News & Commentary

It's the 135th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, an immigration law that legitimized racism as policy.

In late February, Aaron Gach was returning to the United States from Brussels. An artist and activist, he had been abroad exhibiting works about mass incarceration, government control, and political dissent. In his pocket was a smartphone.    

On Nov. 9, 2016 we awoke to a new reality. America had elected Donald J. Trump as its 45th President. “We’ll see you in court” became the ACLU's mantra.

For months, the Trump administration has tried to bully local communities into signing up to become extensions of the federal deportation system. That campaign of threats and public shaming based on flawed data — which has been mostly unsuccessful — suffered another major blow yesterday. A federal court in San Francisco ruled in two cases that the president’s threats were unconstitutional, and stopped the government from carrying them out anywhere in the country. The ruling vindicates the constitutional rights of cities, counties, and states to refuse to participate in deportations. And like the court orders halting the president’s Muslim ban, the ruling shows the crucial role that courts play in preventing presidential overreach.

Did you know that California pioneered the public defender system in the early 1900s? It's time for our state to step up again.

The ACLU has been fighting against censorship for nearly a century. April is National Poetry Month, so we’ve been thinking about a free speech case from sixty years ago that involved a small but powerful book of poetry.

No one should have to turn on their tap and wonder if the water is safe to drink. But thousands of homes across the state are connected to water sources contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical called 1,2,3-TCP.

California incarcerates thousands of people while they await their court dates - simply because they can’t afford to post bail. Meanwhile, wealthy people can easily buy their freedom. 

One disturbing new trend is the increase in immigration arrests at state courthouses across the country. Beyond posing public safety dangers, these arrests also threaten our constitutional rights.