News & Commentary

Imagine you’re on your way to buy a used car and a police officer pulls you over. After asking you a few questions, the officer asks to search your car. Knowing you’ve done nothing wrong, you agree. The next thing you know, the officer is telling you that he’s suspicious that you have $2,500 in cash – and he takes it. You explain that you’re on your way to buy a car. He doesn’t believe you and tells you that if you want your cash back, you’ll have to fight for it in court.

After three years of litigation, we’ve finally settled a portion of one of our long-running Freedom of Information Act suits against the federal government for information about its location tracking practices.  A person’s digital location information reveals detailed, private information that the government should only be able to get through a warrant based on probable cause.  As part of this settlement, the government provided us with information about the types of court orders it obtains to get location information. 

A Catholic-affiliated hospital will now perform a common reproductive healthcare procedure after the ACLU threatened to sue.

What if once a week the police drove by your home and took a picture?

Today a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling saved 11 men from the death penalty. They were sentenced to death for crimes committed before Connecticut's death penalty repeal and must instead serve life imprisonment without release.

A new poll shows that California voters overwhelmingly see a problem with biased policing in our state and support reforms to address the issue.

Public-records laws are designed to ensure that constituents and journalists have access to information on public affairs. They protect a bedrock value of our democracy: transparency.

For communities of color, surveillance isn't just an invasion of personal privacy, it’s a tool for high tech racial profiling that can have disastrous and fatal consequences.