News & Commentary

By Hector Villagra, Executive Director, ACLU of Southern California The consent decree secured by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the Justice Department accomplished its purpose by and large. This is no longer your father’s Los Angeles Police Department.

On May 15, 1923, angered by the LAPD's brutal treatment of striking longshoremen, journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair appeared at a rally in San Pedro. Because the police banned all public meetings by the unionized strikers, the rally was held, with the owner's written permission, on private property prophetically named "Liberty Hill." Sinclair began reading the First Amendment.

Law enforcement agencies are increasingly using sophisticated cameras, called “automated license plate readers” or ALPR, to scan and record the license plates of millions of cars across the country.

by Joey Hernandez, LGBTQ Student Rights Advocate Over the years, the north steps of the State Capitol have seen some fierce advocacy by queer youth from across the state of California. The ACLU of California is keeping that legacy alive in the 2013 legislative cycle. 

by Hector Villagra, Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California Historian Eric Foner has said that "[l]ike all great historical transformations, emancipation was a process, not a single event. It arose from many causes and was the work of many individuals." We are now living through and are on the verge of a great historical transformation, as evidenced by the release of the so-called gang of eight's long-awaited immigration proposal. This transformation, some 20 years in the making, has definitely been a process.

By Esha Bhandari, Equal Justice Works Fellow, ACLU & Carmen Iguina, Equal Justice Works Fellow, ACLU of Southern California In a landmark ruling yesterday, Federal District Judge Dolly M. Gee ordered the federal government to provide legal representation for immigrant detainees in California, Arizona and Washington who have serious mental disabilities and are unable to represent themselves in immigration court.

By Michael Tan, Staff Attorney, Immigrants' Rights Project, ACLU National Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a landmark ruling that curtails one of the most wasteful and draconian features of our immigration lock-up system: the government's practice of putting immigration detainees behind bars for months or even years, without ever holding a bond hearing to determine if they should be locked up in the first place. In Rodriguez v. Robbins, a class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the Court upheld an order requiring bond hearings for detainees locked up six months or longer while they fight their deportation cases. The ruling stands to benefit thousands of immigration detainees across the Ninth Circuit, where an estimated 25% of immigrant detainees are held every year.