News

The California State Assembly passed a law designed to address the pervasive problem of school bullying by providing California schools with tools to create a safe school environment for all students. The bill is named in memory of Seth Walsh, a 13 year-old gay student from Tehachapi, California, who took his life in September 2010, after facing years of relentless anti-gay harassment at school. Read More

A judicial decision handed down today effectively ends the San Francisco Housing Authority's use of city-wide nuisance injunctions and dismisses all pending criminal cases against alleged violators. The injunctions are unconstitutional, vague, and overly restrictive to the point of infringing on an individual's ability "to exist in San Francisco," wrote the judge in his eight-page decision. Read More

The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released records today which show that Arizona, Nebraska, and other states broke the Federal Controlled Substances Act when they imported sodium thiopental, a dangerous controlled substance commonly used in executions that is no longer available in the U.S. The DEA released all import declarations filed for sodium thiopental from January 1, 2010, t... Read More

The ACLU contacted a school district in northern California today because its Internet filtering software had been improperly configured to block access to web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. The organization has sent demand letters to school districts across the country as part of the organization's national "Don't Filter Me" initiative, which seeks t... Read More

New records handed over by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to the ACLU of Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Guardian reveal that state prison officials across the country may have broken the law when importing sodium thiopental, an anesthetic used in lethal injections which has been in scarce supply since 2009. Read More

The office of Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley has failed to disclose public documents on the costs of prosecuting capital cases, according to a lawsuit filed today by the ACLU of California on behalf of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. The lawsuit is for public records on expenses related to homicide cases, and discretionary spending gen... Read More

Sacramento – In his revised 2011-12 state budget, Governor Brown today recommitted to his criminal justice realignment plan, but left out safe and simple sentencing reforms that would ensure that the plan is effective and affordable. The governor's plan keeps people convicted of minor felonies at the county level instead of in state prison. Advocates highlighted, however, that a key part of the so... Read More

Today the ACLU of California sent an open letter to Governor Jerry Brown, Senate President Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez asking that two key reforms targeting waste in prison spending are included in the May revised budget. These two reforms alone would save the state hundreds of millions annually: making possession of a small amount of drugs for personal use a misdemeanor inst... Read More

In April, following months of lively debate, city officials in the town of Redding, California, adopted a policy that restricts leafletting in the plaza in front of the Redding Municipal Library. On May 4, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which challenged the policy on the ground that it violates the First Amendment and the California Constitution, obtained a temporary re... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and The San Francisco Bay Guardian (The Guardian) filed a preliminary injunction motion today, asking the court to order the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to disclose records regarding the worldwide scramble for execution drugs by state prison officials. The ACLU of Northern California and The Guardian filed a federal laws... Read More

Download the Spring 2011 ACLU of Northern California Newsletter and read about our latest events and initiatives. Read More

Today the California Assembly Education Committee passed Seth's Law in a 7-3 vote. AB 9, also known as Seth's Law, is a comprehensive bill that addresses school bullying by providing California schools with specific tools to prevent and address the pervasive problem in order to create a safe school environment for all students. The bill is named "Seth's Law"' in memory of Seth Walsh, a 13 year-old... Read More