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The Historic Journey:
A Comprehensive Timeline of the ACLU’s Impactful Legacy
First Amendment & Democracy
Author Upton Sinclair and 5 others are arrested at a San Pedro workers’ rally as he attempts to read the First Amendment. He is taken away in handcuffs. The police drop the matter, but he does not. This would be the founding of the ACLU SoCal.
Yetta Stromberg was a 19-year-old teacher at the Pioneer Summer Camp in San Bernardino County. She oversaw the daily raising of a red flag, leading camp goers in reciting allegiance “to the worker’s red flag.” It was that flag that got her arrested by a local sheriff for violating a 1919 state law banning public display of a red flag “as an aid to propaganda.” The ACLU SoCal took on her case — she was convicted in state court and in danger of being imprisoned, but in a 1931 landmark decision the U.S. Supreme Court found that California’s red flag law was “repugnant to the guaranty of liberty.”
First Amendment & Democracy
Notable Figures
A.L. Wirin becomes co-counsel at ACLU SoCal. A.L. Wirin is widely acknowledged as one of the first pro bono attorneys in the United States. He worked for years with the ACLU SoCal on a pro bono basis before becoming one of its first staff attorneys. He argued Korematsu and Yasui at the Supreme Court and was involved in some of the most important civil rights cases of his time.
A.L. Wirin is seized by men who dragged him outside of a hotel in Brawley and shoved into a waiting car. A motorcycle officer cleared the way. He was taken to the desert where he was beaten and then taken to the American Legion HQ to be identified. He was released to the desert where he had to walk 11 miles back to Carpinteria. A.L. Wirin successfully sued the Governor, head of the Highway Patrol and other officials.
Notable Figures
Immigrants’ Rights
As John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is banned in California on the threat that it might give migrant workers ideas, 142 agricultural workers are jailed for demanding a pay increase from 80 cents to $1.25 per 100 pounds of crops picked. A.L. Wirin gets them all freed from jail.
Ernest Wakayama seemed the perfect candidate to test the legality of imprisoning people of Japanese descent in internment camps during World War II. Wakayama, who was born in Hawaii, was hardly a radical. He was a U.S. citizen, World War I veteran, and American Legion officer. But he contacted the ACLU SoCal in 1942 to ask about mounting a challenge to the forced evacuation. ACLU SoCalattorney A.L. Wirin filed documents in the case, but before there could be a full hearing, Wakayama and his wife — according to accounts at the time — became so embittered that they gave up their citizenship and were eventually deported. In later years, Wakayama told several people that the renouncement of citizenship was not voluntary — it was forced by officials.
Immigrants’ Rights
Economic Justice
ACLU SoCal proposes a new Bill of Rights known as the Economic Bill of Rights that would become a rallying cry for the office over the next 60 years.
After 23 years of service as Director of ACLU SoCal, Clinton J. Taft steps down and Aaron Allen Heist takes over.
Notable Figures
Education Equity
ACLU SoCal argue briefs in support of Mendez, a class action suit on behalf of 5,000 Mexican-American students attending school in 4 OC communities. On April 14, the Ninth Circuit upheld unanimously a lower court’s ruling that the segregation was unconstitutional. It was the first time that a Federal court rules that segregation of Mexican-Americans in public schools not only violates state law but also the U.S. Constitution and serves as precedent in 1948 (Texas) and 1950 (Arizona) prior to SCOTUS’ 1954 ruling in Brown v Board of Education.
ACLU SoCal protects the rights of draft opponents. Even though the U.S. is at peace, the affiliate continues to defend cases of draft resisters and asks the public to refer possible cases.
First Amendment & Democracy
First Amendment & Democracy
A.L. Wirin and Fred Okrand argue before SCOTUS that a person’s Conscientious Objector status, based on sincere religious beliefs under the First Amendment, extends to refusing to register for Selective Service as well as refusing to serve.
Eason Monroe meets with members of the MattachineSociety, one of the oldest gay rights groups in America. Twenty years later, he and the ACLU SoCal are honored for making gay liberties a civil rights issue.
LGBTQ Rights
First Amendment & Democracy
The ACLU SoCal files a complaint on behalf of 36 local public housing tenants who were evicted because they refused to sign the loyalty oath that was passed by the 83rd Congress.
ACLU SoCal attorneys challenge the tenant’s loyalty oath provision for public housing.
First Amendment & Democracy
Racial Justice
The ACLU SoCal files a damage suit in Pasadena over the town’s denying a nine-year old Black girl, Susan McClain, admission to a public swimming pool in the summer of 1955.
A.L. Wirin argues cases defending two realtors, Harry Beddoe and Earl Wing, who have been expelled from the Southeast Realty Board for selling properties to minority races in what the Southeast Realty Board describes as “undesirable property transactions.”
Economic Justice/ Racial Justice
Police practices
The ACLU sues Oxnard police for throwing 50 tear gas bombs into a crowd of Mexican Americans attending a Catholic church bazaar on August 26.
