News Releases

The ACLU is suing two federal agents for unlawfully imprisoning and seeking to deport an Iraqi refugee who had broken no laws.

The ACLU has sued the state to strike down laws that ban marriage between couples of the same sex.

The Burien City Council voted 6-0 to pass a nondiscrimination ordinance that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The ACLU-WA is assisting Ian Spiers, a biracial community college student who was questioned and detained by local police and a Homeland Security agent for taking photographs at the Ballard Locks.

The American Civil Liberties Union today praised the Washington Court of Appeals for allowing a nonbiological mother the right to seek parental rights and visitation with her daughter after the mother's relationship with the biological mother ended.

The American Civil Liberties Union today welcomed the decision by the Supreme Court to let states decide for themselves whether to grant scholarship money to theology students, which the ACLU said undermines one of the core legal arguments in the President’s so-called "faith-based initiative."

From the vantage point of almost two decades of observation, and countless meetings with local officials and their staff, the single most important overriding message I would like to leave with you is the following: "stop the giveaways." By this I mean, the City should stop giving away in the collective bargaining process the public’s ability to establish a stronger and more effective police accountability system.

In a first-in-the-nation case, the Washington Supreme Court today unanimously ruled that police must obtain a warrant in order to track an individual's movements by Global Positioning Systems (GPS). The ruling agrees with the contentions of an amicus brief submitted in the case by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In settlement of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) has agreed to improve its policies for handling requests for documents by the public. The ACLU sued the SPD in 2001 for violating the state Public Disclosure Act by failing to disclose a key document relating to police enforcement of the City's "no protest zone" during the World Trade Organization demonstrations in 1999.

Under pressure from civil libertarians, the Washington State Patrol has suspended searching randomly selected cars of people seeking to board state ferries. While the state patrol had claimed the searches were voluntary, motorists who did not consent to the arbitrary searches were prevented from boarding the boat.