Please read this information carefully to find out the kinds of legal work we do and how to contact the ACLU SoCal about your legal problem.
Securely submit your legal issue to the ACLU.
Our office handles civil liberties and civil rights matters arising in the Southern California region — meaning San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Kern, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange counties.
If your issue arises elsewhere, find your local affiliate here.
We try to use our limited resources to make systemic or structural change that benefits whole communities, through litigation as well as other kinds of advocacy. We unfortunately are NOT able to offer legal assistance to the vast majority of people who contact us for help.
We will contact you if we need more information to understand your request, if we have suggestions about steps you could take or resources you might find helpful, or if our staff would like to discuss representing you to try to solve your problem. Due to the high volume of requests we receive, we are not able to provide a personalized response to every request.
Reviewing the submissions and requests we receive helps our staff understand the civil rights and civil liberties issues facing community members today and informs our future work, even when we are not able to offer individualized assistance.
Important Note on Deadlines
All legal claims have time deadlines. The deadlines may be different depending on who violated your rights and which rights were violated. For some kinds of violations, you may need to file a claim with a government agency before you can sue, and these agencies have their own time deadlines. If you do not comply with the applicable deadlines, you may be legally barred from pursuing your claim in court. Contacting the ACLU to describe your problem does not mean that the ACLU represents you, and will not stop the deadline clock from running.
The ACLU cannot give you advice about the deadlines that apply to your situation. To protect your rights, please consult an attorney promptly to find out what deadline(s) may apply to you.
How to Contact the ACLU SoCal About a Legal Problem
The best way to ask us for legal assistance is to submit our secure online form.
People who are unable to use the online form can write us a letter at:
ACLU SoCal Legal Intake
1313 West Eighth St.
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Your letter should include your name, the best ways to contact you, a brief (no more than 1 page) description of the issue you want help with, and the county where the issue arose.
We are not able to take walk-ins or make appointments to discuss legal requests in person.
We are also currently unable to accept legal requests by phone.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it cost?
Attorneys represent ACLU clients free of charge. Members of our legal staff sometimes work together with attorneys in private practice who volunteer their time for ACLU cases.
What do you mean by civil liberties and civil rights?
Civil liberties are the basic freedoms that the United States Constitution protects for all Americans, such as freedom of speech, press, religion, and association. The Constitution and our laws also protect individuals’ civil rights to fair and equal treatment, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and other protected traits.
The ACLU SoCal has tackled many civil rights and civil liberties topics in its more than 100-year history. Recently, our primary subject areas have included:
- Criminal Justice including rights, safety, and dignity for people in jail
- Economic Justice including rights, safety, and dignity for unhoused people
- Education Equity
- Government Accountability & Transparency
- Immigrants’ Rights
- LGBTQ, Gender & Reproductive Justice
- Police Practices
- Voting Rights
How do you choose which issues and cases to work on?
The ACLU strives to do work that affects the civil liberties or civil rights of large numbers of people, rather than just the individual parties involved in a dispute. Basic questions we ask when reviewing a potential case or project are:
- Is this a significant civil liberties or civil rights issue? How many people is it impacting?
- Who is affected by this problem? Will we be able to center the voices of impacted people in doing the work? Do the impacted people have other tools at their disposal? Are efforts to address this problem already underway?
- What effect will this work have on the community at large?
- Do we have the necessary resources to do this well?
Our staff members also periodically identify priority issues to work on proactively and/or reactively in their areas of expertise. This planning process informs our allocation of resources as new requests for assistance come in.
What kinds of legal matters affect lots of people?
Legal work can affect a large number of people in two ways. First, we sometimes directly challenge a policy or practice that impacts many people. For instance, when the Los Angeles Police Department was unconstitutionally deeming many city residents “gang members” without due process, we filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of thousands of impacted individuals. The settlement we achieved in that case, as well as legislation and regulations we helped secure, alleviated the problem community-wide.
Second, a case brought on behalf of one person can benefit others when it establishes or expands legal standards and precedents. For example, in the 1990s we filed a lawsuit challenging a clinic’s denial of health care to one man living with HIV. His success set a precedent benefiting thousands of future patients.
Although the ACLU is best known for litigation, we also strive to safeguard people’s rights through legislative work and other policy advocacy, community organizing, coalition building, technical assistance to other attorneys and advocates, community education to help people understand and assert their rights, and other strategies, depending on the situation.
The ACLU generally does not accept cases in which:
- A person has been fired from a job without a good reason or just cause;
- A person is being denied benefits, such as workers' compensation or unemployment benefits;
- Criminal cases, or complaints about a person's attorney in a criminal case. We consider accepting criminal cases only in limited instances, such as, for example, when a person is being prosecuted for engaging in activity protected by the Constitution — such as participating in a political demonstration.
Why does the ACLU turn down or ignore requests that fit the description of what you focus on?
Unfortunately, there are many situations that involve unfairness and injustice that the ACLU SoCal is simply unable to get involved in. We receive thousands of requests for help every year, and our staff does not have bandwidth to engage with all of them. If we are not able to grant your request, that does not mean it does not have legal merit, and you may still want to consider pursuing it with a private attorney or another legal organization.
Can the ACLU advise me about my situation?
Unless we are representing you, the ACLU is unable to give you advice about your case, answer strategy questions, review draft legal papers, or conduct legal research to assist you. This policy allows us to do our best work for the people we are representing and avoid giving questionable advice based on incomplete information.