agree to removal in order to be reunified with your child.”

The government must post the notice in ICE detention facilities starting today.

The ACLU is actively working with the government to locate the parents who have already been deported — a problem the administration would never have required help with had they not ripped families apart in the first place.

The court said the government must use a streamlined process to reunite children.

While the government is now attempting to comply with the court orders, it’s failing because of real logistical problems, like missing records or parents whose locations it failed to track. But it is also stalling by insisting on sticking to status quo agency procedures in the face of extraordinarily unique circumstances.

Ordinarily, the Office of Refugee Resettlement would conduct a background check, perform a home visit, and fingerprint the people to whom it was releasing a child. That’s because the agency is dealing with kids who came to the United States unaccompanied by a parent. But these procedures are not necessary in cases where the government took a child from a parent, rendering them unaccompanied.

The government has also argued that it needs to administer DNA tests to every parent and child, which will cause unnecessary delays in reunification and raises serious privacy concerns.

The judge made clear on Tuesday that business as usual is not acceptable, that parents are not “applying” for permission to get their children, but rather that the government has an “affirmative obligation” to reunite. Unless the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child, the child needs to be reunified with the parent.

We asked the court to restrict the government’s use of DNA testing to limited cases where parentage cannot be verified in another way, meaning that there is no other reliable documentary, testimonial, or other evidence of parentage.

It is inherently coercive for the government to require parents to submit to DNA testing to get back the children that were unlawfully taken from them. Parents should not have to sacrifice their privacy rights and face the risk of having their DNA information collected in a government database to be reunified with their children.

The judge agreed, finding that DNA tests should only be performed when there is a genuine reason to doubt parentage or when the government has a legitimate concern that it will not otherwise meet the deadline to reunify. Further, Judge Sabraw found that should DNA tests be necessary, the samples must be destroyed after being used to match up parents and children and can't be put into a government database.

The government said that all children reunited with parents by the Tuesday deadline would be released from custody, but it raised the specter of family detention in the future.

At the close of the hearing, a Justice Department attorney asked Judge Sabraw to clarify whether the national injunction requires the release of parents from detention, or only the reunion of parent and child.

This question comes on the heels of a separate decision on July 9 from Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles, declining to amend a decades-old court agreement (known as the Flores settlement) which established protections for children to prevent their indefinite detention in unlicensed facilities.

Ending family separation doesn’t require family prisons, but this is not the first time the Trump administration has peddled the false equivalency. Alternatives to family detention not only exist, they are more humane and far less costly.

Judge Sabraw requested further briefing on the matter. 

Few times in recent memory have demanded a more careful examination of our nation's history than now — the year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the 14th Amendment’s passage. At a time when the Trump administration is throwing asylum seekers in jail without due process and undermining efforts to desegregate schools, it is critical to remember that the “pervading purpose” of the 14th Amendment was to eliminate the oppression of historically subjugated minorities and to provide equality of opportunity. 

The amendment's ratification on July 9, 1868, shortly after African-Americans were emancipated from slavery, represented a turning point in the country’s history. Its passage was an effort to provide substance to the Declaration of Independence’s promises of freedom and equality, which from the beginning had not applied to significant parts of the population, including Black people and women. And though those promises were continually reneged upon, the 14th Amendment remained a source of aspiration and hope. 

Although the 14th Amendment is frequently invoked now, particularly by conservative judges and commentators, to attack affirmative action and efforts to desegregate schools under the guise of “colorblindness,” the Fourteenth Amendment was never a colorblind document. The amendment was enacted specifically for purposes of assisting newly freed Black people. Although the 13th Amendment ended slavery, it left uncertain the status of those who had been kept in bondage. The infamous Dred Scott case had held that Blacks had no rights that whites were bound to respect and denied them citizenship. The 14th Amendment was necessary to make clear that Black people, as well as anyone born in the country or naturalized, were American citizens. 

The Trump administration has made loud and clear its disdain for any programs that consider race in college admissions, which betrays the 14th Amendment’s unambiguous history as a statute offering Black people protection in areas replete with discrimination. The 14th Amendment was enacted with the intent to support a series of race-conscious programs that were created at the time to aid Blacks newly emancipated by the 13th Amendment. A series of programs such as the Freedman’s Bureau, special assistance for Black Civil War veterans, and special relief to Blacks in the District of Columbia were enacted in the period following the Civil War in the face of opposition arguing that the programs would make “a distinction on account of color between the two races.” Vetoes of the Freedman’s Bureau Act were overridden twice by Congress and the 14th Amendment was enacted in the midst of the discussions regarding these acts. 

The road to equality by way of the 14th Amendment was not always an easy one. Some of the most ignoble policies and practices, such as forced racial segregation in public schools and public spaces and the incarceration of Japanese-Americans and people of Japanese ancestry during World War II, were found to be consistent with the Constitution. And, as time has passed, its initial emphasis on addressing the rights of freed Black people has shifted substantially. 