The ACLU SoCal moves for an injunction against the Beverly Hills police who, responding to a citizen’s charge, removed statues from a shop window. The complaint said they were “obscene, lewd, and indecent.” They are copies of Michelangelo’s David, Giambologna’s “The Rape of the Sabines.” The Court upholds the ACLU SoCal’s injunction in February 1957 and the artwork is restored.
First Amendment & Democracy
Economic Justice/Immigrants’ Rights, Rights of Farm Workers
Farm owners try to block “Braceros,” Mexican farmers that are temporarily let into the U.S. for agriculture work, from going on strike. ACLU SoCal helps to lift injunction off braceros and protects them from federal trespass laws so they may fight for higher wages
ACLU SoCal sues film companies for $7.5 million in damages for supporting The Blacklist that was over a decade old by then.
First Amendment & Democracy
Racial Justice
Dr. King Jr. hopes to raise $33,000 to go towards desegregation at the L.A. Sports Arena which ACLU SoCal co-sponsors.
Four years before Stonewall, Committee on Sex of ACLU SoCal drafts policy statement citing rights to privacy in consenting sexual relations as a constitutional right.
LGBTQ Rights
First Amendment & Democracy
ACLU SoCal helps drop charges on peaceful protesters of the Vietnam War when 1,500 police officers attack a peace march.
ACLU files suit to end segregation in Los Angeles schools.
Education Equity
Gender Equality/ LGBTQ Rights
ACLU SoCal challenges conviction of Leon Belous, MD, for aborting the pregnancy of a 19-year-old woman. On September 5, 1969, the courts rule in favor of Leon Belous, MD.
ACLU SoCal report ,“Death Under Color of Law,” depicts rate of murders by police.
Police practices
Criminal Justice
We issue report calling for end of death penalty in California
State Supreme Court overturns 1919 CA law on “Criminal Syndicalism.”
First Amendment & Democracy
First Amendment & Democracy
Eason Monroe successfully petitions for back pay to state Supreme Court for having been fired from state university system for refusing to sign oath of allegiance.
We file 335 page brief opposing desegregation plan of LAUSD as “separate but equal.”
Education Equity
Criminal Justice
State Supreme Court Bans the Death Penalty.
Report with WCLP cites 75 unsafe schools – presages Williams case
Education Equity
First Amendment & Democracy
Amicus filed in support of Daniel Ellsberg regarding The Pentagon Papers Suit filed on behalf of LA Free Press re “receiving stolen goods” like Pentagon Papers.
State Supreme Court rules monitoring prisoner phone calls unconstitutional.
Criminal Justice
LGBTQ Rights
Eason Monroe honored by gay rights group for being first to speak to a gay right group in 1952 long before others took up the cause. On June 4, 1972, Eason Monroe is given a lifetime membership in ONE, Inc., the gay rights organization established in 1952 in Los Angeles and publisher of the first pro-gay publication in the U.S. They thanked Monroe for speaking, in 1952, before a group of 20 “fearful people” of the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights organization, about the constitutional rights of homosexuals. “He is responsible for the 20-year fight to get civil lights- minded people of Southern California to recognize that homosexuality is a civil right,” ONE co-founder W. Dorr Legg told The Advocate. Monroe and the ACLU SoCal are credited with the passage of the resolution calling for privacy rights for homosexuals.
Ramona Ripston is hired as Executive Director, first woman Executive Director in the country.
Notable Figures
Criminal Justice
ACLU SoCal Staff Attorney, Terry Smerling, files a class action suit on behalf of women inmates at the Sybil Brand Institute – the only LA County jail for women. Two classes – convicted and unconvicted inmates – are involved. The suit says that incarcerated women are denied the rights of male prisoners in similar institutions.
In January 1979, the conditions are ruled unconstitutional.
ACLU SoCal starts a Gay People Committee chaired by Jay Murley. The committee will work on revising the criminal code, securing employment opportunities for LGBTQ people, and recognizing gay student unions.
LGBTQ Rights
Immigrants’ Rights
ACLU SoCal files suit against INS for indiscriminate deportation of people with Latine appearances, including American citizens and legal residents, regardless of probable cause. At the time, June 1973, 10,000 people had been rounded up without warrants and in most cases without hearings or right to counsel, they were deported.
ACLU SoCal and the Watts Justice Center charged LAPD and LASD with wide scale violation of civil rights of attendees at the Watts Summer Festival. Searches were conducted and multiple observers stated that this would never happen at a festival that attracts a mostly white audience.
First Amendment & Democracy
First Amendment & Democracy
Actress-activist Jane Fonda sues President Nixon on October 18, 1973, for violating her First, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendment rights, not only for a program of intimidation against her and her supporters, but for the recently released enemies list on which she prominently appears. In May 1979, Fonda settles her suit with the FBI.
