News

Three organizations concerned with voting rights have filed a lawsuit in the First District Court of Appeal to clarify that people who have been sentenced for low-level, non-violent offenses under the state’s historic reform of criminal justice known as Realignment are entitled to vote in the 2012 elections and beyond. The suit asks the Court of Appeal to clarify the voting rights of more than 85,... Read More

Sacramento -- While the nation moves to limit women's access to reproductive health services, California is set to write a different story by removing barriers to abortion care. SB 1501, authored by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, would ensure women receive safe and early access to comprehensive reproductive health care by allowing Nurse Practitioners, Certified Nurse Midwives, and Physician As... Read More

With an eye towards ending punitive drug policies that have made the United States the world’s largest incarcerator and cost taxpayers billions of dollars a year, Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) on Friday introduced legislation to reduce the penalty for Californians who possess small amounts of drugs for their own personal use. The bill, SB 1506, co-sponsored by the ACLU of California, Drug Po... Read More

Today nineteen students and alumni filed a federal lawsuit against UC Davis over the University’s treatment of protesters during a Nov. 18 demonstration in which campus police were caught on video dousing seated protesters with pepper spray. The lawsuit seeks to determine why the University violated the demonstrators’ state and federal constitutional rights and seeks to result in better policies t... Read More

A federal appeals court today issued a historic decision upholding a lower court ruling that Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that excluded same-sex couples from marriage in the state, violates the U.S. Constitution. Read More

Supervisor Jane Kim introduced legislation before the Board of Supervisors today that would prohibit members of the San Francisco Police Department working with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) from collecting intelligence on San Franciscans unless there is reasonable suspicion that they are involved in significant criminal activity. Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC), the Asian Law Caucus (ALC), and the San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA) have sent a joint letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller in advance of his visit to San Francisco today asking him to address issues of racial profiling and Islamophobia. Read More

Today the ACLU of Northern California and the National Lawyers' Guild filed a lawsuitin federal court against the Oakland Police Department (OPD) for its egregious constitutional violations against Occupy Oakland demonstrators. The lawsuit asks for an emergency temporary restraining order to stop police violence against political protesters. The restraining order is urgent because another police e... Read More

Today, a coalition of groups advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a U.S. District Court decision that rejected a move to vacate the historic August 2010 ruling that invalidated Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that stripped the freedom to marry from same-sex couples in Califor... Read More

Putting an end to a divisive four year dispute, the City of Antioch last night agreed to a settlement in Williams v. Antioch, a class action civil rights lawsuit brought by five African American women. The suit accused the City of Antioch and its police department of engaging in a concerted campaign of intimidation, harassment and discrimination against African American families who get federal as... Read More

The City of Fresno is violating the constitutional rights of homeless people whose personal possessions are being destroyed and confiscated in ongoing raids, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court by civil rights groups. The groups are seeking a temporary restraining order and a permanent injunction to stop the relentless attacks on Fresno’s homeless residents. The lawsuit was filed i... Read More

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