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Sacramento -- While the nation moves to limit women's access to reproductive health services, California is set to write a different story by removing barriers to abortion care. SB 1501, authored by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, would ensure women receive safe and early access to comprehensive reproductive health care by allowing Nurse Practitioners, Certified Nurse Midwives, and Physician As... Read More

With an eye towards ending punitive drug policies that have made the United States the world’s largest incarcerator and cost taxpayers billions of dollars a year, Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) on Friday introduced legislation to reduce the penalty for Californians who possess small amounts of drugs for their own personal use. The bill, SB 1506, co-sponsored by the ACLU of California, Drug Po... Read More

By Chris CalabreseACLU Washington Legislative OfficeToday, the White House released a new policy paper on consumer privacy which may mark an important turning point in the effort to return control over how our online information is handled.The report contains two main elements. The first is a detailed description about what the administration believes are the core principles that should under... Read More

In the past week, the White House, the Federal Trade Commission, and the California Attorney General's Office have all released reports or announced agreements designed to promote consumer privacy. These announcements incorporate several good ideas that, if implemented and enforced, would give users more control over their own personal information. But the recent moves are just a starting point fo... Read More

UC Davis students filed a federal lawsuit over the University's treatment of protesters during a demonstration in which campus police doused seated protesters with pepper spray. Read More

Today nineteen students and alumni filed a federal lawsuit against UC Davis over the University’s treatment of protesters during a Nov. 18 demonstration in which campus police were caught on video dousing seated protesters with pepper spray. The lawsuit seeks to determine why the University violated the demonstrators’ state and federal constitutional rights and seeks to result in better policies t... Read More

The war on drugs has failed, and people are ready for a change. The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. One in every 31 adults is on probation, in jail or in prison. FBI figures show that over 800,000 people in the U.S. are arrested for marijuana offenses each year. The vast majority of these arrests are for low-level, nonviolent simple possession offenses. Read More

I'm heading to Palo Alto tomorrow for the Stanford Technology Law Review's symposium and looking forward to the first panel of the day, Taking Forgetting Seriously.The question of whether an individual should have the right to demand that organizations delete their data is getting a lot of increased attention, particularly in the European Union. In late January, EU Justice Justice Commissioner Viv... Read More

The right to vote is a fundamental right and all eligible individuals must be allowed to exercise their right. The California Constitution disenfranchises individuals on the basis of criminal conviction only if they are "imprisoned in state prison or...on parole as a result of the conviction of a felony." League of Women Voters of California v. McPherson, 145 Cal. App. 4th 1469 at 1486 (2006).Afte... Read More

A federal appeals court today issued a historic decision upholding a lower court ruling that Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that excluded same-sex couples from marriage in the state, violates the U.S. Constitution. Read More