
Systemic Equality: Equal Access, Better Futures
Are you ready to take action for Systemic Equality?
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Systemic Equality is A Racial Justice Agenda
Since our nation’s founding, discriminatory policies and laws have created an unequal system in which Black communities have had their civil rights and liberties denied and have been systematically locked out of opportunities in education, housing, employment and more.
Through our Systemic Equality agenda, the ACLU will use nationwide litigation, advocacy, and public education to advance laws and policies rooted in racial equity and end discriminatory policies, laws, and practices that have an outsized impact on Black communities.
The ACLU will also continue to evolve our own culture, systems, and processes to drive progress toward our internal racial justice commitments, including by committing sustained recruitment and hiring efforts to recruit more diverse talent pools, developing initiatives to promote and retain Black leadership, engaging Black-owned and Black-led businesses, and more.
When we have full and equal access to education, jobs, housing, voting rights, and more, better futures are possible.
A Spotlight on Fair Housing

Why Fair Housing is Key to Systemic Equality
Here’s how discrimination continues to impact access to housing today, and why we’re fighting to ensure all people have equal access.

Apply for the ACLU-NBLSA Southern Legal Internship (SLIP) Program
SLIP interns will contribute to crucial campaigns in the issue areas that most affect Black and Brown communities.

Fair Housing
Our goal is to expand access to stable, affordable housing.
Historic and ongoing segregation and discrimination has prevented marginalized groups — particularly Black communities — from accessing safe, affordable housing and home ownership.
Equal access to housing is a civil right. We must work to reduce mass evictions and barriers to housing opportunities that disproportionately impact Black women renters, and restore important housing protections to expand equal access to housing opportunities for everyone.
Everyone deserves equal access to safe and stable housing.
Our fair housing work includes:
- Challenging Mass Evictions and Barriers to Housing Opportunities: Black women and their families make up the demographic group most likely to face eviction in the United States, resulting in a myriad of harms and reinforcing segregation. Our multi-part campaign includes securing the right to counsel in eviction cases, prohibiting the consideration of prior eviction records in tenant screening, and more.
- Advocating for the Right to Representation: We are engaged in right to representation campaigns in Delaware and New Jersey to ensure all people facing eviction have the ability to assert their rights in court.
Historic and ongoing segregation and discrimination has prevented marginalized groups — particularly Black communities — from accessing safe, affordable housing and home ownership.
Equal access to housing is a civil right. We must work to reduce mass evictions and barriers to housing opportunities that disproportionately impact Black women renters, and restore important housing protections to expand equal access to housing opportunities for everyone.
Everyone deserves equal access to safe and stable housing.
Our fair housing work includes:
- Challenging Mass Evictions and Barriers to Housing Opportunities: Black women and their families make up the demographic group most likely to face eviction in the United States, resulting in a myriad of harms and reinforcing segregation. Our multi-part campaign includes securing the right to counsel in eviction cases, prohibiting the consideration of prior eviction records in tenant screening, and more.
- Advocating for the Right to Representation: We are engaged in right to representation campaigns in Delaware and New Jersey to ensure all people facing eviction have the ability to assert their rights in court.

Voting Rights
Our goal is to expand voting access for and build the political power of Black communities.
Black people and communities of color, in particular, have faced numerous obstacles to meaningful participation in the political process, including the redistricting process. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits the drawing of district lines that dilute the voting strength of communities of color. When Black people and communities of color are minimized through the redistricting process, they are not adequately represented in our democracy, perpetuating the systemic inequality many voters of colors already face.
Redistricting plans should fairly reflect the political strength of communities of color. As data from the last Census confirms, nearly all of the country’s growth over the past decade is attributable to the growth in our nation’s communities of color. Fair maps and voting policies must adequately reflect that reality.
The right to vote should be equally accessible to everyone.
Our voting rights work includes:
- Equal and Fair Political Representation: As part of our ongoing work to ensure legislatures reflect their constituencies and address the longstanding underrepresentation and disempowerment of Black communities, we will advocate for fair voting district maps in six priority states in the South to obtain more equal representation for Black voters.
