Court Cases

In March of 2018, two Bay Area fathers who had been detained for over six months at the Contra Costa West County Detention Facility in Richmond, California sued the federal government in a class action lawsuit challenging their unlawful and prolonged detention. Complaint is here.  On June 5, 2018, a federal judge ruled that people who have been detained under 8 U.S.C. 1231(a)(6) cannot be held by the government for more than 180 days without a bond hearing before an immigration judge. She also granted a motion for class certification. The ruling is expected to affect hundreds of people detained throughout the Ninth Circuit.”

The ACLU filed a complaint against Madera County for falsely re-imprisoning a man and transferring him into ICE custody.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California and Goodwin Procter LLP today filed a lawsuit against ICE contractor G4S Secure Solutions, for its inhumane treatment of four detainees who were shackled for hours in a hot windowless van during transport.

Approximately 34,000 immigrants are held in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s (ICE) facilities on a daily basis, with roughly 500 to 600 of these immigrants held in northern California detention facilities. These detainees are not serving criminal sentences.

The ACLU sued Chawanakee Unified School District for censoring two students' pro-LGBTQ yearbook quotes.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the law firm Rukin Hyland & Riggin LLP filed a lawsuit on March 21, 2019 on behalf of Oliver Knight, a 29-year-old transgender man who was denied health care based on the hospital’s religious views, which do not recognize gender-affirming care. On August 30, 2017, minutes before Mr. Knight was scheduled to receive a hysterectomy, the St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka canceled his surgery. St. Joseph regularly allows hysterectomies for patients who are not transgender and Knight’s doctor said he and other physicians regularly perform the procedure. The discriminatory denial was because Mr. Knight is transgender.

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 of Northern California filed suit against the city of Berkeley on behalf of Berkeleyside, an online publication that was denied police records under the police transparency bill SB 1421. On Jan. 2, 2019, Berkeleyside requested records now available under the historic new law. On Jan. 18, the Berkeley City Attorney responded and refused to release any records created before Jan. 1. The suit argues Berkeley is violating the Public Records Act and calls on the city to release all the records requested in its possession, regardless of when they were created, except the portions that the current law protects from disclosure.