News

The ACLU of California supports the striking prisoners' demands to end cruel and inhumane conditions in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison. These conditions include prolonged, solitary confinement in small, windowless concrete boxes with little to no human interaction and other severe physical deprivations.Not only are such conditions inhumane and harmful, but they also je... Read More

San Francisco – The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) today urged San Francisco Superior Court to order the city's Director of Elections, John Arntz, to remove the proposed circumcision ban from the ballot now. In an amicus curiae brief filed today, the ACLU of Northern California argues that Article 50 is clearly invalid because California law explicitly preve... Read More

Download the Summer 2011 ACLU of Northern California Newsletter and read about our latest events and initiatives. Read More

Just three death sentences were handed down in California from January to June 2011 compared with the same period last year when there were 13, according to a new report released today by the ACLU of Northern California. This is the lowest number of new death sentences in a six month period since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. Read More

Today the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education reached a significant settlement with the Tehachapi Unified School District, following an investigation into harassment of Seth Walsh based on his non-conformity with gender stereotypes. Seth Walsh killed himself in September 2010 after enduring years of bullying and harassment at school. (Please see the DOJ press release here)T... Read More

The Senate Education Committee today passed a law designed to address the pervasive problem of school bullying by providing California schools with tools to create a safe school environment for all students. The bill is named in memory of Seth Walsh, a 13 year-old gay student from Tehachapi, California, who took his life in September 2010, after facing years of relentless anti-gay harassment at sc... Read More

A Superior Court judge granted a preliminary injunction to prevent the City of Redding from enforcing a policy at its library that would have restricted the ability of residents to share their ideas and opinions in front of the library through peaceful leafleting. The ACLU of Northern California and the North State Tea Party teamed up to enjoin specific sections of the policy because it violates t... Read More

The California State Assembly passed a law designed to address the pervasive problem of school bullying by providing California schools with tools to create a safe school environment for all students. The bill is named in memory of Seth Walsh, a 13 year-old gay student from Tehachapi, California, who took his life in September 2010, after facing years of relentless anti-gay harassment at school. Read More

A judicial decision handed down today effectively ends the San Francisco Housing Authority's use of city-wide nuisance injunctions and dismisses all pending criminal cases against alleged violators. The injunctions are unconstitutional, vague, and overly restrictive to the point of infringing on an individual's ability "to exist in San Francisco," wrote the judge in his eight-page decision. Read More

The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released records today which show that Arizona, Nebraska, and other states broke the Federal Controlled Substances Act when they imported sodium thiopental, a dangerous controlled substance commonly used in executions that is no longer available in the U.S. The DEA released all import declarations filed for sodium thiopental from January 1, 2010, t... Read More

The ACLU contacted a school district in northern California today because its Internet filtering software had been improperly configured to block access to web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. The organization has sent demand letters to school districts across the country as part of the organization's national "Don't Filter Me" initiative, which seeks t... Read More

New records handed over by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to the ACLU of Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Guardian reveal that state prison officials across the country may have broken the law when importing sodium thiopental, an anesthetic used in lethal injections which has been in scarce supply since 2009. Read More