Legal Docket

On November 23, 2009, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and civil rights allies filed an amicus brief in Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Plaintiffs argued that MTC, the planning body for all twenty-six independent transit operators in the Bay Area, consistently under-funded AC Transit, a bus line with high minority ridership, in comparison to other transit systems li... Read More

Should the California Supreme Court apply the federal forum doctrine or the "incompatible use" test to evaluate solicitation restrictions at the Los Angeles International Airport under the California Constitution's Liberty of Speech Clause? In 1997, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness ("ISKCON") filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, challen... Read More

On Nov. 5, 2008, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, along with the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Lambda Legal, filed a writ petition in the California Supreme Court challenging the validity of Proposition 8. Proposition 8, passed by a narrow majority of California voters in the November 2008 election, purports to amend California's Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex ... Read More

In August 2007, the AFL-CIO and other groups filed suit to stop government officials from implementing a Department of Homeland Security regulation that created widespread concern about anti-immigrant discrimination in employment and unnecessary and unjust terminations. Read More

In a historic decision on April 21, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated our landmark lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. for its role in the Bush administration's unlawful extraordinary rendition program. The court ruled that cases like this one may not be dismissed on the grounds that "the very subject matter" of the lawsuit is a state s... Read More

On May 18, 2009, ACLU Foundation of Northern California announced a settlement with the Vallejo City Unified School District on behalf of Rochelle Hamilton, a high school student who faced anti-gay harassment from teachers and school staff. The settlement is designed to combat harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity at all the district's schools, and includes ... Read More

On May 16, 2008, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California drafted and submitted an amicus brief in San Leandro Teachers Association v. San Leandro USD with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the ACLU Foundation of San Diego and Imperial Counties. The question presented in the case was whether a school district employer could censor political messages–concerning the loc... Read More

A Federal judge approved an historic $2.35 million class action settlement to hundreds of Fresno's homeless residents. United States District Judge Oliver W. Wanger had previously ordered that the City and the California Department of Transportation had violated homeless residents' constitutional rights in the practice of immediately seizing and destroying personal property. Throughout a two-year ... Read More

In February 2009, a Fresno television newscast aired a video of a police officer repeatedly punching Glen Beaty, a homeless man, as two officers took him into custody. In the video, Beaty does not appear to be struggling, resisting, or doing anything else that could warrant this level of force: he is lying on the ground as one officer holds his arm and the other punches him in the head. His arms a... Read More

Should San Francisco 49ers' fans have to give up their privacy as the price of admission to the game? Dan and Kathleen Sheehan think the answer is no and have filed a lawsuit challenging the 49er's policy, instituted in 2005, that requires every man, woman, and child attending a 49ers home game to submit to a pat-down search of their bodies. On March 2, 2009, the California Supreme Court rejected ... Read More

Moving to protect the free speech rights of anonymous online posters, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a motion on Nov. 19, 2008 asking a San Francisco federal court to reject two landlords' attempt to require a website to identify people who had posted anonymous criticisms of their apartment complexes. The motion was jointly filed with Public Citizen. We further sought to have the... Read More

Throughout California, thousands of people are not allowed to vote because they are on parole for such statutory felonies as drug offenses and shoplifting. And while African-Americans constitute less than 7% of California's adult population, in 2006 they were approximately 28% of all those disenfranchised as a result of being in prison or on parole for a felony. The ACLU Foundation of Northern Cal... Read More