Court Cases

The Coalition on Homelessness and several individual plaintiffs sued San Francisco over its punitive practice of seizing and destroying unhoused residents’ belongings during encampment sweeps in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the city’s own policies.

Two students, two parents of former students, and a current teacher, filed a claim in Contra Costa County Superior Court, against the State Board of Education, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, the State of California, and Pittsburg Unified School District. The complaint alleges the state and district’s unlawful practices harm thousands of its most marginalized students, primarily children of color.

Foothills Park is a 1,400-acre public green space located in the city of Palo Alto. For decades, the city has kept the park exclusive to Palo Alto residents under an ordinance that threatens non-residents who enter the park with jail time and a hefty fine unless they enter as guests of a city resident. This ordinance is a vestige of Palo Alto's history of racial discrimination. The ACLU Foundation of Northern California and co-counsel Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP filed suit to compel the city to remove its unjust and unconstitutional residents-only restriction.

In a historic settlement, the County of Riverside agreed to stop referring students to an abusive probation program.

The ACLU sued Fresno County's top election official in dispute over Church Black Lives Matter banners.

In June, 2016, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California sued the Stockton Unified School District (SUSD) for violating state and federal law by refusing to release SUSD's Police Department student arrest and citation data. A Public Records Act request by the ACLU revealed that from 2012-2016, the SUSD police department filed 12,000 “incident reports." However, in response to the ACLU's request, the district chose to withold crucial information, like the reason for arrests and citations, and data on the youth affected. Stockton Unified was eventually forced to turn over the full student arrest data, and in June 2017, the ACLU released a report that showed a culture of over-policing at SUSD that had the harshest impact on Black students, Latinx students, and students with disabilities. Following the report, the Stockton Education Equity Coalition released a ‘Report Card’ that summarized the ACLU's analysis and provided recommendations to the District.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed suit against Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones on behalf of Black Lives Matter leaders who were unlawfully blocked from the sheriff's official Facebook page. Tanya Faison and Sonia Lewis, co-leaders of Black Lives Matter Sacramento, have been vocal critics of the sheriff and other law enforcement officials. Both had comments deleted and were blocked from the sheriff's page during a critical time of public debate about whether the sheriff's department should be subjected to outside oversight.