1990s

The beginning of the decade was marked by a massive effort to prevent the first execution in California in 25 years.  The ACLU-NC Death Penalty Project directly represented Robert Harris.  Unfortunately, our efforts, - all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court -- could not prevent the return of capital punishment to California. 

The Language Rights Project, an outgrowth of the ACLU-NC's immigrants rights work, created a groundbreaking docket of legal challenges to language and accent discrimination in employment, government services and businesses.

The affiliate made a special commitment to the expressive freedoms inherent to the high-tech revolution.  The ACLU-NC won key cases in support of the rights of library patrons to have access to the Internet, despite government and pro-censorship forces arrayed against them. 

Recognizing the need to encourage a new generation of civil libertarians, the affiliate founded the Howard A. Friedman First Amendment Project for high school students.  These young activists helped create a fresh docket of students' rights cases including suppression of student expression in murals, high school drug testing and support for lesbian and gay students.

We witnessed the upsurge in right-wing ballot initiatives on race, immigration, criminal justice and gay rights.  Proposition 187 would have cut off education, health care and all government services to undocumented immigrants.  We lost at the ballot box, but defeated the measure in court.  Proposition 209 eliminated affirmative action.  Proposition 227 scrapped bilingual education. 

Initiatives were passed to enact the Three Strikes Law, to expand the death penalty and to incarcerate juveniles as adults. 

The Racial Justice Project, working with other civil rights groups, filed successful lawsuits challenging unequal admissions in the UC system and deplorable learning conditions in schools that served communities of color.

The Project launched the innovative "Driving While Black or Brown" campaign to expose and stop the widespread practice of racial profiling by police.  The campaign was replicated by the national ACLU and many other affiliates.