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"My greatest hope for Robby is that he will just grow up accepting and loving himself," said his mother, Tracy Martinazzi, who took on a school district -- and a way of thinking -- that allowed her son to be the victim of name-calling, taunts, and, finally, brutal physical abuse based on his sexual orientation."And I really want my son to grow up without a victim mentality. I want him to be able t... Read More

"I can't remember a day at school when I wasn't called a faggot or gay," said Robby Martinazzi. Throughout elementary and middle school, Robby had been the target of taunts, physical abuse, and name-calling based on his sexual orientation. After years of asking officials at his Lake County school district to intervene, Robby's parents called the ACLU of Northern California.The result was a compreh... Read More

The rights of two African-American students were violated when they were expelled from Deer Valley High School following an off-campus incident in which police officers pepper-sprayed the students and forcefully arrested them, a judge ruled in May 2008. The judge overturned the expulsions. Read More

In 2001, an African-American student at Grace Davis High School in Modesto was involved in a fight with another student over race–the other student called him a "nigger." While the black student was suspended for more than a month and then transferred to another school, the white student was suspended only briefly.The African-American student's family filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of ... Read More

It was a child's simple refusal to give up a bandana belonging to his recently deceased grandfather that led to a landmark settlement regarding discriminatory discipline against Native-American students at the hands of the Bishop Union Elementary School District (BUESD). Bishop, located in the eastern Sierras, has a population of about 3,400, with approximately 1,500 members of the Paiute Tribe... Read More

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Would you allow a stranger to sift through your purse or wallet and take your driver's license? Would you want your children or grandchildren to tell passers-by on the street what school they attend or their student ID numbers?Of course not. You know it is important to protect your and your family's personal information.But any time that tiny computer chips called Radio Frequency Identification (R... Read More

A settlement was finalized September 16 between the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) in its case involving Kebin Reyes, a U.S. citizen who was six years old when he was illegally detained for ten hours by immigration officials. We argued that Kebin's constitutional rights were violated when he was taken from his home in San Rafael... Read More

In case you missed it on our National ACLU blog, here is an entry written by the ACLU's Matt Bors about federal policies that allow DHS to search international travelers without consent or any suspicion of wrongdoing:Previously we've discussed the push to search under travellers' clothes with the naked machine and the million nameson the terrorist watch list. The latest Civil Discourse comic exami... Read More

We have blogged about the invasive new border search policies that allow copying of books, documents and data, as well as intrusive questioning, all without probable cause and in conflict with decades of legal precedents.The Travelers' Privacy Protection Act restores privacy protections, while still enabling federal border agents to retain foreign intelligence information by obtaining a warrant.Se... Read More