Legal Docket

Racial profiling by law enforcement has long plagued communities of color. The 2003 settlement in our racial profiling case established a moratorium on California Highway Patrol consent searches.

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The Visalia Unified School District has agreed to adopt sweeping reforms to address anti-gay harassment, including groundbreaking measures to train staff and students with the goal of preventing harassment before it happens.The settlement ends a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union over routine harassment of lesbian and gay students, some of whom were then forced into a spec... Read More

ACLU Amicus Brief asking the California Supreme Court to determine the extent to which the Constitution limits the state's power to authorize a content-based injunction restraining a private individual's criticism of his previous employer. Read More

ACLU Foundation of Northern California Amicus Brief arguing that if a school superintendent does not offend the First Amendment by retaliating for the speech at issue in this case would be to find that teachers are automatons – that every moment of class time can be scripted, and that the school administrators can control every classroom utterance even if they have no cons... Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a discrimination lawsuit against Northwest Airlines for refusing to allow Arshad Chowdhury, a 26-year-old Bangladeshi-American, to board a Northwest flight even though he posed no security threat. The complaint was filed on the same day and in collaboration with four other similar complaints filed across the country by other ACLU affiliates against... Read More

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal rejects an attempt by the French courts to force Yahoo! to block French users' access to web pages that contain speech related to Nazism. The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed an influential amicus brief in the case. Read More

California’s Contraception Equity Act is a protective health measure that promotes important workers’ rights. No constitutional principle prohibits Catholic Charities’ employees from receiving the protection this law affords to millions of workers throughout the state. The Women’s Contraception Equity Act (“Contraception Equity Act”) requires employment health insurance policies that include pr... Read More

The California Supreme Court strikes down the 1987 California law requiring teenagers under 18 to obtain parental or judicial consent to end a pregnancy. Read More

Physicians and patients file a class action suit in response to Prop 215’s threat to punish doctors if they are found to be recommending medical marijuana to their patients. Read More

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that San Francisco's Mount Davidson Cross violates the No Preference Clause of the California Constitution. Read More

The State of California is prohibited from using the gas chamber to execute condemned prisoners. Read More

The California Court of Appeals rules that organized graduation prayers are not constitutional. Read More