News & Commentary

For years, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has pulled middle and high school students out of class to conduct daily, metal detector searches. As numerous students have shared, school administrators walk into a classroom and pick out students at will, wand their bodies, and rummage through their belongings. Aside from losing valuable learning time, students undergo this humiliating procedure even if they have done nothing wrong.

Recent stories about Amazon's invasive face scanning surveillance technology and Cambridge Analytica's exploitation of Facebook data have brought the impact of surveillance and data misuse to the fore. But many people don't realize how often local law enforcement agencies acquire and use similar tec

The ACLU Fights Back by Getting Detainees Access to the Outside World — In the past few weeks, shocking images of children jailed by immigration enforcement officials have sparked protests, fundraisers and op-eds across the nation. But these cruel actions by anti-immigration forces was not new.

Many of us have been overwhelmed with emotion as we respond to the pictures and sounds of the separated — and sometimes caged — children, sobbing to be reunited with their parents. As experts tell us more about the damaging long-term effects of this kind of family separation, our horror only increases. For some, it’s just too painful to watch and listen.

Children who have not committed a crime should never be treated like criminals. But that’s exactly what’s happening today in the schools in Riverside County, California.

June is Pride month, a month to celebrate the strength and activism of LGBTQ people. Communities across California honor the spirit of Pride every year with parades, marches, and other events. But as we celebrate, it’s also important to remember that even in California, we still have work to do to secure true, lived equality, particularly for LGBTQ people who are also part of other historically marginalized groups. That’s why we at the ACLU of California are excited to be working on three LGBTQ-related bills this year that will make life better for students, youth in foster care, and people in jail or prison.

Dear Governor Brown, Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon: Today at the United Nations, Phillip Alston, the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, condemned the U.S. and the state of California in a report that details failures to protect the

As stories of state violence against Black men and boys occupy many of the calls for police reform, countless stories of Black women and girls subjected to excessive force and police misconduct remain untold. We must say their names.

On June 5, California voters paid more attention to their local top prosecutor races than ever before. In elections where the incumbent has historically gone unchallenged, there were more contested DA races in California than in recent memory — or perhaps ever before. Although incumbents retained