News Releases

The ACLU is urging Washington State University’s Board of Regents to decline to support the financing of a new building unless all medical training and practices there will be unrestricted by religious doctrine.

A federal court today ruled that the City of Yakima’s election system for City Council violates the federal Voting Rights Act. The court ruled that the system dilutes Latino votes and that “… City Council elections are not ‘equally open to participation’ by members of the Latino minority.”  According to the ACLU of Washington, although Voting Rights Act lawsuits have forced reforms in many cities’ election systems across the country, this case is the first such suit in Washington state.

Represented by the ACLU of Washington, three state-licensed marijuana business owners have intervened in a lawsuit challenging the City of Fife’s ban on marijuana operations. The plaintiff-intervenors say the City of Fife’s ban on legal marijuana operations within the city is unconstitutional and is preempted by state law.   Update: On Aug. 29, the court upheld Fife’s ban, saying that I-502 does not require cities to allow marijuana businesses.

The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that warehousing individuals with mental illness in hospital emergency rooms where they do not get the mental health treatment they need violates state law.

The ACLU and civil rights groups have asked a federal court to immediately stop the government from pursuing deportation proceedings against several children unless it ensures they have legal representation. The move comes as immigration courts are speeding up deportation hearings via a "rocket docket."

On July 25, Huy and a coalition anchored by the National Congress of American Indians, Native American Rights Fund and American Civil Liberties Union, decried the United States’ violations of American indigenous prisoners’ religious freedoms, to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

The ACLU and allies are pursuing a lawsuit challenging the federal government's failure to provide immigrant children with legal representation in deportation proceedings against them. It is unfair to force children to defend themselves alone against government prosecutors.

Advocates for psychiatric patients have filed a friend of the court brief with the Washington Supreme Court urging it to uphold a trial court ruling invalidating a practice called “boarding” – holding civil commitment patients in hospital emergency rooms unable to provide adequate treatment.  The brief was filed by statewide mental health, disability rights, and civil liberties organizations.

Today, the ACLU of Washington (ACLU) and Columbia Legal Services (CLS) voluntarily dismissed their lawsuit after successfully getting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release hunger striking detainees from solitary confinement at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington.  The ACLU and CLS had filed this lawsuit on April 2, 2014 to prohibit ICE from retaliating against detainees at the NWDC who engage in First Amendment protected activities by placing them in solitary confinement.

Federal immigration authorities have released hunger strikers from solitary confinement at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. The action came after the ACLU-WA and Columbia Legal Services sued U.S. Immigration and Enforcement for retaliating against hunger strikers.