Court Cases

Should the police be able to follow you around and collect and analyze your DNA from something you discard, without a warrant or even a reason to believe you have committed a crime? 

Can the State of California retroactively enforce Prop 83's residency restrictions against sex offenders who committed their offenses before the law went into effect?

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 like BART, with lower minority ridership.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California submitted an amicus brief in The People of the State of California vs. Norteño, urging the Solano County Superior Court to limit the overly broad scope of a gang injunction proposed by the City of Fairfield. The ACLU of Northern California brief expressed concerns with several aspects of the injunction, including the potential for racial profiling and the ability of the police to serve the injunction on an individual without presenting clear and convincing evidence of gang membership and without court approval. On July 24, 2009, a preliminary injunction was granted, and a number of ACLU Foundation of Northern California's recommendations were adopted.

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 couples to marry. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Equality California and six couples who did not marry before the election but would like to be able to marry now.

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.