Archive

"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

"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

San Francisco – For the past three years, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department has collaborated with the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its officers to stop and search people who appear to be Latino, interrogate them about their immigration status based on their perceived race, and detain them in the County jail without lawful authority. The Sheriff’s Department and... Read More

On blogs, personal and political websites, and through user-generated content sites, ordinary citizens in extraordinary numbers are recreating a public sphere and reinvigorating the democratic debate at the core of our political system. 46% of Americans have already used the Internet in connection with the political campaign- more than during all of 2004. User-generated content is playing a partic... Read More

"We didn't do anything wrong," said Victor Lopez, one of the Latino students at Rodriquez High School (RHS) who in March 2007 were lined up in front of their peers, accused of being gang members, and photographed by Fairfield police. "I was just talking to my friends. The police shouldn't assume we're gang members just because we're Latino and wearing certain colors. Lots of kids were wearing the ... Read More

Planning a vacation? Thinking about traveling outside the country?If you travel outside the United States, you can kiss your right to privacy, and perhaps your laptop, digital camera and cell phone, goodbye. With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information &mdash... Read More

The Federal Communications Commission chastised Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer applications today, calling the practice unreasonable and ordering Comcast to change its network management policies.Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, responded, "We applaud the FCC for taking enforcement action against Comcast. The nation's second largest Internet service pr... Read More

The California corrections department is using underground, non-public guidelines, rather than lawful regulations, to decide whether to transfer California prisoners to other states as far away as Mississippi and Tennessee. This means that inmates and their families do not know how the prisons decide whom to transfer. It also leaves open the possibility that prison officials are using arbitrary an... Read More

In a clear victory for free speech, a federal court once again held that the ACLU is right and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a law that would criminalize constitutionally protected speech on the Internet, is unconstitutional. This decision is the latest in the ACLU's 10-year battle to defend free speech on the Internet. The American Civil Liberties Union challen... Read More

Federal class action lawsuit filed in 2008 charging that the city of Antioch and its police department are engaged in a concerted campaign of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination against African-Americans who receive federal housing assistance. Read More