Mark Rosenbaum joins ACLU SoCal. He was named General Counsel in 1984, Legal Director, and later Chief Counsel until he left in 2013.
Notable Figures
Police practices
ACLU SoCal Staff Attorney, Dan Lavery, files civil rights suits in Fresno after two UFW farm workers were killed during police-grower-Teamster violence at a lawful picketing there. The suit asked Kern County Sheriff’s Department to instruct its members against violence and screen its forces for psychological, mental, or emotional unfitness for duty.
ACLU SoCal sues LAPD to keep undercover police out of Los Angeles schools without a court order. The suit claimed it’s a misuse of taxpayer funds.
Education Equity
Gender Equality/ LGBTQ Rights
ACLU SoCal Staff Attorney, Jill Jakes, represents Janet Lynn Weathers where it’s ruled that Janet can use her own name in a lawsuit against her husband. The decision allows women to use their own name, rather than her husband’s name in legal and business proceedings.
The ACLU of Illinois filed a Freedom of Information Act that revealed that the LAPD and FBI had been keeping a file on ACLU SoCal Counsel A.L. Wirin since 1933. Over 20,000 pages were made available covering 1920-1943.
Police practices
Criminal Justice
A federal court in Los Angeles enters judgment in favor of detainees in jail system, finding numerous conditions in the jail violate the constitutional rights of jail inmates. The ACLU Foundation of Southern California is the court ordered monitor of the conditions of confinement and medical services within all Los Angeles County jail facilities. The Jails Project also monitors conditions in the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office jails.
Rodolfo Alvarez, a sociology professor at UCLA, is elected President of the Union Board of Directors January 1980. He’s the first Mexican American to hold the post in the affiliate’s history.
Notable Figures
Gender Equality/ LGBTQ Rights
The ACLU SoCal sues in California Supreme Court to stop the 1980 Budget Act from cutting off Medi-Cal funding of abortions.
The Citizens Commission on Police Repression released documents that reveal the LAPD spied on the movement for the integration of LA’s schools as late as 1978.
Police practices
Disability Rights
Federal funds may not be given to public television until regulations are instituted to ensure that deaf people can follow the programs. U.S. District Court Judge Manual Real ruled on Oct 29 in a case brought by ACLU SoCal on behalf of the Greater Los Angeles Council of Deafness. Volunteer attorney Stanley Fleischman says, “its effect will be felt on all public broadcasting shows”.
Los Angeles police are ordered to stop applying the chokehold on suspects. Volunteer ACLU SoCal attorney Michael R Mitchell secured the decision from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. More than 80% of people who have died from strangle holds have been Black.
Police practices
LGBTQ Rights
After a four-year battle, the ACLU SOCAL secures an out-of-court settlement and an honorable discharge for Joanna Clark, who had been charged that her Army enlistment was voided because she is a transgender woman.
The Citizens Commission on Police Repression released documents that reveal the LAPD spied on the movement for the integration of LA’s schools as late as 1978.
Police practices
Gender Equality/ LGBTQ Rights
ACLU SoCal joins a lawsuit against the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee to end discrimination against 80 women runners that would allow the runners to compete in the 1984 Summer Olympic games.
Bilingual voting assistance as well as a Spanish facsimile of the ballot will be available to voters in the November 1984 election due to ACLU SoCal pressure.
First Amendment & Democracy
Immigrants’ Rights
ACLU SoCal Board votes to support sanctuary for Central American political refugees, calling it the “Underground Railroad for our time.”
ACLU SoCal joins ACLU Women’s Rights Project in suing state for discrimination in setting insurance rates by gender, in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Gender Equality/ LGBTQ Rights
Notable Figures
Mark Rosenbaum wins a class-action suit against L.A. County under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act for underpaying jobs held mostly by women and minorities.
Poor and minority students receive inferior education from the LAUSD, the ACLU charges in Rodriguez et al v. LAUSD filed in August 1986. At present, white students in “white” schools have $417 more spent on them than poor students in minority schools.
Education Equity
Police practices
ACLU SoCal sues the LAPD to discontinue the use of the battering ram.
A settlement reached in Bagley v. LAUSD provides that students approached by undercover police in schools will be able to use the defense of entrapment if they are charged with a crime.
Education Equity
Police practices
Los Angeles County agrees to spend $25 million more annually to relieve jail overcrowding, according to a settlement criminal complaint against them.
ACLU and MALDEF suit against racial gerrymandering in Los Angeles County. The Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union joined in the case. MALDEF won, enabling Latine to win a seat for the first time, a milestone reached in 1990.
First Amendment & Democracy
Racial Justice
ACLU SoCal joined with the Asian Pacific Legal Center to fight the “English only” rule for workers at the Executive Life Insurance Company. Asians and Hispanics comprise 50 percent of the company’s work force but can be fired if the company hears them speaking another language.
On March 3, 1991, Rodney King, a Black motorist, is pulled over by LAPD officers for speeding, and is beaten by five officers for, it is later charged, resisting arrest.
