News & Commentary

Oakland police are arresting school-age African American youth at shockingly high rates, contributing to a burgeoning education crisis for students of color, according to a new report released today by the Black Organizing Project, ACLU of Northern California, and Public Counsel. The report, "From Report Card to Criminal Record: The Impact of Policing Oakland Youth," reveals disturbing trends about police interaction with Oakland's youth of color and especially with African-American boys.

Abstinence-only-until-marriage instruction is still taught in a surprising number of Northern California school districts, despite a state law that prohibits it in public schools. Reproductive Justice Policy Director Phyllida Burlingame discusses the challenges of enforcing the law and what the ACLU is doing to help young people get the information they need to protect their sexual and reproductive health.

California state law mandates that sexual health education in public schools be comprehensive, medically accurate, science-based, and bias-free. So why are Clovis Unified High Schools teaching teens from a book that makes no mention of condoms, even in chapters about HIV/AIDS and on preventing STDs and unintended pregnancy?

For more than a decade, the ACLU of Northern California has been working to ensure that sex education in public schools is science-based, free of bias, medically accurate and age-appropriate. The law we co-sponsored with Planned Parenthood in 2004 has become a model for other states and for the national REAL (Responsible Education About Life) Act. After years of Bush Administration support for ineffective, biased and harmful abstinence-only education, the nation is poised to take a new direction, and many are looking to California as a leader.

Social media and other emerging technologies are fundamentally altering how students interact and express themselves in school. Staff Attorney Linda Lye explains the history of student free speech, and discusses technology's modern twist on the First Amendment.

Would it surprise you to hear that almost 85% of LGBT students are verbally harassed at school? Or that 40% are physically harassed? Perhaps you've already heard these troubling statistics, and know that when it comes to stopping bullying, "zero tolerance" is the new catchphrase.

California's sex education policies are the envy of most other states. California is alone in having never accepted Title V federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funds, and state laws require that sex education in schools and state-funded community programs be comprehensive and bias-free. California's laws have served as models for other states and the federal Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act legislation. Recently, the Guttmacher Institute praised California as being way out front in preventing unintended pregnancy among teens, in part because of the state's embrace of comprehensive sex education.

For Rochelle Hamilton, starting high school was the beginning of relentless harassment from teachers and school staff because she's openly gay. One teacher told her, "You're going to hell. This is a sin." Another said, "What's wrong with you? What are you, a man or a woman?" After months of asking the school and the district to intervene – to no avail – Rochelle and her mom reached out to the ACLU for help. Together, we took on the school district – and won.

For the third time in four years, voters in California rejected a measure that would have endangered the health and safety of pregnant teenagers. Proposition 4 represents a third strike against mandatory parental notification laws and the harms they cause.