Court Cases

45,000 ballots were discarded - without notice - in California's November 2016 election. This ACLU Foundation of Northern California lawsuit asks that future voters be given an opportunity to fix any signature match problems before their votes are thrown away.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed suit against the DMV on behalf of several voting rights groups, demanding that voter registration opportunities meet legal requirements. 

All adult citizens have a right to vote in California except while they're "imprisoned or on parole for conviction of a felony" or are mentally incompetent. But the CA Secretary of State has expanded this exclusion to include people who are on forms of community supervision created by the 2011 Criminal Justice Realignment Act. Over 58,000 Californians were wrongfully disenfranchised.

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 California and the Impact Fund filed an amicus brief in the CA Court of Appeal in the case Legal Services for Prisoners with Children v. Bowen, outlining the breadth and implications of disproportionate disenfranchisement of people of color.