Police practices
Police practices
The ACLU SoCal led the charge against Police Chief Daryl Gates by placing a full-page ad urging him to resign in the wake of a videotaped police beating of an unarmed motorist. The ad included a photograph of a baton-wielding officer and the headline, “Who do you call when the gang wears blue uniforms?”
Ramona Ripston personally delivered boxes of petitions calling for Gates’s resignation to the then-police chief. Over 10,000 signed petitions were collected.
ACLU SoCal became the first affiliate in the nation to oppose the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, breaking with the national ACLU’s decision to remain neutral.
Notable Figures
First Amendment & Democracy
ACLU SoCal and MALDEF sued over redistricting plans of county supervisor districts, which violated the Equal Protection Clause. The supervisors who drew the districts were motivated by both an intent to fragment the Latine voting population and to preserve incumbencies. The lawsuit led to the creation of new district boundaries and the election in 1991 of the county’s first Latina county supervisor, Gloria Molina.
The U.S. Armed Forces must show that their policy of excluding lesbians and gay men is “rational” according to an August 19, 1991, finding by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The lawsuit against the Army was brought in 1983 by Jon Davidson of the ACLU SoCal on behalf of plaintiff Rev. Dusty Pruitt, an ordained Methodist minister, who was suspended and then discharged after her sexual orientation was revealed. This suit will result in a famously flawed “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
LGBTQ Rights
Police practices
After the acquittal of four white Los Angeles policemen who were videotaped beating motorist Rodney King, the ACLU SoCal called on the U.S. Attorney General’s office to formally request a federal civil rights prosecution of the officers.
Time Warner Inc., actor Charlton Heston, California Attorney General Dan Lungren, and the LA Police Commission insisted that Ice-T’s rap song “Cop Killer” be removed not only from his “Body Count” album but everywhere. The ACLU SoCal’s rep testified before the Police Commission saying the song shares, “a message that demands attention, not suppression… it would be unthinkable to suppress an artistic message of this sort.”
First Amendment & Democracy
First Amendment & Democracy
The ACLU SoCal has filed a brief in support of radio personality Howard Stern and against his unprecedented fining by the Federal Communications Commission for airing “indecent material.”
The ACLU SoCal joined a coalition to defeat Proposition 174 on the November 1993 ballot, which would have set back school desegregation by instituting a voucher system for private and parochial schools, taking funds directly from public schools.
Education Equity
Education Equity
The ACLU SoCal’s lawsuit against the L.A. Unified School District to ensure appropriate education for special needs children led to a consent decree that forces the school system to seek out and serve disabled children. The ACLU SoCal and its co-counsel will monitor performance of the consent decree.
The ACLU Foundation of Southern California, along with other civil rights groups, has filed a federal class action suit against the LAPD claiming pervasive sexual harassment and discrimination based on sex, ethnicity, and race against its women officers and other employees.
Police practices
Police practices
“From the Outside In”, a report from the ACLU SoCal, reveals that 83.1% of LAPD officers live outside of L.A. city limits. Decades of academic and professional research of law enforcement concludes that residency brings a special commitment to the city in which officers work. It recommends incentives such as low-rate or no-rate mortgages, rent subsidies, and salary premiums should be extended to officers to enable them to live in the city that they patrol. Several officers suggested that the report’s authors were hypocritical and demanded that ACLU SoCal officials disclose their own residences. Responding to those charges the author of the report released residential information about the ACLU staff showing that most of the organization’s staffers live in the city: 69% of the ACLU SoCal’s 32-member staff lives in L.A., even though the ACLU SoCal covers an area from San Luis Obispo to San Diego County.
Proposition 187 would have required individuals suspected of being immigrants to prove their citizenship. The measure is successfully blocked by the ACLU SoCal and a coalition of civil rights groups on December 14, 1994, despite being affirmed by voters in the November 1994 election. Only two provisions were allowed to become law: making it a crime to manufacture, use, or sell false citizenship documents, and preventing undocumented people from attending public universities. Eventually, in 1998, U.S. District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer finds Prop. 187 unconstitutional. The proposition would have required local law enforcement authorities to work with federal authorities to prevent undocumented people from receiving benefits or public services in California.
Immigrants’ Rights
Police practices
The City of L.A. will pay $3.6 million dollars in damages to 55 people bitten by LAPD K-9 dogs in a case that took four years to settle. Part of the settlement requires dogs that were trained to “find and bite” to be trained to “find and bark.”
The ACLU SoCal, in coalition with several local broadcasters, won a First Amendment victory when Judge Lance Ito ruled to allow a camera to monitor courtroom proceedings of the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
First Amendment & Democracy
First Amendment & Democracy
Governor Pete Wilson refused to implement the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, popularly known as the “Motor Voter” act, triggering a lawsuit by the ACLU SoCal and coalition partners. The court issues an injunction and orders California to submit a plan to implement the National Voter Registration Act.
