News & Commentary

By Michael Tan, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, & Joanne Lin, Washington Legislative Office

A survey of 110 National LGBT Equality and Support experts ranked the American Civil Liberties Union as the #2 outstanding nonprofit doing significant LGBT equality work.

By Will Matthews, ACLU of Northern California & Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project A recent study from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) demonstrates that decriminalization of marijuana can actually improve our children’s futures while saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

By Michael Kaufman and Carmen Iguina In 2009, the Obama administration announced plans to transform the immigration detention system to make it “truly civil” – a recognition that detainees are being held for civil immigration violations, not as punishment for a crime.

By Jason Howe The passport control agent almost seemed apologetic. “Sir, he has to fill out a separate family entry card,” he told me, “he” meaning my husband, Adrián. And then, he mumbled “DOMA.”

By Jason Howe You have to hand it to Sheriff Lee Baca. He sometimes arrives at the correct conclusion. It’s just not very often that he does it quickly, easily or without a lot of coercion – i.e. being sued.

By Jennie Pasquarella, ACLU of Southern California and Julia Mass, ACLU of Northern California For the first time yesterday, California Attorney General Kamala Harris publicly weighed in on the hotly-contested federal immigration program, Secure Communities (S-Comm). In an information bulletin to local law enforcement agencies, she provides much needed clarification to these agencies about the parameters of their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Her statement should finally put to bed any lingering doubt that immigration detainers are voluntary requests and that each local agency may make its own decisions about whether or not to enforce the requests, at its own expense.