Archive

The ACLU of Northern California urges Santa Clara County to keep its current immigration detainer policy and to reject the District Attorney's recommendation to adopt a policy that would allow enforcement of immigration detainers under certain circumstances. Read More

The ACLU of California took a position on over 118 bills before the legislature. This year stands as one of the most robust in advancing our civil liberties: the governor signed into law 12 of our priority bills. Read More

The ACLU of California announced Thursday that Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom will chair a blue ribbon panel that will study the complex legal and policy issues that must be resolved as California considers legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana for adults. Read More

Today is a frustrating day in California. Despite huge overwhelming support from California voters from across the state and political spectrum, Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed an historic sentencing reform bill that was sent to his desk with bipartisan support in the state Legislature. Read More

Gov. Jerry Brown today vetoed a bill that would have modestly reformed California’s drug sentencing laws for simple possession, significantly reduced incarceration costs for counties and helped the state end its ongoing incarceration crisis. Read More

Comedian and actor David Moss fell into hard times with a drug addiction that immediately became a struggle he couldn’t overcome. Addiction had landed him in a cycle of arrests – not just one or two times, but a whopping 14 times for the same charge: being under the influence of a narcotic. Read More

The facts prove that life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP) is swift, severe, and certain punishment. The reality is that people sentenced to LWOP have been condemned to die in prison and that’s what happens: They die in prison of natural causes, just like the majority of people sentenced to death. The differences: Sentencing people to death by execution is three times more expens... Read More

In 1942, San Leandro draftsman Fred Korematsu was jailed for refusing to obey President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 ordering all citizens of Japanese descent to report to relocation centers. Korematsu and his fiancée had intended to leave California to marry.The ACLU of Northern California took on Korematsu’s legal challenge and was nearly alone in challenging to the wartime r... Read More

Yesterday morning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral argument in the ACLU of Northern California’s lawsuit with the Electronic Frontier Foundation against Proposition 35. I told the court that Proposition 35 is too broad and violates the First Amendment. As the federal district court has already held, it affects too much protected speech, on too many websites, by too many p... Read More

Sacramento - Less than a month after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the nation’s plan to scale back federal prison sentences for low-level drug crimes, the California Assembly today passed an historic drug sentencing reform bill that will allow counties to significantly reduce incarceration costs by giving local prosecutors the flexibility to charge low-level, non-violent drug offense... Read More