The ACLU SoCal strongly opposes “three strikes” laws and cites the 1965 study by President Johnson’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice which concluded that three-strikes laws were ineffective in deterring serious crime; place burdens on courts, attorneys, and the prison system; and deprive the courts of the freedom to tailor punishment.
Criminal Justice
Racial Justice
The ACLU SoCal is leading a coalition of civil rights groups to keep the anti-affirmative action “California Civil Rights Initiative”, or Proposition 209, off the November 1996 ballot. A “Don’t Be Fooled” campaign is geared toward educating voters that the deceptively titled ballot measure would end affirmative action.
The ACLU SoCal establishes the Jails Project to monitor Rutherford V. Baca, a long-standing federal case on overcrowding and unconstitutional conditions in the Los Angeles County Jail system.
Criminal Justice
Police practices
The ACLU SoCal launched a “DWB” (Driving While Black/Driving While Brown) public service campaign to counteract the veto by Governor Pete Wilson of AB 1264, a bill that would have required law enforcement to collect and report statistical information, over a three-year period, on the race of motorists pulled over by the police.
The ACLU SoCal established a hotline and urged support for SB 78, legislation that would track race-based stops by California’s law enforcement officers. The hotline received nearly 1000 calls from people reporting their stories of race-based police traffic stops.
The ACLU SoCal has compiled these experiences in support of SB 78, which is to be heard on April 20 by the Senate Public Safety Committee, and to educate the public about racial profiling in routine traffic stops. “It is time to learn the facts so we can begin to address what most of us believe to be true: too many police officers are treating people of color as suspects and not as individuals,” said Ramona Ripston, Executive Director of the ACLU SoCal.
Police practices
Economic Justice
Governor Pete Wilson’s welfare cuts, approved by the state Legislature in November 1992, are refuted by the Ninth U.S. District Court of Appeals in a class action challenge brought by the ACLU SoCal.
The law said that new state residents receive benefits at the same level as their former home state until they had lived in California for 12 consecutive months. ACLU briefs showed that someone from Louisiana would receive $190 a month versus the same person from California would get $624. The case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on January 17, 1995, which later handed down a victory for the ACLU SoCal and against California’s two-tier welfare system. In 1997, Wilson filed a similar bill and the ACLUs of Southern and Northern California and the NOW Legal Defense Fund file another suit against it. On April 1, 1997, Judge Lawrence Katlon blocks the bill and schedules hearings. On September 28, 1998, SCOTUS grants certification in Roe v. Anderson, the case challenging the welfare disparity, and Mark Rosenbaum argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in January of 1999. The court overturned the law, inspiring the New York Times to call it “one of the most consequential Constitutional developments in years.”
ACLU SoCal has proposed an independent commission to study and make recommendations regarding the LAPD’s growing scandal involving its Rampart division. As many as 200 cases may be tainted as the result of officers falsifying records, planting or withholding evidence, and beating suspects. Beginning in September of 1999, ACLU SoCal was the first organization to call upon Mayor Richard Riordan to appoint a commission. With Riordan’s support, LAPD Chief Bernard Parks rejected the idea, asserting that the Department’s own Board of Inquiry could handle the problem. In February of 2000, the FBI – which Parks had brought in to study the problem – became implicated in illegal deportations initiated by CRASH officers.
Police practices
Police practices
ACLU SoCal and community organizations announce their intention to reform LAPD policy in a public meeting outside LAPD HQ.
Many of the groups had been working separately and this marked is the first time they came together considering recent LAPD scandals.
ACLU SoCal sues to intervene in the Consent Decree brought between the City of Los Angeles and the Department of Justice over the LAPD’s abuses. The lead attorney is Erwin Chemerinsky, who petitioned to intervene after President George W. Bush said that federal authorities should not impose themselves on local police reform.
ACLU SoCal filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the LAPD from using racial profiling. The case was brought by three Black and two Latine drivers who were followed, stopped, and detained by police for no reason on five separate occasions on the way home or to work.
In 1999, Governor Gray Davis vetoed a bill that would have required law enforcement agencies to collect data on the race of drivers who are stopped by police. The bill achieved strong bipartisan support, and over 70 localities have already agreed to collect such data, but Los Angeles has refused.
Police practices
First Amendment & Democracy
ACLU SoCal sued the LAPD in federal court for its attacks on members of the media during a protest at the 2000 Democratic Party National Convention. After shutting down a concert in the protest zone across from the Staples Center, police attacked the frightened crowd with batons, pepper spray, and nonlethal bullets. Members of the media reported that police officers singled them out for attack.
ACLU SoCal and partner civil rights organizations file Williams v. State of California. The suit seeks to extend the arc of education-related civil rights litigation by holding the State of California accountable for failing to maintain minimal standards in many of the state’s schools, especially in communities of color, economically struggling communities, and immigrant communities. Deprivations include lack of current textbooks, shifting of teachers between schools, dilapidated and dangerous buildings, and lack of basic amenities. A centerfold with photos and testimonials spotlights anecdotal reports of problems throughout the school system.
