American Civil Liberties Union

The ACLU has asked the Orange County Sheriff's Department to restrict the use of Tasers in most cases, saying hundreds of people have died nationally after being shocked by the stun guns during encounters with police. The American Civil Liberties Union delivered a sharply worded 10-page letter to Sheriff Sandra Hutchens on Tuesday, urging her to limit the department's use of Tasers to incidents in which there is a threat of "death or serious bodily injury."

In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public restrooms have an expectation of privacy. Craig (R-Idaho) is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to let him withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct stemming from a restroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport. The ACLU filed a brief Tuesday supporting Craig.

Justice Department officials who prosecuted hundreds of illegal immigrants arrested at an Iowa meatpacking plant in May used a government-created manual to speed through guilty pleas, a potential violation of the rights of those detained in the raid, the American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday. The manual was assembled before the workers were arrested or their lawyers were appointed.

Growing up with a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, Ramona Ripston learned early about intolerance. Her maternal grandparents sat shiva to mourn the marriage of her parents and snubbed their grandchildren for a decade. As a young woman, Ripston witnessed her parents' fears as her father's colleagues from Brooklyn College in New York were summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Los Angeles police officers are far more likely to stop, search and arrest minorities than they are whites -- even after statistics were adjusted for high- and low-crime areas -- according to a nongovernmental report released Monday. The report by Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California found that once stopped, African Americans were 29% more likely to be arrested than whites.

The American Civil Liberties Union petitioned the U.S. government Wednesday for the release of a U.S. citizen who, the group alleges, has been under FBI scrutiny for years and has been imprisoned without charge in the United Arab Emirates for three months. Naji Hamdan, 42, a former Hawthorne resident, was arrested Aug. 29 by Emirates state police at the request of the U.S. government, effectively putting Hamdan in U.S.

Lawmakers in South Carolina are considering a bill that would create the nation's most aggressive DNA collection program, instructing police to take genetic samples from people arrested in any crime -- including misdemeanors such as shoplifting -- and enter them into state and national DNA databases. Every state collects DNA from people convicted of murder or sex crimes; 44 states, including South Carolina, take samples from all convicted felons.

Severe overcrowding at a federal immigration detention facility here places detainees' health and safety at risk, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged in court documents filed this week. The San Diego Correctional Facility's 6-by-12-foot cells are designed for two people but in many cases house three, forcing some detainees to sleep on the floor near toilets, the ACLU said in its complaint.

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court Friday to unseal secret documents filed by the Bush administration in support of its warrantless domestic surveillance program. The administration announced last week that it was suspending the electronic surveillance program and says the ACLU case challenging its constitutionality should therefore be dismissed. It has filed some of its arguments under seal, preventing the ACLU from seeing them.

A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union urged a federal appeals court on Wednesday to affirm a lower-court decision that the Bush administration's Terrorist Surveillance Program was illegal and show "the president that he has to obey the law." But a Justice Department lawyer maintained that the program was legal and called on the judges to overturn the ruling, while also arguing that the case was now moot. A three-judge panel of the U.S.