News Releases

The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the City of Pasco, WA violated the rights of two artists when it censored their works. The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington on behalf of artists Janette Hopper and Sharon Rupp challenging the exclusion of their works from a program to display art at the Pasco City Hall in 1996.

Increasingly, corporations and some police officials around the country are seeking to silence their critics by filing actions known as SLAPP suits, or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. These suits aim to intimidate citizen activists with limited means by forcing them to spend time and money on baseless legal proceedings.

Seeking to promote open government, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington today filed a lawsuit seeking public documents about the City of Seattle's stance in contract negotiations with the Seattle Police Guild.

The ACLU's Kitsap County Chapter fought an effort to censor David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, a murder mystery about prejudice toward Japanese Americans after World War II. After South Kitsap County School District teacher and parent review panels endorsed the book, a vocal group of parents condemned the acclaimed work as pornographic.

The ACLU successfully challenged regulations purported to give the Washington Liquor Control Board authority to prohibit labels on beer bottles that the Board believes are "immodest, undignified, or in bad taste."

Proponents of free speech literally chalked up a victory on the campus of Western Washington University in Bellingham. In 1999, WWU administrators proposed new guidelines for writing messages in chalk on Red Square plaza that would unreasonably limit who could write messages and what they could say.

People of color in cities large and small across this nation still live with the day-to-day reality that skin color makes one a suspect in America. Police are more likely to stop and more likely to search motorists who are people of color. The ACLU is working to combat the practice of making decisions based on the race or ethnicity of an individual.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington today is filing its second lawsuit in United States District Court in Seattle challenging the City of Seattle's establishment of a No Protest Zone during the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on December 1-3, 1999.

TCI Cablevision (now owned by AT&T) and producer Michael Aivaz have reached a settlement to a lawsuit in federal court over the cancellation of Aivaz's program on Seattle's cable access television channel. Under terms of the settlement, TCI for the first time has established formal procedures for acting on complaints about the content of public access programming.

The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the Washington Court of Appeals to recognize the parental rights of a lesbian mother who has separated from the biological mother of her daughter.