On September 12, 2000, ACLU SoCal filed the first motion in the Williams education suit demanding proper textbooks for students. The suit charges that people at the state level are writing checks for textbooks that have not made it into students’ hands.
Education Equity
First Amendment & Democracy
ACLU SoCal and librarians have stalled AB 2350, a bill that would require software on library computers to block pornography sites as well as topics such as AIDS, safe sex, gay and lesbian issues, and women’s rights.
ACLU SoCal sued against the implementation of Proposition 227, the voter-passed ballot initiative that would cut bilingual education in L.A.’s public schools by placing English language learners into immersion programs. The immersion theory, says the complaint, is untested in American education.
Education Equity
Education Equity
Filed in 1997, the Serna v. Eastin settlement brings better schools for Compton’s 31,000 students. The suit charged that the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and other state agencies had failed to deliver on promises following their 1993 takeover of Compton schools.
The settlement requires the state to provide all students with classroom and take-home textbooks for all core courses and establish regular community feedback forums.
Martha Matthews, Bohnett Attorney, filed a suit against Anaheim Unified School District over librarian’s attempt to block biographies of LGBTQ people.
Education Equity
Economic Justice
The ACLU SoCal opposed a bill that would provide for the involuntary institutionalization of mentally ill people.
The ACLU SoCal filed a suit to stop illegal student searches after male students in a math class at Locke High School in South Central were told to stand and be frisked by security guards. No weapons were found.
Education Equity
National Security & Surveillance
The ACLU SoCal set up a racial profiling hotline following demands from the U.S. State Department that all residents of Middle Eastern origin to report to the I.N.S.
ACLU SoCal attorney, Ben Wizner, brought a suit against the state of Washington’s Office of Corrections and the officers of Callum Bay Corrections Center on behalf of Sylvester Mahone. Mahone was confined for three days in a cell with no clothes, blanket, heat, water, or toilet paper as punishment.
First Amendment & Democracy
Police practices
Ramona Ripston offers an opinion piece on LAPD racial profiling after ACLU SoCal data shows that African Americans and Latine drivers and pedestrians who are stopped are more likely to be asked to step out of their cars, frisked, and searched by LAPD officers than white drivers and pedestrians. LAPD declined to collect such data.
Immigrants’ Rights
ACLU SoCal filed a lawsuit seeking the release of Sopheap Puth, a non-citizen held by ICE, for 6 months past his sentence.
A 2001 SCOTUS ruling said that immigration officials may not detain non-citizens for more than 6 months after they are ordered removed unless there’s likelihood of removing them in the reasonable future.
A class action lawsuit was filed against the Antelope Valley Union High School District for funneling pregnant and parenting teens into substandard alternate education programs instead of being given priority to finish at their own schools.
Education Equity
Education Equity
Litigation in Williams v.California, comes to an end after four years, becoming one of the largest legal wins for education equity in California. The settlement requires the California legislature to develop an accountability infrastructure to ensure that students are provided with the critical basics for education.
The settlement also provided $800 million for school repairs and $138 million for new infrastructure material to help students in low performing schools.
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Billy Soza Warsoldier must be allowed to wear his hair long as part of this religious beliefs as an Indigenous person.
First Amendment & Democracy
First Amendment & Democracy
ACLU SoCal secured an agreement to protect whistleblowers employed by the Federal Air Marshals Service. The Department of Homeland Security prohibits employees from making any public statement about the agency due to its overly broad policy restricting employee speech.
The court ruled that arresting unhoused people using public spaces when no shelters were available was a cruel and unusual punishment. This nullified a 35-year-old code that allowed police to round up unhoused people.
Economic Justice
Economic Justice
ACLU SoCal files a lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente over their practice of dumping patients at Skid Row, sometimes leaving them with no more than a hospital gown and an adult diaper.
A letter was sent to the city’s attorney in December 2005 of hospital malpractices. The hospital refused to negotiate.
ACLU SoCal settles lawsuit with City of Santa Barbara on behalf of Michael Tocher, a student at the time, after he was arrested for reading the names of soldiers killed in Iraq.
Tocher was arrested on Veterans Day, 2004. He received $17,000 in damages and the city was required to retrain police on free speech.
First Amendment & Democracy
Economic Justice
A settlement was reached banning officers from conducting unlawful searches of unhoused people in Skid Row, and mandating officer training on constitutional guidelines to search and detain people.
70% of people picked up by police had no violations against them or had never been on probation or parole.
ACLU SoCal wins a $2.7 million settlement that split among 125 police officers in a class-action lawsuit against City of Ontario for spying on police officers in the locker room, without warrant, with video cameras.
