Archive

For the third time in four years, voters in California rejected a measure that would have endangered the health and safety of pregnant teenagers. Proposition 4 represents a third strike against mandatory parental notification laws and the harms they cause.The ACLU of Northern California is pleased and proud that voters made it clear that the health and safety of young women must come first, before... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a writ petition before the California Supreme Court today urging the court to invalidate Proposition 8 if it passes. The petition charges that Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution’s core commitment to equality for everyone ... Read More

The California Attorney General, Equality California, and the nation’s leading LGBT legal groups agree that the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who married between June 16, 2008 and the possible passage of Proposition 8 are still valid in the state of California and must continue to be honored by the state. Read More

This report is a distillation of a roundtable discussion, which focused on the nature of the problem of school bias and pushout, how vulnerable youth populations intersect with one another, and the need to address these very complex and overlapping issues in a manner that is respectful of all students served by our education system. The report concludes with a discussion of various approaches that... Read More

All Mary Scott wanted was a quiet place to raise her girls. With high-ranking schools, low crime rates and plenty of affordable housing, Antioch seemed to fit the bill. That was before the police tried to run her out of town."When I first moved here things were smooth like I had expected," says Scott, who has four daughters and is fighting cancer. "Then I got bombarded by prejudice."Scott is not a... Read More

Cyberspace is no longer a separate world. Instead, more and more online applications and networked devices know exactly where you are in the real world and put that information to use. Knowing where you are can reveal details of your life that you may well wish to keep private – details about where and when you work, which clubs and groups you join, and who your friends are. You deserve the right ... Read More

The University of Washington and RSA today released a report on the significant privacy and security vulnerabilities of RFID-embedded Enhanced Drivers' Licenses and Passport cards. Read More

A broad coalition of public interest groups released two letters today calling on television networks and YouTube to protect online political speech in the final days of this election.These letters follow-up on an ACLU of Northern California and EFF blog post in August highlighting the importance of the Internet as a forum for political speech and calling on service providers and content owners to... Read More

Television networks should stop silencing political speech on the Internet, according to a letter the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Northern California and a coalition of public interest groups sent to four major television networks today. Several broadcasting companies have sent letters to YouTube demanding that they take down videos containing short clips of news coverage even when... Read More

On September 14, 2009 ACLU Foundation of Northern California and civil rights allies filed a motion to intervene in Associated General Contractors of America v. California Department of Transportation.  The lawsuit, currently pending in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, was brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation and seeks to dismantle Caltrans' Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) p... Read More