Legal Docket

On October 24, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a discrimination complaint on behalf of Black students in the Visalia Unified School District who have faced ongoing racial hostility. The complaint, filed with the Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Education, charges the district with violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by creating a racially hostile ... Read More

In January 2018, the First District Court of Appeal ruled that the money bail system in California violated due process and equal protection by imprisoning defendants prior to trial solely because they could not afford to pay bail. The ruling required Superior Court judges to consider both a defendant’s ability to pay and non-monetary alternatives to money bail when setting an amount of money bail... Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the ACLU Foundation and the law firm Durie Tangri LLP filed a lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco for its police department’s racially discriminatory enforcement practices. Read More

In 2004, the FBI conducted a “threat assessment” of long-time journalists and commentators Justin Raimondo and Eric Garris, as well as their website, Antiwar.com. In violation of the federal Privacy Act, this threat assessment compiled descriptions of the journalists’ First Amendment activities without any apparent law enforcement purpose. Attorneys at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California an... Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed suit against the California Department of Corrections on behalf of three media organizations challenging the execution viewing procedure. Read More

The Disability Rights California (DRC) and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California sued Secretary of State Alex Padilla for failing to provide voter registration services for low-income Californians and Californians with disabilities. The lawsuit demands that California comply with state and federal laws that require public assistance offices and state-funded progra... Read More

In April 2018, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and Legal Services of Northern California filed suit in federal district court against the City of Sacramento to halt enforcement of an unconstitutional "anti-solicitation" ordinance adopted by the Sacramento City Council. The suit was filed on behalf of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, the Sacramento Homeless Org... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on July 10, 2018 demanding records related to the treatment of immigration detainees by ICE, particularly transportation by contractor G4S Secure Solutions. In regions throughout the country, ICE subcontracts with G4S to transport immigration detainees. G4S is a private contrac... Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed suit against Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on July 5, 2018, demanding that the State Department issue a decision on an Iranian family’s application to immigrate to the United States. Presidential Proclamation 9645 -- commonly known as the Muslim Ban -- along with other federal law, requires State Department officials to issue decisions on vi... Read More

ACLU Foundation of Northern California lawsuit seeking information about the federal government’s use of location tracking technologies. Specifically, how the government seeks or obtains location information and whether this surveillance practice is constitutional. Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California and Protection and Advocacy, Inc. issued a letter to the California Department of Mental Health stating our concern that the state hospital system was forcibly drugging patients who have been tried for crimes and were found not guilty by reason of insanity. Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on May 23, 2018 demanding records of ICE’s relationship with private companies to access vast troves of information about drivers through Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) databases. Earlier in 2018, it was revealed that ICE purchased access to two private databases of ALPR data for p... Read More