First Amendment & Democracy
National Security & Surveillance
In 2011, Imam Yassir Fazaga, Ali Uddin Malik, and Yasser Abdelrahim, sued the FBI for paying an informant to gather information on his congregation and other Muslims in Orange County because of their religious identity. The FBI thought they could target Muslim communities by saying that any information shared on the operation would result in a “risk to national security.”
The U.S. Supreme Court decided that Fazaga can continue to fight in lower courts to hold the FBI accountable for its discriminatory surveillance of Muslim Americans, a decade-long legal battle continues to this day.
In June 2010, I.C.E. raided the Terra Universal factory in Southern California, and unconstitutionally detained and arrested 43 workers on suspicion of immigration violations. Because of I.C.E.’s illegal tactics, and because the raid was a departure from the administration’s stated policy to target unscrupulous employers rather than workers, the ACLU SoCal filed a Freedom of Information Act request to gather information about the raid and I.C.E.’s worksite enforcement policies.
The Court ruled in ACLU SoCal’s side finding that I.C.E.’s efforts to search for responsive documents was inadequate.
Immigrants’ Rights
National Security & Surveillance
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking information about the United States’ role in the detention and torture of Naji Hamdan, a U.S. citizen, in the United Arab Emirates. After years of surveillance by US intelligence officials, Mr. Hamdan was detained and tortured in a secret prison in the UAE. Shortly after the ACLU SoCal filed a habeas case alleging the U.S. government’s complicity in his abduction, he was released from the secret prison. The ACLU SoCal later filed a FOIA request seeking documents that would establish the U.S. government’s role in Mr. Hamdan’s abduction.
A lawsuit against Los Angeles County and the L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca for denying bail on the basis of I.C.E. holds, and for holding people in County Jail for more than 48 hours based on those I.C.E. holds. In February 2020, the court’s final judgement upholds a permanent injunction barring I.C.E. from relying on a database of inaccurate, incomplete records to issue detainers and gives I.C.E. three months to comply.
Immigrants’ Rights
LGBTQ Rights
A federal class action lawsuit against San Bernardino County over discriminatory policies at the West Valley Detention Center that deny gay, bisexual and transgender inmates equal access
A case involving the Barstow Police Department’s wrongful arrest of Jesse and Robert Katz for exercising their right to refuse to show identification.
In 2014, the Katz brothers were eating at a Barstow taco shop when another customer accused them (and other people in the restaurant) of stealing a vaporizer. The man called the police, but he had no evidence and admitted that he had none when the police arrived. Nonetheless, the officers asked the Katz brothers for their IDs. The brothers had done nothing wrong and exercised their right to refuse to show ID. The officers arrested them and took them to jail.
In May 2015, ACLU SoCal and the City of Barstow reach an agreement to train officers that a person detained by police is not required to identify himself.
Police practices
Education Equity
The Community Coalition v. LAUSD lawsuit was filed against LAUSD for misallocating $450 million of state education funds under the Local Control Funding Formula, diverting it away from low-income students, English language learners, and foster youth. The case resulted in a 2016 decision by the California Department of Education that required LAUSD to correct its spending plan and a historic settlement that provided over $150 million in additional services to 50 of LAUSD’s highest-need schools.
On September 14, 2017, LAUSD, CDE, and the Petitioners entered into a settlement in which LAUSD agreed to provide roughly $150 million in additional spending to 50 schools over three school years.
ACLU SoCal intervened on behalf street vendors to challenge the unlawful seizure and destruction of their carts, utensils and other property by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Fashion District Business Improvement District.
Economic Justice
Immigrants’ Rights
A class action lawsuit challenging the federal government’s policy and practice of setting bonds for noncitizens in immigration proceedings, without consideration of their ability to pay the bond, that results in the detention of individuals merely because they are poor.
In 2022, a federal court approved a settlement that would consider a detained person’s financial ability to pay a bond.
Evan Minton, 35, is a transgender man who was scheduled to receive a hysterectomy in August at Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a hospital in the Dignity Health chain. Two days prior to the appointment, a nurse called to discuss the surgery and Minton mentioned that he is transgender. The next day, the hospital canceled the procedure. The ACLU SoCal filed a lawsuit against the Dignity Health medical center for withholding medical care because of a patient’s gender identity, amounting to sex discrimination in violation of California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.
LGBTQ Rights
Immigrants’ Rights
A coalition of immigrants filed suit against the Trump administration for its unlawful revocations of their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status. These revocations have taken place without notice or an opportunity for those affected to present their cases, even though they followed all program rules and did not engage in any conduct to disqualify them from DACA.
In 2018, a federal judge ruled in favor of three young immigrants and a nationwide class of others like them who have had their DACA status unlawfully revoked by the Trump administration. The court certified a nationwide class and issued a nationwide injunction blocking the administration from terminating class members’ DACA grants and work permits without notice, an explanation, and an opportunity to respond.
