Archive

Last week, LA Weekly ran a story indicating that the Los Angeles Police Department is using a device called a "Stingray" to track cell phones. Law enforcement seems to think that because these devices can track cell phones without going to the trouble of even interacting with mobile carriers, they don't need a search warrant. Please tell Governor Brown to sign the Location Privacy Act of 2012 into... Read More

Several of the state’s leading reproductive rights groups applauded Governor Brown for signing SB 623, an important bill authored by Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) that will allow the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), to continue evaluating the safety, effectiveness and satisfaction rates of early abortions performed by nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and physic... Read More

This morning the ACLU of Northern California's important DNA privacy case, Haskell v. Harris, was reheard by an 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. I argued that the current California law – which says that DNA has to be collected from anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony, whether or not they are ever charged or convicted – is unconstitutional and wrong. Collecting DNA at the point of arre... Read More

On Sep. 19, 2012, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will rehear the ACLU of Northern California's federal class-action challenge to a California law that mandates that DNA is collected from anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony, whether or not they are ever charged or convicted. The oral argument is scheduled for 10am in Courtroom 1 at the James R. Browning US Courthouse in San Francisco. Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed suit charging that the Dinuba Unified School District and the State of California were violating students' fundamental right to equal educational opportunity. Read More

Just shy of the one-year anniversary of the inaugural Occupy Wall Street protests, the ACLU of Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Guardian obtained initial documents from the FBI about surveillance of Occupy demonstrations in the region.The documents came after an ACLU-NC lawsuit filed after the FBI refused to release any documents in a Freedom of Information Act req... Read More

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a popular definition of insanity. Those of us across the country trying repeatedly to pass bills that would prohibit the shackling of pregnant women in jails and prisons are hardly insane. Dedicated? Yes. Stubborn? Possibly. Unwilling to accept women suffering? Absolutely.This year marks the third attempt to get a signature on ... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California today announced its endorsement of Proposition 30, the Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act. Read More

A federal court in Sacramento issued a preliminary injunction this week protecting the free speech rights of a deputy sheriff in Trinity County to speak out about drug legalization and other political issues, in a suit brought by the ACLU of Northern California and the law firm of Keker and Van Nest LLP.The plaintiff in the case is Mark Potts, a deputy sheriff in the Trinity County Sheriff's Depar... Read More

The state Supreme Court has dismissed review of a case centering on whether federal law pre-empts local medical marijuana regulations, pulling the plug on a proceeding that advocates and opponents once hoped would offer guidance in a wildly uncertain area of law.Noting that parties had dropped their disagreement over federal pre-emption and pointing to the fact Long Beach has abandoned the city or... Read More