The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a US nonprofit civil-liberties organization founded in 1920, operating through litigation and advocacy on constitutional and statutory rights. On AI policy it acts as a US civil-society litigation counterpart on AI civil-rights questions, alongside Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), whose focus is on technology and rights, and Access Now, whose focus is international digital rights. Its AI work spans surveillance, hiring discrimination, content moderation, government procurement, and state-level legislation, and connects to the substantive policy area covered in AI and Civil Liberties.
Overview
The ACLU pursues civil-liberties objectives through both litigation and legislative advocacy, and its AI work occupies both modes. Court cases proceed under existing law, including Title VII and the Fourth Amendment, while advocacy targets newer state AI statutes. The organization at times appears on opposing sides of AI free-speech questions, both defending AI-generated speech and challenging compelled-disclosure laws that affect AI users.
The ACLU's Racial Justice Program maintains a program on accountability in artificial intelligence that challenges AI's capacity to preserve and exacerbate systemic racism and other inequities, with particular focus on employment, housing, and credit decisions; the program's framing is that algorithmic bias built into systems that do not account for existing discrimination produces predictive decisions that discriminate in ways that are difficult to see (Source: aclu.org).
Activities
On AI-driven surveillance, the ACLU litigates against AI face-recognition deployment by law enforcement, advocates for state-level moratoria, and brings lawsuits over predictive-policing tools and biometric-data collection. On June 10, 2026, the ACLU and the ACLU of Florida filed a wrongful-arrest suit on behalf of Robert Dillon, a Florida man arrested after police relied on an incorrect facial-recognition match; the organization has also pursued administrative complaints against Maryland police departments over the wrongful arrest of a woman based on an erroneous facial-recognition search result (Source: aclu.org).
On AI hiring discrimination, it pursues disparate-impact litigation against AI hiring systems and has participated as amicus in Mobley v. Workday, Inc. and similar cases. On AI content moderation, it litigates over platform AI content-moderation decisions affecting protected speech, an area that intersects with the free-speech dimension of AI and Civil Liberties.
On government AI procurement, the organization advocates for procurement transparency, in contrast to the opaque-procurement-criteria problem described in Procurement-Driven AI Governance. On state-level AI legislation, it advocates around the California AI Act, the Colorado AI Act, and other state AI-bias and transparency requirements. Across many AI civil-rights cases it has appeared as amicus or party, including xAI LLC v. Weiser (challenging the Colorado AI Act).
Relationships
- related: AI and Civil Liberties (the substantive policy area).
- related: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Access Now (civil-society peers).
- related: Mobley v. Workday, Inc., xAI LLC v. Weiser (challenging the Colorado AI Act) — ACLU amicus or party in many AI civil-rights cases.
- related: AI Bias and Discrimination, AI and Privacy, AI and Surveillance.