The ACLU SoCal filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of nine people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and five United States citizen children of TPS holders against the Department of Homeland Security to stop the unlawful termination of TPS for more than 300,000 people living in the U.S. and to protect the tens of thousands of U.S. citizen children whose parents would be forced to leave under the administration’s policy.
The Trump administration adopted a new, far narrower interpretation of the federal law governing TPS, and then used that interpretation to terminate TPS status for all individuals from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan.
Immigrants’ Rights
LGBTQ Rights
Christynne Wood, a transgender woman, was denied use of women’s bathrooms and locker rooms at a Crunch Fitness gym in El Cajon. The ACLU SoCal sued, as California law allows everyone to use restrooms that align with their gender identity.
In 2021, Wood won a settlement in which Crunch Fitness El Cajon agreed that all its employees will undergo anti-discrimination training, including the identification and prevention of harassment based on gender expression.
ACLU SoCal filed a class action lawsuit against Riverside County, which oversaw the Youth Accountability Team (YAT) program and funneled millions of taxpayer dollars into the program.
The YAT program was created to target at-risk youths for intervention but in practice amounted to a youth probation program, despite the fact that students enrolled in the program had not been convicted of crimes.
Education Equity
Immigrants’ Rights
Yea Ji Sea lived in the U.S. her entire life and served in the U.S. Army for more than four years and earned two medals. When the Trump Administration terminated the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program (recruitment of foreign national with sought-after skills), Sea was notified of her honorable discharge. She had applied for citizenship while in the military, was initially denied, then asked to reapply. She did not hear back. The ACLU SoCal filed a lawsuit to force USCIS to issue a decision on her citizenship application.
Finally, in August 2018, Sea became a U.S. Citizen.
The ACLU SoCal files a lawsuit against the Pacific Maritime Association for employment discrimination against pregnant dockworkers who are not union members. Dockworkers are routinely denied access to job assignments that would allow them to keep working safely and accrue hours toward union qualification. Dockworkers need the hours of work to earn seniority and eventually full-time jobs with union memberships and benefits.
Economic Justice/ Gender justice
Police practices
Lawsuit on behalf of Demetra Johnson, Vinny Eng, and Zachary Wade — all of whom had family members killed by LASD deputies. They’ve not received vital records on the deaths of their loved ones and on the deputies who pulled the triggers.
This lawsuit charges that the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) violated California’s Right to Know Act, also known as SB 1421, which gives the public the right to access certain records relating to police misconduct and serious uses of force.
The ACLU SoCal filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in L.A. to force I.C.E. agents to stop impersonating police and other unlawful practices during home arrests.
The lawsuit is filed on behalf of Osny Sorto-Vazquez Kidd, a DACA recipient.
Immigrants’ Rights
First Amendment & Democracy
This lawsuit, filed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, asks the court to direct the Terminal Island prison to decarcerate vulnerable people who have medical conditions that could lead to serious illness or death from COVID-19 infections. For those who remain, the lawsuit asks that the prisons provide adequate spacing for six feet or more of social distancing. It also asks that people receive, without charge, individual supplies of hand soap and paper towels, and access to hand sanitizer, daily showers, and daily clean laundry, plus other measures.
The ACLU SoCal unveiled the monumental mural, “The Care We Create”, on the façade of the Los Angeles HQ office. The mural is led by ACLU SoCal artist-in-residence, Audrey Chan, and depicts various SoCal community leaders and past clients.
LGBTQ Rights
LGBTQ Rights
The ACLU SoCal announces its opposition to the recall of California governor Gavin Newsom. A recall would be a step back for civil liberties in California and fails to get enough votes to proceed.
Michael Kaufman, ACLU SoCal’s Sullivan and Cromwell Access to Justice Senior Staff Attorney, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court to defend immigrants’ right to a bond hearing. With co-counsel, Matt Adams of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, ACLU SoCal argued that immigrants should not be held indefinitely without bond hearings.
Immigrants’ Rights
Economic Justice
ACLU SoCal filed a lawsuit against the City of Lancaster and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The plaintiff in the lawsuit is Leroy Butts, a 68-year-old Black man who was unhoused at the time of an incident in 2019 in a Lancaster park. He was legally passing out “Know Your Rights” pamphlets when two LASD deputies approached a group of people who were homeless. Butts told members of the group of their rights to be in the park, and in a clear act of retaliation the deputies issued him a $500 administrative citation.
In October 2022, Butts won a settlement.
ACLU SoCal, Chicanxs Unidxs and the Peace and Justice Law Center filed suit against the Orange County District Attorney, Todd Spitzer, for violating the state’s Public Records Act by refusing to release documents concerning the county’s implementation of the Racial Justice Act.
The landmark California Racial Justice Act, passed in 2020, prohibits the state from pursuing convictions or sentences based upon race, ethnicity, or national origin and allows people to challenge proceedings that may have been tainted by racial bias. But for the law to be effective, the public must be able to access policies and data from prosecutors.
Criminal Justice
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