Before you submit a legal assistance request, please read the information below.
Because of the time involved in reviewing legal assistance requests, please be careful when requesting assistance for an issue with an upcoming deadline. If you are facing an upcoming court date or similar deadline, you should continue to seek legal assistance elsewhere while we review your complaint. Typically, we need at least one to two weeks, and sometimes much longer, to respond and cannot guarantee that we will provide you with direct legal representation or advice once we have reached a decision.
Because of our limited resources, the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties (ACLU-SDIC) can only accept a small fraction of requests made for legal assistance.
Please read this information carefully to find out how to ask the ACLU-SDIC for legal help and what kind of cases we accept.
Esta infomación en español.
Ways to submit a request for legal assistance to the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties
- Submit a request via our online form.
Click here for link to our online submission form
- Submit a request via email.
If you cannot access our online submission form, please download and email us a completed Legal Assistance Application form (English). The form is also available in Spanish: Aplicación para Solicitar Ayuda Legal (Spanish).
Please send the form to info@aclu-sdic.org. If you can’t download and email the form, don’t worry. Just email us with your concerns.
- Submit a request via a voicemail message.
For San Diego County, call 619-232-2121, and press “4”, giving your name, email and a brief description of the issue you wish to discuss.
For Imperial County, call 760-638-8932, giving your name, email and a brief description of the issue you wish to discuss.
Your call will be returned by an ACLU-SDIC staff member. The staff member cannot give legal advice to you, nor can they refer you to individual private attorneys. They may offer you appropriate referrals to other agencies.
- Submit a request by mail.
If you don’t have access to email, please write to us at:
ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties
PO Box 87131, San Diego, CA 92138-7131
Please submit a brief letter outlining your situation. Please do not submit originals or several copies of documents as we cannot return any materials that you submit to us with your intake.
How do we choose cases?
The ACLU generally files cases that affect the civil liberties of large numbers of people, rather than those involving a dispute between two parties. The basic questions we ask when reviewing a potential case are:
- Is this a significant civil rights issue?
- What effect will this case have on people in addition to our client?
- Do we have the necessary resources to take this case?
What does it cost?
In ACLU cases, the attorneys represent the clients free of charge. ACLU cases are handled by staff counsel as well as volunteer attorneys who are in private practice.
What civil liberties do you protect?
The civil liberties we seek to protect include:
- Freedom of Speech and Press. For example:
- A student is suspended for writing a newspaper article critical of the principal;
- A police officer is disciplined for speaking out against police brutality; or
- A group is charged for police protection when it applies for a demonstration permit.
- Freedom of Religion. This involves both the right of individuals to religious beliefs and the separation of church and state.
- Privacy. For example, reproductive rights.
- Equal Protection and Against Discrimination. For example, a sheriff's department that refuses to accept women deputies, or a refusal to allow people who are experiencing houselessness to vote because they have no fixed address.
- Due Process. For example, a community group is denied a permit by the police and the town provides no way to appeal the police decision.
What cases affect others?
Lawsuits can affect a large number of people in two ways. First, we sometimes challenge a policy or practice which directly impacts many people. Second, a lawsuit brought on behalf of one person can have a larger impact on others in the long run when it establishes or expands legal protections. For example, a lawsuit challenging drug testing of one employee, if successful, could set a precedent for thousands of workers in the future.
Why do we prefer cases without serious factual disputes?
We prefer to take cases where the issue is a question of law rather than a complicated dispute of fact. An example of a factual dispute is an employment discrimination case where the employer claims he fired the employee because of poor job performance and has credible evidence to support that claim. The reasons we often decide not to accept cases involving factual disputes are:
- Our limited resources (it is often expensive to prove a case which involves substantial factual disputes);
- A court might never reach the civil liberties legal issue if it resolves the facts against the client; or
- The case is less likely to have a broad impact on others if the decision rests upon the specific facts of a case.
Types of cases the ACLU generally cannot accept, include:
- A person was fired without a good reason or just cause;
- A person is being denied benefits, such as worker's compensation or unemployment benefits; or
- Criminal cases, or complaints about a person's attorney in a criminal case. Only in limited cases, for example, when a person is being prosecuted for engaging in activity protected by the Constitution (such as participating in a political demonstration), do we consider accepting criminal cases.
Why the ACLU may turn down cases that fall within our guidelines:
There are many cases and problems of unfairness and injustice which the ACLU is simply unable to handle. We receive hundreds of requests for help each month at this office alone. Therefore, we cannot accept many of the cases that fall within the guidelines discussed above. We must select those cases which we believe will have the greatest impact on protecting civil liberties.
Can the ACLU advise me about my case even if you can't take it?
The ACLU is unable to give you advice about your case, or provide other types of assistance (for example, reviewing your papers, or conducting legal research to assist you) if we do not accept your case. This policy allows us to direct the necessary resources to those cases that we do accept.
Legal Disclaimer:
The information and materials on this website are intended for informational purposes only and are not intended to be treated as legal advice. The information is general in nature and may not apply to particular factual or legal circumstances. Neither the website nor the use of information from the website creates an attorney-client relationship.
Unsolicited emails and information sent to the ACLU and ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties do not create an attorney-client relationship.
If after reading this, you believe your case may be the kind of case we can accept, please download our Legal Intake Form (below). (If you have trouble accessing it or are unable to print it, call our office at 619/232-2121, and press "7" to request that an intake questionnaire be sent to you. We will not be able to discuss your case until we have a completed intake questionnaire.) We can accept Legal Assistance Applications via email at info@aclu-sdic.org.
Please do not submit additional documentation to our office. If we need more information, we will call you. We will let you know as soon as possible whether we can accept your case, although there may be some delay because of limited resources.
Legal Assistance Application Form [If emailing, save the form with your name, indicate in the body of the message that this is a legal assistance request, and email to info@aclu-sdic.org.]
Applicación para Solicitar Ayuda Legal (Intake form in Spanish) [Si quieres enviar este formulario por correo electrónico, rellenarlo y guardarlo bajo su nombre. Por favor, indicar en el cuerpo del mensaje que esta es la forma legal de la solicitud de asistencia. Envíe su paquete a info@aclu-sdic.org.]
