News & Commentary

A federal court in Sacramento issued a preliminary injunction this week protecting the free speech rights of a deputy sheriff in Trinity County to speak out about drug legalization and other political issues, in a suit brought by the ACLU of Northern California and the law firm of Keker and Van Nest LLP.

The state Supreme Court has dismissed review of a case centering on whether federal law pre-empts local medical marijuana regulations, pulling the plug on a proceeding that advocates and opponents once hoped would offer guidance in a wildly uncertain area of law.

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?

Today the Location Privacy Act of 2012 passed through the California Assembly with overwhelming bipartisan support. This is a critical step in protecting the privacy of all Californians in our modern world where a cell phone is closer to a necessity than a luxury.

In a victory for free speech on the Internet, social network giant Facebook last week corrected a mistake that had the unfortunate consequence of blocking political speech and affirmed its commitment to serving as a neutral platform for political advocacy. The controversy erupted when the social network, which positions itself as a key platform for reaching "a huge potential voter pool," rejected ads by Just Say Now and Students for Sensible Drug Policy, drug policy reform groups which both seek to promote discussion of marijuana legalization in the current election cycle. Facebook's rejection of these ads deprived drug reform groups of an important outlet for reaching potential voters and also deprived Facebook's 160 million users of a perspective on a public policy issue. Fortunately, after the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation raised concerns, Facebook reversed its rejection and permitted the ads to run.

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.

In the span of four years, California voters three times rejected a ballot initiative that would require doctors to notify a pregnant teen's parent before an abortion. Propositions 73, Proposition 85 and Proposition 4 all proposed to amend the state Constitution to reverse the state Supreme Court ruling in an ACLU lawsuit that teenagers have fundamental rights to decide whether to end an 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.