Court Cases

In 2004, the FBI conducted a “threat assessment” of long-time journalists and commentators Justin Raimondo and Eric Garris, as well as their website, Antiwar.com. In violation of the federal Privacy Act, this threat assessment compiled descriptions of the journalists’ First Amendment activities without any apparent law enforcement purpose. Attorneys at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP represented the journalists in a federal lawsuit against the FBI. Records the journalists received in response to their Freedom of Information Act claims revealed that the threat assessment was based on shoddy investigative work in addition to the apparent targeting of the journalists’ political speech. In the litigation, the FBI asserted that it was entitled to create this threat assessment because of Antiwar.com’s posting of government documents. But the First Amendment has long protected the publication of government secrets and the FBI never even suggested that the journalists or Antiwar.com had violated the law by obtaining or posting those documents.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed suit against the California Department of Corrections on behalf of three media organizations challenging the execution viewing procedure.

ACLU Foundation of Northern California lawsuit seeking information about the federal government’s use of location tracking technologies. Specifically, how the government seeks or obtains location information and whether this surveillance practice is constitutional.

Jarvis Jay Masters, a death-sentenced inmate, and Witness to Innocence, a nonprofit organization composed of and led by exonerated death row inmates and their family members, is challenging California’s new lethal injection regulations.