Black people and communities of color, in particular, have faced numerous obstacles to meaningful participation in the political process, including the redistricting process. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits the drawing of district lines that dilute the voting strength of communities of color. When Black people and communities of color are minimized through the redistricting process, they are not adequately represented in our democracy, perpetuating the systemic inequality many voters of colors already face.
Redistricting plans should fairly reflect the political strength of communities of color. As data from the last Census confirms, nearly all of the country’s growth over the past decade is attributable to the growth in our nation’s communities of color. Fair maps and voting policies must adequately reflect that reality.
The right to vote should be equally accessible to everyone.
Our voting rights work includes:
- Equal and Fair Political Representation: As part of our ongoing work to ensure legislatures reflect their constituencies and address the longstanding underrepresentation and disempowerment of Black communities, we will advocate for fair voting district maps in six priority states in the South to obtain more equal representation for Black voters.

Criminal Justice
Our goal is to improve public safety by investing in Black communities instead of punishment.
Investing in punishment while undermining what we need for equal and thriving communities has resulted in overcriminalization and the unjust and unequal treatment of our communities — especially Black communities.
We improve public safety by addressing root causes of crime, such as poverty and lack of opportunity, while also focusing on strengthening communities through investments in promising solutions. These include increasing access to affordable housing, jobs, education, health care, and mental health and substance use services in our communities. At the same time, we must work to reduce the number of people incarcerated, surveilled, and criminalized by law enforcement and in the courts. We must challenge dehumanizing conditions in jails and prisons and ensure that people returning to our communities are equipped for success. We must challenge cruel, extreme, and discriminatory punishments such as the death penalty and life without parole. We must work to erect meaningful constitutional guardrails on law enforcement — including jail and prison administrators.
We have the power to choose and to invest in real solutions that increase equality, justice, and safety for all of us.
Our criminal justice work includes:
- Challenging Policing: Part of a larger campaign to reimagine community safety that uses litigation and integrated advocacy to challenge racially-biased policing practices and advance community-based and non-punitive approaches to public safety.
- Shrinking the Geography of Mass Incarceration: An integrated effort, our litigation and advocacy will focus on developing legal challenges to stop funding for the expansion or construction of prisons, jails, and detention centers.
- Ending Racially Discriminatory Jury Selection in the Death Penalty: The jury selection process in death penalty trials, known as “death qualification,” removes otherwise qualified jurors from serving in capital trials based on their opposition to the death penalty. The process discriminates against Black jurors, who are disproportionately opposed to the death penalty. The history of the death penalty in America is inextricably tied to the history of lynching, and the opposition to the death penalty within the Black community is rooted in that history. This disenfranchisement from jury service is a fresh injustice compounding the injustice of racial terror and violence.
Investing in punishment while undermining what we need for equal and thriving communities has resulted in overcriminalization and the unjust and unequal treatment of our communities — especially Black communities.
We improve public safety by addressing root causes of crime, such as poverty and lack of opportunity, while also focusing on strengthening communities through investments in promising solutions. These include increasing access to affordable housing, jobs, education, health care, and mental health and substance use services in our communities. At the same time, we must work to reduce the number of people incarcerated, surveilled, and criminalized by law enforcement and in the courts. We must challenge dehumanizing conditions in jails and prisons and ensure that people returning to our communities are equipped for success. We must challenge cruel, extreme, and discriminatory punishments such as the death penalty and life without parole. We must work to erect meaningful constitutional guardrails on law enforcement — including jail and prison administrators.
We have the power to choose and to invest in real solutions that increase equality, justice, and safety for all of us.
Our criminal justice work includes:
- Challenging Policing: Part of a larger campaign to reimagine community safety that uses litigation and integrated advocacy to challenge racially-biased policing practices and advance community-based and non-punitive approaches to public safety.
- Shrinking the Geography of Mass Incarceration: An integrated effort, our litigation and advocacy will focus on developing legal challenges to stop funding for the expansion or construction of prisons, jails, and detention centers.
