Legal Docket

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

Seeking to address years-long delays in the processing of citizenship applications, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and other civil rights organizations filed a class-action lawsuit against the federal government for its violation of the Constitution and federal law. Ahmadi v. Chertoff sought to enforce federal laws that require the government to decide a citizenship application within ... Read More

On Dec. 16, 2008, the San Francisco Superior Court struck down a state law requiring that low-income working women must have resided in California for at least six months before becoming eligible to receive prenatal and other medical care services through California's Access for Infants and Mothers (AIM) insurance program. Read More

On September 14, 2009 ACLU Foundation of Northern California and civil rights allies filed a motion to intervene in Associated General Contractors of America v. California Department of Transportation.  The lawsuit, currently pending in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, was brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation and seeks to dismantle Caltrans' Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) p... Read More

A settlement was finalized September 16 between the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) in its case involving Kebin Reyes, a U.S. citizen who was six years old when he was illegally detained for ten hours by immigration officials. We argued that Kebin's constitutional rights were violated when he was taken from his home in San Rafael... Read More

The California corrections department is using underground, non-public guidelines, rather than lawful regulations, to decide whether to transfer California prisoners to other states as far away as Mississippi and Tennessee. This means that inmates and their families do not know how the prisons decide whom to transfer. It also leaves open the possibility that prison officials are using arbitrary an... Read More

Federal class action lawsuit filed in 2008 charging that the city of Antioch and its police department are engaged in a concerted campaign of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination against African-Americans who receive federal housing assistance. Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California reached a settlement with a Lake County school district that contains a series of steps the district will undertake to protect students from anti-gay harassment and discrimination. The agreement is on behalf of a student who was persistently subjected to verbal taunting and physical abuse based on his sexual orientation.The ACLU Foundation of No... Read More

On May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for the state to ban same-sex couples from civil marriage. The ACLU Foundation of Northern California and co-counsel represent a group of committed lesbian and gay couples as well as two non-profit organizations, Equality California and Our Family Coalition. Our co-counsel are the National Center for Lesbian Rights, La... Read More

Does a school district have the authority to expel students based on an incident involving a school resource officer that occurred off campus and after school? A Contra Costa County Superior Court ruled in May 2008 that the Antioch Unified School District violated the rights of two students when it expelled them from school following an off-campus incident in which police officers pepper-sprayed ... Read More

On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a National Security Letter (NSL) on the Internet Archive, a digital library. The letter sought personal information about one of the Archive's users, including the individual's name, address, and any electronic communication transactional records pertaining to the user. The NSL also included a gag order, prohibiting the Archive and its counsel from revealing th... Read More