News & Commentary

Veterans and their advocates in southern California, the epicenter of veterans’ homelessness, are angry that President Obama and the Veterans Affairs Department have not built a single bed for homeless disabled veterans on the 400 acres the government owns in West Los Angeles, property that was deeded to the federal government for that very purpose in 1888.

By Mitra Ebadolahi, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project The ACLU is appearing today before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to argue on behalf of our client, Nick George. In August 2009, Nick went to the Philadelphia International Airport to catch a flight to California and begin his senior year at Pomona College. At the airport, he was detained, abusively interrogated, handcuffed, and jailed for several hours in a holding cell – solely because he was carrying a set of Arabic-English flashcards for his language studies, and a book critical of U.S. foreign policy.

By Esha Bhandari, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project Mark Lyttle, an American citizen with mental disabilities who was wrongfully detained and deported to Mexico and forced to live on the streets and in prisons for months, settled his case against the federal government this week.

By Naomi Gilens, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project Justice Department documents released today by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.

By Alicia M. Walters, ACLU of Northern California Originally posted by the ACLU of Northern California. We did it. After years of work from the ACLU of California and our allies, dangerous shackles and restraints can no longer be used on pregnant women in our state’s prisons and jails. Last week Governor Brown signed AB 2530, authored by Assemblymember Atkins, after it passed the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support.

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project With an opinion yesterday from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, ACLU client Max Soffar moves a step closer to an unjust execution.  And, little more than one year after the execution of Troy Davis, our system moves closer to another miscarriage of justice. 

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project The ACLU of Michigan recently put out an interesting report on surveillance cameras. Like other ACLU reports on cameras (such as those by our affiliates in Illinois and Northern California, and the materials on our national site) it summarizes the policy arguments against cameras. But it also focuses on a uniquely disturbing application of surveillance cameras: their deployment in residential neighborhoods.

By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 12:54pm In New York’s prisons, people caught with too many postage stamps in their cells can land a stint in extreme isolation – the harshest possible punishment in the state prison system.