- Ending Racially Discriminatory Jury Selection in the Death Penalty: The jury selection process in death penalty trials, known as “death qualification,” removes otherwise qualified jurors from serving in capital trials based on their opposition to the death penalty. The process discriminates against Black jurors, who are disproportionately opposed to the death penalty. The history of the death penalty in America is inextricably tied to the history of lynching, and the opposition to the death penalty within the Black community is rooted in that history. This disenfranchisement from jury service is a fresh injustice compounding the injustice of racial terror and violence.

Economic Justice
Our goal is to reduce the racial wealth gap.
Systemic inequities and barriers keep people — particularly people of color — from accessing the mainstays of economic life; including education, employment, and homeownership; resulting in racial disparities in wealth and income. These disparities result from a combination of ongoing discrimination, structural inequality, and biases across our institutions, and emerge in new forms of technology, including through artificial intelligence, that influence nearly every facet of life.
Through litigation and advocacy, we aim to remedy deeply entrenched sources of inequality and ensure that access to opportunity and the ability to build wealth is available to all.
All people should have an equal opportunity to earn a living, find a home, and get an education.
Our economic justice work includes:
- Exposing Discriminatory Hiring and Lending Tech: Leveraging research and integrated advocacy, we will promote a more equitable approach to AI policy and expose and stop the use of biased, discriminatory hiring and lending technologies that perpetuate hiring and employment discrimination.
Systemic inequities and barriers keep people — particularly people of color — from accessing the mainstays of economic life; including education, employment, and homeownership; resulting in racial disparities in wealth and income. These disparities result from a combination of ongoing discrimination, structural inequality, and biases across our institutions, and emerge in new forms of technology, including through artificial intelligence, that influence nearly every facet of life.
Through litigation and advocacy, we aim to remedy deeply entrenched sources of inequality and ensure that access to opportunity and the ability to build wealth is available to all.
All people should have an equal opportunity to earn a living, find a home, and get an education.
Our economic justice work includes:
- Exposing Discriminatory Hiring and Lending Tech: Leveraging research and integrated advocacy, we will promote a more equitable approach to AI policy and expose and stop the use of biased, discriminatory hiring and lending technologies that perpetuate hiring and employment discrimination.

Education Equity
Our goal is to ensure all students have equal access to high quality education and safe schools.
All students have a right to an equal education, but students of color (particularly Black students), students with disabilities, and low-income youth have historically been marginalized, criminalized, and under-resourced by the public school system.
We will challenge unconstitutional disciplinary policies that disparately target Black students and infringe on their right to a safe learning environment. We will also support race conscious admission policies to increase access to underrepresented groups who face systemic barriers to higher education.
All students deserve equal access to a high quality education, a safe learning environment, and a diverse student body that enriches the educational experiences of all students.
Our education equity work includes:
- Defending Race Conscious Admissions: The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the ACLU of North Carolina filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold universities’ ability to consider race in college admissions.
All students have a right to an equal education, but students of color (particularly Black students), students with disabilities, and low-income youth have historically been marginalized, criminalized, and under-resourced by the public school system.
We will challenge unconstitutional disciplinary policies that disparately target Black students and infringe on their right to a safe learning environment. We will also support race conscious admission policies to increase access to underrepresented groups who face systemic barriers to higher education.
All students deserve equal access to a high quality education, a safe learning environment, and a diverse student body that enriches the educational experiences of all students.
Our education equity work includes:
- Defending Race Conscious Admissions: The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the ACLU of North Carolina filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold universities’ ability to consider race in college admissions.
Are you ready to take action for Systemic Equality?
Yes, sign me up to learn about actions I can take to ensure every person can achieve their highest potential, unhampered by structural and institutional racism.
By completing this form, I agree to receive occasional emails and text messages per the terms of the ACLU's privacy statement.
How Can We Achieve Systemic Equality?
ACLU Deputy Legal Director Yasmin Cader explains what needs to be done in the fight against systemic racial discrimination in order to create a world in which everyone’s civil rights and liberties are recognized.

