News & Commentary

Given the poverty crisis plaguing California, I was excited to have the opportunity recently to attend a Community Legislative Briefing hosted by The California Partnership -- of which the ACLU of Southern California is a proud member -- a diverse coalition of health, human service, labor, low income, immigrant rights and civil rights community-based organizations that have come together to fight poverty in our state.

Sacramento is at this very moment considering spending another one billion taxpayer dollars on prisons. That’s crazy! We’ve given our elected officials a better option: pass modest drug sentencing reform that would actually safely reduce incarceration costs.

When we at the ACLU of Southern California first heard about the anti-gay laws being used to oppress the LGBT community in Russia, we were particularly troubled to learn that the intent behind the law is to prevent LGBTQ youth there from hearing positive information about being LGBTQ.

Tarek Hamdi has lived in the United States for decades. His wife was born here. He raised four daughters here. He works here. He pays taxes here.

Eric Holder's recent announcement at the American Bar Association's Annual Meeting that he is taking steps as Attorney General to tackle the bloated federal mass incarceration crisis comes at a crucial, and welcome, time.

Eric Holder's recent announcement at the American Bar Association's Annual Meeting that he is taking steps as Attorney General to tackle the bloated federal mass incarceration crisis comes at a crucial, and welcome, time.

The California Assembly will soon vote on a bill (SB 397), which would allow the California DMV to distribute new drivers' licenses "enhanced" with tiny computer chips called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags.

A quarter of California’s public school students are English learners who are entitled by state and federal law to receive instructional support to become English proficient. This educational opportunity, however, has been denied to more than 20,000 of the English learner students who attend our state’s schools.