News & Commentary

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.

By Elizabeth Gill, ACLU of Northern California Staff Attorney Today the LGBT rights world was a flurry of activity, with Facebook feeds full of red for marriage equality and people the country over intently focused on what was happening inside the U.S. Supreme Court. Sometimes the oral arguments in a case are like tea leaves that make it relatively easy to predict an outcome. But today’s Supreme Court argument in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, provided few such clues. What’s clear is that the Justices are all deeply engaged in both the questions on the jurisdiction and the merits that the case presents – and that’s a good thing.

By Carmen Iguina and Michael Kaufman This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s declaration in Gideon v. Wainwright that the Constitution guarantees indigent criminal defendants the right to appointed counsel. The Supreme Court described a “noble ideal” of “fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law.” As we reflect on the many unfulfilled promises of Gideon, we should also pause to consider that this “noble ideal” is not recognized in many court proceedings regarded as “non-criminal,” but where the most serious and significant interests are at stake. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the immigration system.