Learn More About the Issues on This Page
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Aclu Joins Calls To Gov. Newsom To Commute All Death Sentences As State Supreme Court Reviews Constitutional Challenge. Explore Press Release.ACLU Joins Calls to Gov. Newsom to Commute All Death Sentences as State Supreme Court Reviews Constitutional Challenge
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The American Civil Liberties Union joined the growing chorus of calls to Gov. Newsom to commute all death sentences on California’s death row to life without parole at a press conference in Sacramento this morning hosted by the California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition. The call for commutations comes as the California Supreme Court considers a landmark petition filed in April 2024 by the ACLU, the ACLU of Northern California, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), Wilmer Hale, and the Office of the State Public Defender (OSPD) challenging the state's death penalty statute as racially discriminatory and unconstitutional under the Equal Protection guarantees of the California Constitution. The petition demonstrates that racial disparities in California’s implementation of the death penalty are persistent, pervasive, and well documented. Black people are about five times more likely to be sentenced to death when compared to similarly situated non-Black defendants, while Latino people are at least three times more likely to be sentenced to death. “The evidence makes it abundantly clear that racial inequality infects every aspect of California's death penalty system,” said Claudia Van Wyk, senior counsel at the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. “Gov. Newsom recognized this when he imposed his moratorium on executions, but systemic failures of this magnitude require more than a temporary pause. While the courts deliberate our legal challenge, executive clemency offers an immediate remedy. The governor must finish what he started and commute every death sentence.” This week, the ACLU released a report on discrimination in capital jury selection citing studies in states across the country, including California. Studies of capital trials in California find that Black prospective jurors and women are disproportionately excluded and selected jurors are skewed from the eligible juror population, resulting in juries are less likely to deliberate and more likely to convict. “As the lawsuit we filed in 2024 makes clear, the stark racial disparities in the application of California's death-penalty system violate equal protection,” said Neil Sawhney, director of appellate advocacy at the ACLU of Northern California. “While we are hopeful that the California Supreme Court will rule in our favor, the governor can immediately remedy this unconstitutional discrimination through executive clemency.” With 570 people on death row, California has the largest death row in the nation and one of the largest in the world. Two-thirds of those sentenced have been on death row for more than 20 years, with dozens having spent more than 40 years awaiting execution. - Press ReleaseJun 2025
Capital Punishment
New Aclu Report Finds Racial And Religious Discrimination In Death Penalty Jury Selection. Explore Press Release.New ACLU Report Finds Racial and Religious Discrimination in Death Penalty Jury Selection
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union released Fatal Flaws: Revealing the Racial and Religious Gerrymandering of the Capital Jury today, a report that exposes how the process of “death qualification” warps juries in capital trials. Death qualification requires that jurors be willing to impose a death sentence to serve on a capital jury. Drawing on consistent studies from multiple states across the country, the report reveals how this process disproportionately excludes Black prospective jurors, women, and people of faith from serving in some of the most important cases heard in American courthouses. “The Constitution guarantees that every person accused of a crime has the right to be tried by a jury of their peers, but that promise is by definition denied for people facing the death penalty,” said Brian Stull, deputy director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. “Death qualification systematically excludes prospective jurors based on their race, sex, and religion, violating their own rights to civic participation. The resulting juries do not reflect our communities, convict more frequently, and are composed to ignore evidence favoring a life sentence in violation of our Constitution. Justice depends on equal access to the jury box. We must demand and end to this cycle of discrimination and exclusion once and for all.” Key findings from the report include: Death qualification disproportionately excludes Black prospective jurors. Black Americans, as a group, are more likely to oppose the death penalty due to the racist roots of the capital punishment system. As a result, this process disproportionately removes Black Americans from capital juries, and Black women at the highest rates of all. Death qualification unfairly excludes people of faith whose religious beliefs oppose capital punishment. Some religious groups, such as Quakers, Buddhists, and Catholics formally reject the death penalty and many others have expressed serious concerns with capital punishment. Studies