News

In recognition of this fact, today, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California released a Know Your Rights guide designed specifically for people of color. It contains critical information they need to know about their constitutional rights during a police stop. It further provides important tips for interacting with law enforcement, whether someone is stopped while they are on foot, in their vehi... Read More

A federal district judge issued an emergency order that requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to test all people detained and all staff at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center for COVID-19. Documents show the more than 50% of detainees tested are positive for COVID-19. Read More

This morning, a federal judge granted extraordinary relief -- weekly rapid testing, no new intakes, and a dorm for COVID-positive detainees -- for all immigrants detained at Mesa Verde Detention Facility in the wake of a COVID-19 outbreak that hospitalized two detainees and infected at least 7 others. Read More

California state law is clear: Secretary of State Alex Padilla has the discretion to take measures to ensure that the Arabic- and Somali-speaking voters of Fresno and San Diego Counties, respectively, can cast their ballots in the November 2020 election. Despite testimony from these communities showing that they have been unable to participate in elections due to language barriers, Secretary Padil... Read More

Today, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California sent a letter to Facebook demanding information about what caused Facebook to delete the Black Zebra Productions page, a Black-led independent journalism outlet that provides critical resources and information to thousands of people fighting state violence against Black people. The sudden and unwarranted removal of this page was an affront to the o... Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a class action lawsuit demanding that the Tulare County Sheriff take immediate measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in jails. Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundations of Southern and Northern California today sent a letter to the Greenfield Union School District in Bakersfield, expressing deep concern that “the district has created a hostile environment for Black students and staff in its schools by subjecting them to differential treatment and degrading, off-handed comments.” Read More

ACLU Foundation of Northern California and ACLU Minnesota along with Color of Change and MediaJustice have sent a letter to Twitter this morning demanding that they take immediate action to prevent its developers from facilitating government surveillance of its users. Dataminr, a Twitter developer, has provided law enforcement with tweets by activists organizing and participating in ongoing demons... Read More

Today, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed an Amicus brief to support groups who are representing unhoused people and requesting to intervene in legal action between UC Hastings and the City of San Francisco concerning conditions in the Tenderloin neighborhood. The settlement proposed by the parties would directly impact the lives of unhoused people whose voices have been excluded fro... Read More

Today, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California settled a lawsuit with Fresno County over the chief elections official’s removal of a polling place at Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno – all because the church refused to cover up Black Lives Matter banners on church property. Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area submitted a demand letter to the City of Sacramento this morning urging the City to drop all charges against individuals for violating the City’s June 1 curfew order. Seventy-two individuals were arrested and charged for violating the order, which imposed a sweeping ban on public as... Read More

In January 2019, the ACLU led a coalition of over 80 civil rights groups calling on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to stop selling face recognition technology to law enforcement. Google heeded these calls early on. Microsoft instead responded with a legislative effort in multiple states to legitimize law enforcement use of the technology. The ACLU, together with a coalition of groups, earlier this ... Read More