Legal Docket

This is a civil rights class action arising from unconstitutional and unlawful actions taken by the Oakland Police Department (“OPD”) in response to a peaceful nonviolent antiwar demonstration at the Port of Oakland on April 7, 2003. The named individual plaintiffs are demonstrators, legal observers, videographers, journalists, and dockworkers who were in the vicinity of the April 7th demonstratio... Read More

The landmark case Clement v. California Department of Corrections was brought on behalf of Pelican Bay prisoner Frank Clement by the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and the Prison Law Office. Clement filed a federal court challenge to the California Department of Corrections policy prohibiting inmates at the prison from receiving any mail that contains material printed from the Internet. A ... Read More

Filed in 1999 on behalf of African-American, Latino, and Pilipino American applicants to UC Berkeley, Castaneda v. Regents of the University of California alleged that the university's admission procedures unfairly disadvantaged applicants of color in violation of their federal civil rights by not taking into account the full range of indicators of "merit." The parties were able to settle the case... Read More

The federal government settles a lawsuit that made public, for the first time, hundreds of records about the government's secret "No-Fly" list. Read More

A historic ruling holds that schools must take steps to eliminate harassment when they learn that lesbian, gay, or bisexual students are abused at school. Read More

Racial profiling by law enforcement has long plagued communities of color. The 2003 settlement in our racial profiling case established a moratorium on California Highway Patrol consent searches.

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The Visalia Unified School District has agreed to adopt sweeping reforms to address anti-gay harassment, including groundbreaking measures to train staff and students with the goal of preventing harassment before it happens.The settlement ends a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union over routine harassment of lesbian and gay students, some of whom were then forced into a spec... Read More

ACLU Amicus Brief asking the California Supreme Court to determine the extent to which the Constitution limits the state's power to authorize a content-based injunction restraining a private individual's criticism of his previous employer. Read More

ACLU Foundation of Northern California Amicus Brief arguing that if a school superintendent does not offend the First Amendment by retaliating for the speech at issue in this case would be to find that teachers are automatons – that every moment of class time can be scripted, and that the school administrators can control every classroom utterance even if they have no cons... Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a discrimination lawsuit against Northwest Airlines for refusing to allow Arshad Chowdhury, a 26-year-old Bangladeshi-American, to board a Northwest flight even though he posed no security threat. The complaint was filed on the same day and in collaboration with four other similar complaints filed across the country by other ACLU affiliates against... Read More

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal rejects an attempt by the French courts to force Yahoo! to block French users' access to web pages that contain speech related to Nazism. The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed an influential amicus brief in the case. Read More

California’s Contraception Equity Act is a protective health measure that promotes important workers’ rights. No constitutional principle prohibits Catholic Charities’ employees from receiving the protection this law affords to millions of workers throughout the state. The Women’s Contraception Equity Act (“Contraception Equity Act”) requires employment health insurance policies that include pr... Read More