Court Cases

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California and NCYL have charged school officials in two Humboldt County towns with intentionally discriminating against Native American and Black students by allowing the pervasive racial and sexual harassment of these students to go unchallenged.

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.

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.

Federal class action lawsuit filed in 2008 charging that the city of Antioch and its police department are engaged in a concerted campaign of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination against African-Americans who receive federal housing assistance.

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.