Despite the setbacks, the 14th Amendment has been vital in protecting the equal protection and due process rights of a greater number of people. Whether assuring counsel and a bias-free jury, working in conjunction with the First Amendment to assure freedom of worship, guaranteeing the rights of same-sex couples to marry, protecting the right to vote, supporting the right of transgender students to receive access to education, prohibiting racial segregation in schools, ending restrictions against mixed-race marriages, supporting the right of women to have access to birth control and abortion, or protecting the rights of immigrants, the 14th Amendment has been a powerful tool in the protection of the rights and liberties of all Americans. 

But the amendments’ 150th anniversary is not solely an occasion to celebrate. Rights won, even after long protracted struggles, can be lost. In the current political climate — one in which efforts are being made to limit the enforcement actions of agencies and departments which once sought to strenuously enforce the 14th Amendment and one in which judges are selected for their antipathy to rights secured on behalf of people of color and other vulnerable populations — the 14th Amendment faces the realistic possibility of being stripped of its authority and its ability to stand as a bulwark against oppression. 

We cannot take the 14th Amendment for granted. Instead, it’s imperative that we use every means at our disposal to assure that the amendment continues to serve as a path to freedom and full equality for those who need it most. 

On the issue of LGBT rights, Justice Kennedy played a critically important role in transforming the lives of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in America. The landmark rulings he authored in this area transported us, as LGBT people, from being criminals in the eyes of the law to having the freedom to marry the people we love most in the world. With Justice Kennedy’s spot now open on the court, Congress must ensure that his replacement demonstrates that same dedication to upholding the basic American values of nondiscrimination and equality, which are essential to allowing LGBT people to live our lives freely and openly. 

But while the U.S. Senate braces for what is certain to be an all-consuming, months-long confirmation battle over a new justice, we must not lose sight of the fact that there are things Congress can and must do now to safeguard the rights and dignity of the most vulnerable, regardless of who sits on the highest court in the country. One major thing that Congress could do is pass the Do No Harm Act, which would prevent religion from being used as a license to discriminate. 

When it was signed into law 25 years ago, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was intended to protect religious freedom, especially for religious minorities. In recent years, however, individuals and businesses have worked to distort RFRA into a blank check to license discrimination or to impose their religious beliefs on others. 

The Supreme Court’s 2014 Hobby Lobby ruling marked the first time that the court said that business owners could use RFRA to deny their employees a benefit that they are guaranteed by law: insurance coverage for contraception. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed concern that the decision could open the door for RFRA to be used to engage in a wide range of discrimination. 

Justice Ginsburg’s concerns have proven to be well-founded in the four years since Hobby Lobby. Now, multiple cases currently under consideration could expand religious exemptions to anti-discrimination law even further. 

The Supreme Court, for example, may hear a case in its upcoming term that involves yet another dangerous claim that RFRA permits discrimination. Aimee Stephens had worked for nearly six years as a funeral home director in Michigan when she took the difficult step of coming out to her employer as a woman. Rather than supporting Aimee during such a significant period of change in her life, the owner fired her, explaining that it would be “unacceptable” for Aimee to come to work as the woman she is. 

In 2016, a federal judge ruled that even if what happened to Aimee was discrimination in violation of federal civil rights law, RFRA authorized that discrimination because of the funeral home’s religious objections to transgender people. Fortunately, this decision was reversed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit earlier this year. The decision from the Sixth Circuit affirmed that transgender people are protected by federal laws that prohibit sex discrimination, like Title VII, and that RFRA cannot be used to trump those protections. 

In the coming weeks, the funeral home is expected to ask the Supreme Court to take up the case. If the court does so, the stakes for LGBT people will be incredibly high. 

In addition, the Trump administration is currently weighing a request from South Carolina to grant a waiver from federal nondiscrimination requirements to allow one of the largest providers of child welfare services in the state — and a recipient of large amounts of taxpayer dollars — to discriminate against prospective families who are not Protestant Christians. If granted, this “RFRA waiver” would cause children to be denied access to countless qualified families they desperately need, reducing their chances of finding loving, stable families simply because those families are LGBT or don’t adhere to particular Christian beliefs. 

RFRA is being invoked in ever more brazen schemes to open the floodgates to all manner of discriminatory religious refusals. But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

The Do No Harm Act, which is currently pending in both chambers of Congress, is designed to restore RFRA to its original intent. While maintaining the law’s use as a shield for religious minorities — for example, cases involving the right to wear religious garb and observe religious holidays — the Do No Harm Act would ensure that RFRA could no longer be used as a sword to harm other people, particularly LGBT people, women, and religious minorities. 

If the Do No Harm Act were the law of the land, even a Supreme Court that is significantly more hostile to civil rights and civil liberties would not be able to use RFRA for discriminatory purposes, such as overriding the protections of our nation’s civil rights laws. Those who are very rightly concerned about the direction of the Supreme Court must do everything in their power to make sure our laws protect all people’s rights, especially the rights of those who are most vulnerable to discrimination. Passing the Do No Harm Act is an essential step towards that end.