Archive

Yesterday, California lawmakers took an important step towards updating reader privacy for the digital age. The California Assembly Judiciary Committee passed the Reader Privacy Act of 2011 (SB 602) with a bipartisan vote of 8-2.The Reader Privacy Act is authored by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo), co-sponsored by the ACLU of California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and su... Read More

This report reviews both legal and policy considerations for police practices in immigrant communities – from traffic stops and unnecessary arrests to immigration-based detention in local jails, including vechicle checkpoints and impoundments. Details are included on the financial and human costs of these practices, including several personal stories.The report is accompanied by a summary of cost-... Read More

La "Ley de Seth" es una nueva ley que fortalece leyes estatales existentes contra el hostigamiento para ayudar a proteger a todos los estudiantes de las escuelas públicas de California. La Ley de Seth requiere que las escuelas públicas de California actualicen sus politicas y programas contra el hostigamiento, y se enfoquen en proteger a los estudiantes que son hostigados por su orientación sexual... Read More

A Superior Court judge granted a preliminary injunction to prevent the City of Redding from enforcing a policy at its library that would have restricted the ability of residents to share their ideas and opinions in front of the library through peaceful leafleting. The ACLU of Northern California and the North State Tea Party teamed up to enjoin specific sections of the policy because it violates t... Read More

Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, found a strange device attached to his car. When he posted a photo of it online, the FBI showed up at his home and wanted their GPS tracking device back. The FBI had been tracking Afifi's movements without a warrant. Read More

A Fact Sheet from the ACLU of California, Drug Policy Alliance and The Ella Baker CenterIt's time to reform California's sentencing laws. Californians are fed up with misguided policies that have packed our prisons & jails, drained our state bud­get and led to one of the highest rates of recidivism in the country.The recent Plata v. Brown decision from the U.S. Supreme Court requires the D... Read More

The California State Assembly passed a law designed to address the pervasive problem of school bullying by providing California schools with tools to create a safe school environment for all students. The bill is named in memory of Seth Walsh, a 13 year-old gay student from Tehachapi, California, who took his life in September 2010, after facing years of relentless anti-gay harassment at school. Read More

Catherine CrumpACLU National OfficeOn Friday, the ACLU of Delaware filed a brief with the Delaware Supreme Court arguing that law enforcement agents should not be permitted to attach a GPS device to a car without getting a search warrant. The brief explains that because GPS tracking is an invasive form of surveillance capable of revealing many private facts about a person, a lower court was correc... Read More

A judicial decision handed down today effectively ends the San Francisco Housing Authority's use of city-wide nuisance injunctions and dismisses all pending criminal cases against alleged violators. The injunctions are unconstitutional, vague, and overly restrictive to the point of infringing on an individual's ability "to exist in San Francisco," wrote the judge in his eight-page decision. Read More

The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released records today which show that Arizona, Nebraska, and other states broke the Federal Controlled Substances Act when they imported sodium thiopental, a dangerous controlled substance commonly used in executions that is no longer available in the U.S. The DEA released all import declarations filed for sodium thiopental from January 1, 2010, t... Read More