Company Profile

Company Description:

The ACLU of Northern California, founded in 1934, is an affiliate of the national ACLU, which was founded in 1920, to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. We are non‐profit and non‐partisan. Since its founding, the ACLU has been at the forefront of advancing and protecting the individual civil rights and civil liberties enumerated in our Constitution. The ACLU stands up for these rights even when the cause is unpopular, and sometimes when few others will.

The ACLU‐NC focuses primarily on government action and inaction, including stopping government action that is harmful to civil liberties and rights, and encouraging government action that is supportive of those liberties and rights. This focus on government is for several reasons: the first is the tremendous power that government has to take away life and liberty, and also the power of collective action through government to protect rights. It is also because the Constitution applies most comprehensively to government action. On a more limited basis, however, the ACLU‐NC also engages in advocacy against private entities that are violating rights, either directly against those entities, insisting on government action in those instances, or in advocating against government actions that protect or support those harmful actions by private entities.