Archive

We've heard it all over the country, that Occupy encampments must come down because of "health and safety concerns."That was the justification offered by UC Davis Chancellor Katehi in a statement issued on Friday, November 18, 2011, calling for tents at the fledging Occupy UC Davis encampment to "be peacefully removed" by 3 pm that afternoon. Later that day, brave students sat cross-legg... Read More

Catherine CrumpACLU National OfficeIn a victory for the privacy rights of everyone with a cell phone, a court has held that law enforcement agents must get a warrant to access cell phone location records. The ACLU, ACLU of Texas and Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a brief urging the court to adopt exactly this position. The Constitution requires nothing less.In the case, the government as... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC), the Asian Law Caucus (ALC), and the San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA) have sent a joint letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller in advance of his visit to San Francisco today asking him to address issues of racial profiling and Islamophobia. Read More

Today the ACLU of Northern California and the National Lawyers' Guild filed a lawsuitin federal court against the Oakland Police Department (OPD) for its egregious constitutional violations against Occupy Oakland demonstrators. The lawsuit asks for an emergency temporary restraining order to stop police violence against political protesters. The restraining order is urgent because another police e... Read More

By Sandra FultonACLU Washington Legislative OfficeToday in the Senate there was a major win for freedom of speech and the Internet. In a largely partisan vote Senate Democrats defeated a resolution introduced by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) which would have overturned the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) open Internet rules that are set to go into effect this month.Though the FCC's... Read More

Today, a coalition of groups advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a U.S. District Court decision that rejected a move to vacate the historic August 2010 ruling that invalidated Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that stripped the freedom to marry from same-sex couples in Califor... Read More

The Oakland Police Department oversaw the use of excessive force against Occupy Oakland demonstrators, and now the department is refusing to hand over information about what really happened. Read More

The day after an enormous peaceful demonstration, and the first general strike this country has seen since the 1940s, some of the focus has turned to bonfires and tear gas. But as we continue looking into what happened during late-night clashes between demonstrators and the police, let's not forget the voices of the thousands upon thousands of people who peacefully came together and marched throug... Read More

In response to the Oakland Police Department’s (OPD) transformation last week of downtown Oakland into this battle zone-like scene, the ACLU of Northern California and the National Lawyers’ Guild demanded that OPD conduct a full and independent investigation of the recent enforcement actions on Occupy Oakland.On October 31, we received a letter from OPD informing us that it had opened up an Intern... Read More

Putting an end to a divisive four year dispute, the City of Antioch last night agreed to a settlement in Williams v. Antioch, a class action civil rights lawsuit brought by five African American women. The suit accused the City of Antioch and its police department of engaging in a concerted campaign of intimidation, harassment and discrimination against African American families who get federal as... Read More