1980s

California's new wave of immigration was met by repressive laws on both federal and state levels. The ACLU-NC litigated against a probe of bilingual ballot seekers ordered by the U.S. Attorney and fought INS raids at workplaces and in immigrant neighborhoods. 

The affiliate founded the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, which pursued lawsuits on behalf of gay men and lesbians who experienced employment discrimination.  The Project authored and helped to implement the first domestic partnership ordinances in the country, laws that became a model for hundreds of other cities and states. 

When the AIDS epidemic emerged, the ACLU-NC took on the urgent task of ensuring that the rights of people with AIDS and HIV were not trampled by rash, shortsighted or homophobic government policies.

The legalization of abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court gave rise to a rabid anti-choice movement. In California, the ACLU-NC sought to maintain Medi-Cal funding for abortion for indigent women, after federal funding was cut off.  In 1982, the ACLU-NC won a landmark victory in the California Supreme Court. Relying on the privacy amendment in the state Constitution, Justice Matthew Tobriner wrote, "Once the state furnishes medical care to poor women in general, it cannot withdraw part of that care solely because a woman exercised her constitutional right to have an abortion." 

Another landmark case guaranteed that teenagers could receive an abortion without requiring them to have parental or judicial consent.