News & Commentary

Al Bendich was a young ACLU lawyer in 1957 when he argued the landmark "Howl" case, winning free speech for poet Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of City Lights bookstore.

Some of the most vigorous and sustained "Black Lives Matter" protests took place in Oakland and Berkeley. While some law enforcement response was called for, there were disturbing signs of a familiar pattern - the use of excessive force against demonstrators.

When the Amazon series Transparent won the Golden Globe award for best comedy series, it was a big deal, but it wasn't enough. With one exception, there were no people of color representing the trans community and no trans women receiving acting awards for playing trans roles.

Yesterday a federal judge in the Northern District of California held a hearing to determine whether our lawsuit challenging the U.S. government’s domestic surveillance program could proceed.

People with disabilities face violent and deadly consequences when law enforcement does not take disabilities into account. It is not okay to take a deaf person down for failing to follow verbal orders. It is not okay to attack someone with autism because he is slow to respond to instruction. It is not okay to treat a woman with a mental disability as if she were a dangerous criminal.

Today, we sent a letter to the Fort Bragg Unified School District asking that the District immediately reverse its policy banning participants and spectators at the holiday basketball tournament from wearing t-shirts that say “I Can’t Breathe.”

Emily Herx never imagined that she could lose her job for trying to get pregnant. But after working for more than seven years as a literature and language arts teacher at a Catholic school in Indiana, she was shocked to learn that her teaching contract would not be renewed: All because the in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment she was undergoing in an attempt to have a second child made her a "grave, immoral sinner" in the eyes of her religious employers.

My family contacted the ACLU and is working with them to file a complaint with the Department of Justice in order to make Gloucester High School safer and more inclusive to transgender youth while hopefully encouraging other local schools to do the same.