News

Today, the ACLU of Northern California filed a complaint with the California Department of Justice urging Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate the Oakland Unified School District’s racially discriminatory school closure plan, which disproportionately impacts Black students and families. Read More

Two new ACLU reports call on District Attorneys in Merced and Sacramento Counties to change policies that fuel mass incarceration, and racial disparities in sentencing Read More

Facing intense pressure from an ACLU-led coalition of nearly three dozen community organizations, Mayor London Breed has pulled her proposed ballot measure that would have gutted key provisions of San Francisco’s landmark surveillance oversight ordinance. Read More

The Court administers this additional fee known as the civil assessment without judicial review, adequate notice, or consideration for a person’s circumstances. The $300 charge is often six to eight times greater than the base fine for a traffic infraction in California. Read More

The ACLU of Northern California and our legal partners filed a lawsuit against the state of California and Pittsburg Unified School District for allegedly maintaining an illegal educational system where Black students, children of color with disabilities and English learners have been segregated in substandard learning environments, excluded from classrooms altogether through the use of unwarrante... Read More

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The pilot Gold Chains episode, “California Fugitive Slave Law,” examines a racist law that allowed white slaveholders to recapture formerly enslaved African Americans and terrorized the Black community. Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California is calling on state officials to ensure that its equity-focused COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan won’t leave some of California’s most vulnerable communities behind. Read More

Today, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California asks the court to deny the motions for preliminary civil injunctions filed by the San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera that would ban four people from a 50-square-block area of the Tenderloin who are alleged to have engaged in drug dealing. Read More

“Today, for the first time in state history, a white police officer has been held accountable for killing a Black man. Now, we can finally say George Floyd’s name and make it synonymous not only with grief, anger, and loss over his brutal murder, but with a moment of justice. But to be clear, true justice would mean George Floyd was alive today, with his fiancée, his daughter, and his family. Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California sent a letter to the Lemoore Union Elementary School District expressing deep concern for the District’s failure to provide all students with a distance learning option during the Covid-19 pandemic. The letter urges the District to immediately comply with public health guidance and the law to provide a high-quality distance learning option to all students... Read More

ACLU NorCal filed an appeal to the California Department of Education on behalf of a parent in the Novato Unified School District who uncovered data demonstrating that Black and Latinx students are disproportionately excluded from the San Marin High School STEM program, and that the district’s admissions process for the program perpetuates bias against students of color. Read More