News & Commentary

I lost my drive after my older brother Rufus was sentenced. I didn't care. I didn't trust. That was my attitude. Rufus was the father figure I looked up to. When he went to jail for the rest of his life, I started looking up to his buddies. A lot of them are dead or in jail now.

On Friday, ACLU SoCal and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed the opening brief in our lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department for information on how the agencies are using Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR). We argue the departments are improperly withholding these records, keeping important information about this invasive surveillance technology from the public.

When Gurvinder Singh and Kuldeet Kaur went to the Kern County Courthouse in 2012 to get married they believed it would mark the beginning of a new chapter in their lives.

Forty-one years after the historic Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, politicians across the nation are falling all over themselves to take away a woman's right to decide when and whether to have a child.

Nine years ago, as part of the landmark Williams settlement, the state promised school districts $800 million to fund the Emergency Repair Program (ERP), established to help schools address facility conditions that pose urgent threats to students’ health and safety.

Sheriff Lee Baca stunned the public this week by announcing that he will immediately retire as the head of Los Angeles County jails. His announcement marks another milestone in the ACLU's campaign to end the culture of rampant deputy-on-prisoner violence that has plagued the Los Angeles County jails for years.

Governor Jerry Brown on Thursday unveiled his proposed budget for 2014-2015, a budget that contains some elements that would actually move California in the direction of criminal justice reform that remains so urgently needed.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy David "Lee" Baca finally exercised the kind of leadership that has sorely been lacking from his office when he announced his retirement at the end of this month. His decision to step aside makes possible a new era of accountability and reform in a department plagued by a culture of abuse and impunity.

Was our government involved in the overseas abduction and torture of an American citizen? Do we have the right to know the answer to that question? That is the issue the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals must decide in an appeal filed last week by Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles and the ACLU of Southern California.