Who we are

The three California affiliates—ACLU of Northern California, ACLU of Southern California, and ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties—have a long, successful history of working together to protect and promote civil liberties.  Though each of us is autonomous and has exclusive right to guide the work in its jurisdiction, we come together to maximize our statewide impact on issues for the benefit of civil liberties.  When our work is done on behalf of all three affiliates, particularly in high-impact statewide litigation and collaborative legislative efforts, it is more powerful and effective in conveying the strength of the statewide ACLU presence.

The ACLU of California currently has a number of statewide priority areas: Criminal Justice Reform, Education Equity, Immigration Reform, LGBT Equality, Privacy & Technology, Reproductive Justice, and Voting Rights.

Free Speech

The battle to protect freedom of speech is never won. The ACLU stands ready to step in when individuals’ rights to protest or be heard are infringed;

Immigrant Rights

As the state with the world’s busiest border crossing, we work to ensure that immigrants receive protections guaranteed under the Constitution, including the right to be treated fairly in court and to be free from discrimination based on race or national origin;

LGBT Rights

We work to create a society in which lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people enjoy the basic rights of equality, privacy, personal autonomy, freedom of belief and expression, and freedom from harassment;

Reproductive Justice

Though California has strong protections for reproductive rights, access to abortion is not uniformly available and medically accurate sex education is not the norm in every school district;

Technology and Privacy

We fight the trend toward a surveillance society and work to guarantee that individuals, not governments or corporations, determine how and when others gain access to their personal information.

Please contact the ACLU in your area for more information about how you can get involved in our civil liberties issues or to get information about a legal issue.