News

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter today announced that the U.S. armed forces will open all combat jobs, units, and schools to qualified women beginning next year, making no exceptions for any branch of the armed services. Read More

The ACLU today sent a letter demanding that Dignity Health, doing business as Mercy Medical Center Redding, a Catholic-affiliated hospital in California’s largest hospital network, stop unlawfully denying post-partum tubal ligation to patients based on religious doctrine. Read More

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the district court’s preliminary injunction in Texas, et al. v. U.S., enjoining President Obama’s immigration executive action initiatives. Read More

The ACLU of California today released a report that finds both successes and challenges in Prop 47’s first year. The report includes 40 county snapshots with information on public safety spending, incarceration and crime trends, and a decline of people sentenced for low-level felonies. Read More

The ACLU of Northern California and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office have reached a settlement agreement that will ensure that women are able to choose whether they receive pregnancy testing in the county’s jails. Read More

Download the Fall 2015 ACLU of Northern California Newsletter and read about our latest events and initiatives. Read More

Gov. Brown signed SB 589, a bill that protects the voting rights of citizens under conservatorship. The governor has created a new protection for more than 50,000 Californians living with disabilities to ensure they do not have their voting rights unfairly taken away. Read More

SACRAMENTO--Today Gov. Brown vetoed SB 249 (Hueso), a measure to create “Enhanced” Drivers Licenses (EDLs) to be used as an additional border-crossing identification document available only to U.S. citizens. EDLs employ outdated technology that would put Californians' private information at risk and open the door to high-tech racial profiling and employment discrimination.  “It... Read More

Today, in a landmark victory for Californians’ digital privacy rights, Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA, SB 178) into law. The bill, jointly authored by Senators Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Joel Anderson (R-Alpine), updates the state's privacy laws for the digital age by protecting Californians against warrantless surveillance of their d... Read More

Today, Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 953: The Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 into California law. Read More

Oakland From October 3 through October 10, a #CaravanForJustice featuring survivors of law enforcement violence and grassroots organizers will travel throughout California to mobilize communities of color against police brutality. Read More

In the midst of a national conversation about police transparency and accountability, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Law Offices of Amitai Schwartz filed a lawsuit today against the City of Hayward and its Police Department (Hayward PD) for charging the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) unlawful and excessive costs as the price of disclosing body worn camera footage r... Read More