News & Commentary

If implemented, SB 1053 (Mitchell), would help protect women’s health by building on existing federal and California state law to eliminate remaining restrictions on access to contraception.

State programs that otherwise provide support to California’s poorest families include diapers on a list of disallowed items along with alcohol and cigarettes. This means that these families aren’t receiving the help they need to keep their babies in clean diapers.

Barely a generation ago, California’s schools were the greatest in the nation. Now, the state’s education is abysmal, ranking 49th in the nation on how much it spends on students.

When I was young, my mom was on welfare. She wasn't unlike other moms on our South Los Angeles block: single, working multiple jobs, and doing her best to keep her head above water. My mom braved the stigma that is tethered to receiving state benefits. Braving it is what poor people do...

California has long been a leader in ensuring social safety net programs for poor families but the Maximum Family Grant (MFG) rule is hurting our reputation. The MFG rule says that if a parent or guardian has been receiving aid from CalWORKS for ten months consecutively, any child conceived within that timeframe is blocked for life from receiving the same assistance granted to their siblings.

A recent report titled California’s Most Vulnerable Parents: A Population-Based Examination of Youth Involved with Child Protective Services captures the existing need to provide services and resources to a vulnerable and often forgotten population—pregnant and parenting foster youth.

The ACLU of Northern California, along with other public interest and legal services organizations, won an important victory last week for families who live in public housing.

Until December 2008, California required that women reside here for six months before they were eligible to receive essential health services through the state's Access for Infants and Mothers program. The ACLU of Northern California joined with other public interest organizations to challenge the rule on behalf of Maternal and Child Health Access, a non-profit organization.

When the ACLU of Northern California learned in October of 2006 that the City of Fresno was violating the constitutional rights of its homeless residents by seizing and immediately destroying their possessions, we, along with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and the law firm of HellerEhrman LLP, filed a class-action lawsuit in federal district court.