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Last week, LA Weekly ran a story indicating that the Los Angeles Police Department is using a device called a "Stingray" to track cell phones. Law enforcement seems to think that because these devices can track cell phones without going to the trouble of even interacting with mobile carriers, they don't need a search warrant. Please tell Governor Brown to sign the Location Privacy Act of 2012 into... Read More

This morning the ACLU of Northern California's important DNA privacy case, Haskell v. Harris, was reheard by an 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. I argued that the current California law – which says that DNA has to be collected from anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony, whether or not they are ever charged or convicted – is unconstitutional and wrong. Collecting DNA at the point of arre... Read More

Just shy of the one-year anniversary of the inaugural Occupy Wall Street protests, the ACLU of Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Guardian obtained initial documents from the FBI about surveillance of Occupy demonstrations in the region.The documents came after an ACLU-NC lawsuit filed after the FBI refused to release any documents in a Freedom of Information Act req... Read More

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a popular definition of insanity. Those of us across the country trying repeatedly to pass bills that would prohibit the shackling of pregnant women in jails and prisons are hardly insane. Dedicated? Yes. Stubborn? Possibly. Unwilling to accept women suffering? Absolutely.This year marks the third attempt to get a signature on ... Read More

The state Supreme Court has dismissed review of a case centering on whether federal law pre-empts local medical marijuana regulations, pulling the plug on a proceeding that advocates and opponents once hoped would offer guidance in a wildly uncertain area of law.Noting that parties had dropped their disagreement over federal pre-emption and pointing to the fact Long Beach has abandoned the city or... Read More

A federal court in Sacramento issued a preliminary injunction this week protecting the free speech rights of a deputy sheriff in Trinity County to speak out about drug legalization and other political issues, in a suit brought by the ACLU of Northern California and the law firm of Keker and Van Nest LLP.The plaintiff in the case is Mark Potts, a deputy sheriff in the Trinity County Sheriff's Depar... Read More

California state law mandates that sexual health education in public schools be comprehensive, medically accurate, science-based, and bias-free. So why are Clovis Unified High Schools teaching teens from a book that makes no mention of condoms, even in chapters about HIV/AIDS and on preventing STDs and unintended pregnancy?Recent events, such as Representative Akin’s ill-informed statements a... Read More

Today the Location Privacy Act of 2012 passed through the California Assembly with overwhelming bipartisan support. This is a critical step in protecting the privacy of all Californians in our modern world where a cell phone is closer to a necessity than a luxury.We shouldn't have to choose between using our smartphone and protecting our privacy. Unfortunately, outdated laws like the Electronic Co... Read More

In a victory for free speech on the Internet, social network giant Facebook last week corrected a mistake that had the unfortunate consequence of blocking political speech and affirmed its commitment to serving as a neutral platform for political advocacy. The controversy erupted when the social network, which positions itself as a key platform for reaching "a huge potential voter pool," rejected ... Read More

For more than a decade, the ACLU of Northern California has been working to ensure that sex education in public schools is science-based, free of bias, medically accurate and age-appropriate. The law we co-sponsored with Planned Parenthood in 2004 has become a model for other states and for the national REAL (Responsible Education About Life) Act. After years of Bush Administration support for ine... Read More

In the span of four years, California voters three times rejected a ballot initiative that would require doctors to notify a pregnant teen's parent before an abortion. Propositions 73, Proposition 85 and Proposition 4 all proposed to amend the state Constitution to reverse the state Supreme Court ruling in an ACLU lawsuit that teenagers have fundamental rights to decide whether to end an unintende... Read More

Until December 2008, California required that women reside here for six months before they were eligible to receive essential health services through the state's Access for Infants and Mothers program. The ACLU of Northern California joined with other public interest organizations to challenge the rule on behalf of Maternal and Child Health Access, a non-profit organization.The San Francisco Super... Read More