Blog

Tribal sovereignty is once again under attack. In June, the Supreme Court issued a devastating ruling in Oklahoma v Castro-Huerta, giving states unprecedented power to prosecute crimes in Indian country at the expense of Indigenous people and tribal sovereignty. Read More

Here in the Bay Area, we must do everything we can right now to bolster privacy protections, not build more surveillance. Read More

Governor Newsom’s so-called “CARE Court” plan would create a new court system that subjects unhoused people with mental health disabilities to involuntary treatment. Read More

The ACLU of Northern California fights for Californians’ bodily autonomy and the right to have children, not have children, and parent the children we have with dignity and safety. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a devastating step back by [dismantling/overturning] Roe v. Wade and nearly 50 years of precedent guaranteeing the constitutional right to abortion, we know that Roe was never e... Read More

In May 2022, the United States Department of the Interior released Volume 1 of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Report, investigating the centuries-long project that forcibly separated hundreds of thousands of Native American children from their families and tribes. In addition to documenting abuses at these schools, the investigation located 408 schools across 37 states and identifie... Read More

Californians’ right to bodily autonomy—to make decisions over one’s own life and future—is a deeply held value in our diverse state. This includes the right to abortion. A leaked draft of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion recently revealed the Court’s intention to explicitly overturn Roe v. Wade and nearly 50 years of precedent guaranteeing the constitutional right to abortion. Read More

We can increase equality, justice, and safety without resorting to criminalization and surveillance. Read More

Our year-long investigation uncovered records that show California Highway Patrol (CHP) spying on protesters for racial justice in cities up and down the state Read More

Rap lyrics are protected free speech under the First Amendment. But all too often in trial after trial of Black men, prosecutors introduce this form of artistic expression to secure convictions for serious crimes carrying long prison sentences. Simply put, rap is unfairly seen in the courts, not as an art form, but as inherently incriminating evidence. Read More

Scanning QR codes instead of ordering from a physical menu is a way for companies to insert all the machinery of the online advertising ecosystem between you and your food. Read More

Tech companies and police forces would like us to believe that there is nothing we can do to stop harmful surveillance technologies like face recognition. We reject that narrative. Read More

The ACLU News archive, dating back to 1945, documents the various forms of legalized housing discrimination leveled at Black people in Northern California, and also charts severe backlash to progress, whenever it was made. It provides a snapshot of the ways that businesses, the state, and individuals partnered to exclude Black people from the accumulation of wealth through dispossession and the de... Read More