Latest From ACLU of Washington

The ACLU filed a suit in 2004, challenging the constitutionality of the indigent public defense system in Grant County. The suit argued that public defenders were underfunded, overworked and lacked independence, depriving indigent defendants of effective assistance of counsel.

Research has shown that government cameras in public places don’t reduce crime. The ACLU-WA has been a vocal opponent of efforts to place police surveillance cameras in Seattle parks.

The ACLU has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the appeal of Cal Coburn Brown, who was sentenced to death in Washington state in 1993. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the death sentence in 2005, ruling that a potential juror had been incorrectly kept from the jury that found Brown guilty and imposed the death penalty.

The City of Pasco and artists Janette Hopper and Sharon Rupp have reached a final settlement in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the artists. Under terms of the settlement, the City has issued an apology to the artists for “censoring their artwork” and further acknowledging it violated their First Amendment rights. The final settlement came recently, after the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2001 that the City of Pasco violated the rights of Hopper and Rupp when it excluded their works from a program to display art at the Pasco City Hall in 1996.

At a hearing here today, the American Civil Liberties Union presented arguments to advance the first nationwide class-action lawsuit challenging the government’s controversial No-Fly lists, which are distributed to all airlines with instructions to detain or interrogate passengers whose names match thousands of names listed.