Court Cases

Does a school district have the authority to expel students based on an incident involving a school resource officer that occurred off campus and after school? A Contra Costa County Superior Court ruled in May 2008 that the Antioch Unified School District violated the rights of two students when it expelled them from school following an off-campus incident in which police officers pepper-sprayed the students and forcefully arrested them. The judge overturned the expulsions. The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California and Berkeley attorney Jivaka Candappa sued the district on behalf of the students, arguing that it lacked the authority to expel the students based on the incident, and that the students' due process rights were violated during the expulsion hearings.

On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a National Security Letter (NSL) on the Internet Archive, a digital library. The letter sought personal information about one of the Archive's users, including the individual's name, address, and any electronic communication transactional records pertaining to the user. The NSL also included a gag order, prohibiting the Archive and its counsel from revealing the existence of the letter.

Two Southern California fair housing organizations sued Roomate.com, an Internet-based roommate matching service, arguing that the website must be held responsible for postings on the site that violate federal fair housing laws. Roommate.com argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from liability for content posted by third parties, gives it complete immunity from suit. After agreeing to have the case re-heard en banc, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion that holds housing websites accountable for their own actions that violate the fair housing laws but sustains the important free speech protections of section 230 by holding that housing websites may not be held liable for the discriminatory comments of users of the site. The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a friend of the court brief urging the court to carefully separate content and conduct by Roommate.com from that of the individuals who use its service.

In March 2007, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a lawsuit in Napa Superior Court on behalf of five families, seeking judicial relief from an unconstitutionally vague, overbroad, and restrictive dress code enforced by Redwood Middle School and the Napa Valley USD.

The District Attorney of Yolo County in late December 2004 sought a permanent injunction against the Broderick Boys “gang,” attempting to place on permanent probation, without any trial or due process, hundreds of residents of a predominantly Latino neighborhood in West Sacramento. In July 2005, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a motion to set aside the permanent injunction for lack of notice, which the judge denied. The ACLU Foundation of Northern California appealed, filing the final brief in that appeal in June 2006. On April 23, 2007, the California Court of Appeal agreed with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and voided the permanent injunction imposed on the so-called Broderick Boys gang.