Archive

In response to recent sweeps, in which the City and its agents have taken, discarded and/or destroyed property belonging to homeless individuals, a coalition of legal groups today delivered a demand letter to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee charging that these practices are unlawful. Read More

Santa Clara County has passed a landmark law to stop secret and discriminatory surveillance. The passage of this new law comes on the heels of San Jose's secret acquisition of a drone, the Santa Clara Sheriff's attempt to quietly buy an invasive cell phone tracking device, and revelations that Fresno and Bay Area police departments have been using social networking software that monitors Black Liv... Read More

The ACLU of California is monitoring possible voter intimidation in Siskiyou County. The sheriff and other county officials have possibly been engaged in a targeted voter intimidation campaign resulting in widespread fear of voting and unlawful and retaliatory arrest. Read More

In a vote this morning, the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors made Santa Clara the first county in the nation to institute consistent transparency, accountability and oversight measures for all surveillance decisions with a groundbreaking ordinance. Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal lawsuit against the fifth largest health care system in the U.S., Dignity Health, because it denies transgender employees health insurance coverage for medically necessary treatments for gender dysphoria. Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a suit under the California Public Records Act to demand records from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation related to lethal injection. The ACLU Foundation of Northern California issued this request for documents in advance of the department's promulgation of a new, one-drug lethal injection protocol, so that the ACLU Foundati... Read More

Despite marijuana usage rates being similar across racial and ethnic lines, data provided by the Los Angeles and Fresno Police Departments show that black and Latino people in those cities were issued marijuana possession citations at higher rates than white people in the years immediately following the penalty change from misdemeanor to infraction. The data also reveal that marijuana possession e... Read More

Police transparency law, SB 1286, was held in the Senate Appropriations committee today. The law would have shined light on how police departments handle confirmed instances of officer misconduct and serious uses of force. Today is a sad day for transparency, accountability, and justice in California. Read More

Every four years, the U.S. explodes into a frenzy with coverage and commentary about the next President of the United States. You literally have to be hiding under a rock right now not to be bombarded with Clinton, Sanders, and Trump coverage. Read More

It’s pretty simple: our social media content is protected by the First Amendment. That’s why the ACLU is concerned that the federal government is pressuring social media companies to limit content on platforms that hundreds of millions of people use every day. Read More