Court Cases

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.

Complaint filed on behalf of Black students in the Visalia Unified School District who have faced ongoing racial hostility.

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.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California sued President Donald J. Trump, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection for establishing and enforcing an unconstitutional and discriminatory Muslim ban.