News

With a 5-1 vote in the Senate’s Public Safety Committee today, Senator Mark Leno’s Senate Bill 1286 will advance in the California Legislature. The bill gives the public access to crucial information about how police departments handle the most serious uses of force and confirmed instances of officer misconduct. Read More

SACRAMENTO–Nearly two hundred ACLU members and allies rallied at the steps of the Capitol alongside state Senator Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) today in support of legislation to curb police abuse in California, specifically Senate Bill 443 (Mitchell) and Senate Bill 1286 (Leno).“Police abuse can take many forms,” said Norma Chavez-Peterson, Executive Director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperia... Read More

Media Contact for GSA Network: Brittaney Carter, Communications Manager, (415) 612‐2402, bcarter@gsanetwork.org(Clovis, CA, April 5, 2016) On Wednesday, April 6, the Clovis Unified School District Governing Board will convene to vote on removing gendered provisions of its student dress code. Tomorrow’s meeting follows a vote on January 27, 2016, where the Board unexpectedly kept in place an outdat... Read More

Download the Spring 2016 ACLU of Northern California Newsletter and read about our latest events and initiatives. Read More

This equation of anti-Semitism and “anti-Zionism” threatens free speech principles. In the area of free speech, clarity and specificity are essential to preserve the free flow of ideas. Read More

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice urged local courts nationwide to put an end to policies that penalize people simply for being poor – including the practice of suspending driver’s licenses when individuals miss payments on fines. This practice is all too common in California traffic courts, and is not prevented by amnesty policies that went into place last year.Today, a coalition of legal... Read More

The ACLU of Northern California today asked the Supreme Court of California to provide justice to people unlawfully sentenced as teenagers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Read More

In an effort to improve transparency, accountability and trust between law enforcement and the public, Senator Mark Leno has introduced SB 1286, a bill allowing greater public access to peace officer records related to serious uses of force and sustained charges of misconduct. Read More

Last night, the Manteca Unified School District voted to update the dress code as part of a settlement with the ACLU of Northern California, which sued two Sierra High School officials on behalf of a lesbian student in October 2015. Eleventh-grader Taylor Victor was singled out, chastised, and censored after wearing a shirt to school identifying herself as a proud member of the LGBT community. Read More

Legal and scientific experts are warning that California’s proposed lethal injection protocols were created without the transparency and public participation required by law and that these untested execution procedures will amount to human experimentation, with a grave risk that something will go terribly wrong. Read More

The ACLU of California today released a report that finds county jails are putting people’s health at risk by denying, delaying, and ignoring crucial reproductive health care. Read More

The following can be attributed to Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, Director of Criminal Justice and Drug Policy for the ACLU of California:The governor’s proposed state budget released today includes the current Department of Finance estimate of savings resulting from Proposition 47. This first estimate puts FY 2015-16 savings at just $29.3 million, far below all previous estimates and despite a clearly ... Read More