Archive

The Defense Department's longstanding policy barring women from thousands of ground combat positions was challenged today in a federal lawsuit by four servicewomen and the Service Women's Action Network. Read More

Think Facebook is only interested in your online activity? Think again. The company recently announced a partnership with information broker Datalogix, which operates many of the loyalty card programs we use to get a discount at stores like CVS. The partnership — one of Facebook's three new advertising programs —allows Facebook to gauge the effectiveness of its ads by learning about the offline pu... Read More

You don't surrender your constitutional rights based on who you work for. That's why the ACLU of Northern California sued on behalf of a deputy sheriff in Trinity County who was censured at work after publishing letters to the editor in the local paper.A judge agreed, and has issued a permanent injunction in behalf of our client, protecting his free speech rights. The injunction means that the Tri... Read More

This morning, 26 individuals and organizations including the ACLU of California sent an open letter to new Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer asking her to add HTTPS security to Yahoo! Mail. Without secure connections, the email sent and received by Yahoo! users around the world — from dissidents living under repressive regimes to Americans communicating about sensitive topics — is vulnerable to interceptio... Read More

Today the ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a federal class-action lawsuit to block implementation of unconstitutional provisions of Proposition 35 - a ballot measure passed by California voters Tuesday that restricts the legal and constitutionally protected speech of all registered sex offenders in California. Read More

Today the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a federal class-action lawsuit to block implementation of unconstitutional provisions of Proposition 35 - a ballot measure passed by voters that restricts the legal and constitutionally protected speech of all registered sex offenders in California. Read More

Arguments were held before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today in a challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups to the most extreme abortion ban in the country. Read More

In mid-October, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office revealed that it was seeking funds to purchase a drone to engage in unspecified unmanned aerial surveillance. The ACLU of Northern California immediately sent a Public Records Act request seeking answers to three basic questions: 1) Are drones really necessary in our community; 2) How much will they cost to acquire, operate, and maintain; and 3) ... Read More

As sheriffs have readily admitted, county jails are not full of individuals who have been convicted of crimes, or even individuals thought to present a high public safety risk to the community. Most people in county jails have not been convicted of a crime. More than 71 percent of the 71,000 Californians held in county jails on any given day are awaiting their day in court. Most of them do not pos... Read More

One year ago today, police fired tear gas, flash bang grenades and lead-filled bags into a massive crowd of Occupy Oakland demonstrators. The ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild sued the Oakland Police Department for its egregious constitutional violations against demonstrators during the October 25, 2011 and November 2, 2011 demonstrations. That lawsuit is ongoing.Demonstrators are planning to ga... Read More