News & Commentary

With so much at stake in this election, the ACLU has launched its most comprehensive voting rights protection and voter education programs in the organization’s history. We’re prepared to defend civil rights and civil liberties no matter who wins in November.

John Do is the ACLU of Northern California’s lead counsel for a lawsuit challenging the city’s costly and ineffective practice of destroying unhoused individuals’ belongings, and citing, arresting, and moving them without offering shelter. For Do, who grew up poor in subsidized public housing, ending homelessness is personal. “I’ve always seen homelessness as a direct result of decades of poor policymaking and a lack of investment in affordable housing,” said Do, a senior attorney with the Racial and Economic Justice Program. “Without it, I know with one hundred percent certainty that my family would have been homeless.”

Dozens of mentally ill people have died in California jails when they should have been in state hospitals receiving treatment. An ACLU lawsuit demands answers.

Sixty years after a landmark Supreme Court case guaranteed the right to a free attorney for criminal defendants who can’t afford a private lawyer, millions of low-income people are still being denied this basic constitutional right.

Governor Newsom’s so-called “CARE Court” plan would create a new court system that subjects unhoused people with mental health disabilities to involuntary treatment.

We can increase equality, justice, and safety without resorting to criminalization and surveillance.