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Youth

All young people must have the opportunity to meaningfully participate in our society.  The ACLU Youth Policy project seeks to ensure that young people – particularly those who have been historically excluded or underserved – receive meaningful education and services in communities, instead of being pushed to a juvenile justice system that will undermine their ability to be successful as adults.  Our current focus is on reforming school discipline policies and practices, working to limit school-based referrals to the juvenile justice system, and decreasing the over-reliance on jails and prisons for young people in the juvenile and adult criminal law systems.

Resources

News Release, Published: 
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
A Q&A about walkouts, policy regarding absences, and other student political speech at public schools.
News Release, Published: 
Sunday, December 31, 2000
For several years the ACLU has worked with parents to keep creationist teachings out of the science classroom in Burlington-Edison High School. Responding to advocacy by the ACLU and concerned parents, the school board in 1998 backed a decision by the superintendent that the science teacher could no longer teach creationism in the guise of "intelligent design theory" in biology lessons.

The ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief protecting the rights of someone who sought to be legally designated as a de facto parent – one who has been found by the court to have assumed the role of a parent for a substantial period of time.

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