News & Commentary

Yesterday morning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral argument in the ACLU of Northern California’s lawsuit with the Electronic Frontier Foundation against Proposition 35. I told the court that Proposition 35 is too broad and violates the First Amendment. As the federal district court has already held, it affects too much protected speech, on too many websites, by too many people who don’t pose a risk of re-offending.

The American Civil Liberties Union of California is encouraged by Sen. Darrell Steinberg's proposal, announced today, to reject Gov. Jerry Brown's call for prison expansion and to instead seek lasting solutions to California's overincarceration crisis that will also make our communities safer. As several members of the Senate Democratic Caucus acknowledged at a press conference this morning, mass incarceration has taken a substantial toll on California's communities and it's time to do something different.

Taxpayers spend more on the criminal justice system than what it would cost to educate every young person in California. AB 420 addresses the school-to-prison pipeline and will keep more kids in front of a blackboard instead of behind bars.

California must follow the Attorney General’s lead. We must abandon the failed and costly policies of the past that have left far too many people locked up for far too long who don’t need to be kept behind bars to keep our families and communities safe. Now is the time to focus on front end sentencing reforms, especially for low-level, nonviolent drug crimes, that will reduce wasteful spending on incarceration and free up money for the kinds of rehabilitation, education and job training programs that will reduce crime and enhance public safety.

Solitary confinement completely isolates immigration detainees: They are generally confined to a small jail cell for twenty-three hours a day, with little to no human contact, and a slot in the door through which officers pass their meals. In some Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, their one hour of daily “rec” time takes place in a human-size cage or in a narrow concrete yard outdoors behind high concrete walls

The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected a request from the state of California for a stay of the federal court order that the state reduce its prison capacity to 137.5 percent of capacity.

As the mother of an African-American boy, the tragic, unnecessary death of Trayvon Martin and the trial and subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman have me heartbroken and filled with unanswerable questions. Does this verdict mean that some people view my son's (or my husband's or my father's) life as disposable? And how do parents like me protect our sons from people whose perceptions, unconscious or otherwise, will lead them to make incorrect assumptions based solely on skin color, while simultaneously ensuring that our children continue to be happy and hopeful instead of fearful and angry?

As a black man living in Oakland, I'm not immune to racist policing. I've experienced it repeatedly. Fruitvale Station reminded that like Oscar Grant, I may never come home.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California this week was forced to file a lawsuit against Sacramento County officials after they failed to respond to requests for public documents. It's a case that underscores why it was so important that the state legislature last month backed off plans to weaken the California Public Records Act: the fact is that even with the law intact, it often takes going to great lengths to get access to information that should be readily available to the public.