Issues
Learn about what's happening across the most pressing civil liberties issues of our time, and what you can do.
Featured Issues
Criminal Justice Reform
The rights guaranteed to criminal suspects, defendants, offenders and prisoners are not mere technicalities. They are fundamental political rights that protect all Americans from governmental abuse of power. These rights include the guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure, the right to reasonable bail, the right to due process of law and the right to be free from cruel and unusual treatment—and they are indispensable to a free society. Yet crime control policies all too often assume that harsher law enforcement policies and longer prison sentences can solve the problem. The ACLU works to puncture this “tough on crime” rhetoric, safeguard fundamental liberties, and advocate for sensible, evidence-based reforms of criminal justice policies.
D.C. Statehood
D.C. is the only national capital in the democratic world whose citizens don't have equal voting and representation rights. Granting D.C. statehood is needed, constitutional, and the only way to enfranchise more than 700,000 Americans who have been denied their full voting rights for over 200 years.
Freedom of Speech and Association
The First Amendment protects our freedom to speak, assemble, and associate with others. These rights are essential to our democratic system of governance. The Supreme Court has written that freedom of expression is "the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom." Without it, other fundamental rights, like the right to vote, would cease to exist. Since its founding, the ACLU has advocated for broad protection of our First Amendment rights in times of war and peace, to ensure that the marketplace of ideas remains vigorous and unrestricted.
All Issues
Privacy
In this age of ever-expanding surveillance, governmental database aggregation, and data mining, our right to privacy is under assault. The ACLU works to protect our personal privacy in a range of settings.
Racial Justice
Despite enormous progress, the promise of fair and equal treatment for people of color remains elusive. The ACLU is committed to combating racism and racial discrimination.
Religious Liberty
The right to practice religion, or no religion at all, is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. It is sometimes wrongly imagined that the ACLU does not vigorously protect rights of freedom to exercise religion, particularly of Christians. In fact, the ACLU defends both the right against governmental establishment of religion and the right to freely practice one’s religion without governmental interference. These rights operate hand in hand, and together ensure that freedom of belief (and non-belief) can flourish.
Reproductive Freedom
Personal privacy and reproductive rights are among our most important constitutional liberties. The ACLU seeks to uphold the rights of individuals to decide freely, without governmental hindrance or coercion, whether or not to bear a child. We strive to ensure that all in our society have access to sexuality education, contraception, abortion, prenatal care, and childbearing assistance.
Voting Rights
District citizens bear the burdens of American citizenship without its full benefits. Congress dictates how D.C. tax dollars are spent, but we lack voting rights in either house of Congress. The ACLU supports full representation and statehood for the District of Columbia.
Women's Rights/Gender Equity
Women have made great strides in the fight for equality, but gender bias continues to create huge barriers for many, especially poor women, women of color, and immigrant women. Ongoing struggles include ensuring equal economic and educational opportunities, ending gender-based violence, and addressing the harms to women and girls in the criminal legal system. The ACLU has been working to systematically end sex discrimination and ensure that all women and girls are able to lead lives of dignity.
Youth/Childrens' Rights
The extent to which we protect the constitutional rights of young people strongly influences how much they respect and understand those rights as adults. As the Supreme Court noted in an early student rights case, “That [schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.” The ACLU works to educate young people about their rights and safeguard those rights in public schools and other settings.
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