across the country confirm that people of faith are disproportionately excluded from capital jury service, even though they can impose lawful verdicts on both conviction and sentence. Death qualification systematically excludes growing numbers of Americans from jury service. Changing views on the death penalty make the exclusionary effects of death qualification even more pronounced. At least 44 percent of Americans oppose the death penalty, meaning nearly half of the country is potentially disqualified from capital jury service. Death-qualified juries are more likely to convict and to ignore evidence in favor of life in violation of the Constitution. Death-qualified juries act differently than those that are not. They are more likely to convict, to ignore evidence favoring life over death, to be influenced by racial bias, and to deliberate less thoroughly. The report also urges state legislators to pass laws banning the exclusion of jurors opposed to the death penalty who can follow the law, calls on prosecutors to decline to death qualify jurors, and recommends that defense counsel mount challenges to death qualification by introducing evidence of its discriminatory effects. The full report can be found here: https://www.aclu.org/publications/fatal-flaws-revealing-the-racial-and-religious-gerrymandering-of-the-capital-jury Learn more about the ACLU’s work challenging death qualification here: https://www.aclu.org/news/capital-punishment/the-sinister-and-racist-practice-infecting-death-penalty-juries - Press ReleaseMay 2025
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Court Issues Order Finding Extensive And Irredeemable Defects In The Application Of The Death Penalty In Kansas. Explore Press Release.Court Issues Order Finding Extensive and Irredeemable Defects in the Application of the Death Penalty in Kansas
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — After hearing a historic challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty and the practice of death qualification, a Kansas trial court has issued a written order finding extensive and irredeemable defects in the application of the death penalty over the last 30 years. The court declined to rule on the ultimate questions regarding the constitutionality of the state’s death penalty and the practice of death qualification because the individuals who brought the challenge no longer faced the death penalty. In its opinion the court highlighted that: The death penalty is not a deterrent. “The scientific community has found no reliable evidence of the death penalty being a deterrent to homicides.” The death penalty is costly. “More than $4 million has been spent with the results being no death penalty sentences and zero executions.” Racial bias infects capital prosecutions. “The factors which distinguish death sentence cases from non-death sentence cases are the race and gender of the victim, and the race and gender of the defendant.” Courts have been unable to ensure capital juries are free of racial bias. “[The legal framework for limiting discrimination in jury selection] is so flawed that it does not protect racial biases in jury selection and must be reformed, a fact known to Kansans for years.” “In each of the four cases where we raised this challenge in Kansas, none of our clients ultimately faced capital trials where the death penalty remained on the table,” said Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. “That is no coincidence. The evidentiary hearings have consistently exposed uncomfortable truths to state prosecutors, the courts, and the public about the deep flaws and injustices embedded in the death penalty system. While we are relieved that none of our clients have received death sentences, the systemic issues that these cases have brought to light persist. We remain committed to challenging the death penalty on behalf of people facing capital charges in Kansas, with the hope that state legislators will end the death penalty and make future legal challenges unnecessary.” The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Kansas, Democracy Forward, the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit, Hogan Lovells, and Ali & Lockwood represented two individuals, Hugo Villaneuva-Morales and Antoine Fielder, in their constitutional pre-trial challenges to the death penalty in Wyandotte County. Following extensive pre-trial litigation, including the weeklong evidentiary hearing challenging the death penalty, the cases were resolved without the death penalty. The state and Mr. Fielder entered into a plea agreement and Mr. Fielder was sentenced to life without parole. The prosecution tried Mr. Villanueva-Morales for capital murder but ultimately withdrew its request for the death penalty. Because the two men no longer faced the prospect of a capital sentence, the court declined to address the broader constitutional claims.Court Case: Challenging Death Qualification and the Death Penalty in KansasAffiliate: Kansas - News & CommentaryApr 2025
Capital Punishment
Death Row Case Exposes Failures To Protect Childhood Trauma Survivors. Explore News & Commentary.Death Row Case Exposes Failures to Protect Childhood Trauma Survivors
Mikal Mahdi’s life was marked by abuse. Today, as he awaits execution, the courts have the responsibility to acknowledge the systemic failures that shaped his path.By: Megan Byrne, Elisa Epstein