News & Commentary

A black canvas near Gate 18 in the Sacramento airport’s Terminal B sits in place of a billboards intended to promote healthcare access for immigrants in California. Why? The airport has refused to use the original ads, claiming that they are too political in nature.

My name is James Prigoff. I am 86 years old and a retired senior corporate executive. I am also a professional photographer – in fact, I have been a photographer for most of my life. My specialty is photographing murals, graffiti art, and other community public art. Why have my artistic pursuits landed me in a national database potentially linking me to "terrorist" activities?

One year ago Matthew Barrett was offered a job as a food services director at Fontbonne Academy, a college prep high school in Milton, Mass. With 20 years of work in the food services industry, Matthew was clearly well qualified.

What does an 86-year-old art photographer have in common with a young man with a video game habit? Not just a proclivity for perfectly innocuous hobbies, unfortunately. These days, engaging in either activity can get the FBI on your case.

There are children in cages along the U.S.-Mexico border right now. And more are showing up every day.

Calaveras County Board of Supervisors passed a law to praise a local organization not just for its work in the community but also for its mission of “inviting” women in the community to “see for themselves the many blessings that can come from living the teachings of Christ.” They also failed to allow community members - many of whom were at the meeting to oppose this resolution - to speak out about this resolution before they took their vote, a clear violation of our state’s Brown Act, which requires that our public officials listen to us before they make decisions like this.

This week’s unprecedented Hobby Lobby decision deserves the widespread criticism it has attracted: the Supreme Court decreed that corporations, which lack souls, have religious beliefs; even more jaw-dropping, it decreed that those anthropomorphic beliefs trump workers’ health, reproductive choices and equality.

While immigration detention is supposed to be “civil” detention, as opposed to incarceration as punishment for a crime, the conditions that immigrants experience are anything but civil. People detained by ICE are bused daily to immigration court wearing jumpsuits and metal handcuffs, belly chains, and leg irons in San Francisco.

Today, the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law creating a 35 foot buffer zone around abortion facilities. The Court balanced two fundamental rights: freedom of speech on public sidewalks and women’s right to access reproductive health care. At the ACLU, we care deeply about both rights, and believe that in balancing rights in conflict the goal is to safeguard both. In our view, the Court gave too little weight to the real world experience of women who have suffered harassment, obstruction and intimidation in seeking care.