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SACRAMENTO鈥� Today, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Northern California filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) urging an investigation of Criteria Corporation, a technology corporation that develops and sells assessments used for hiring and other employment processes that raise concerns about discrimination against applicants based on disability, race, and sex. The complaint focuses on one of Criteria鈥檚 assessment products, Emotify, which claims to measure 鈥渆motional intelligence鈥� and an applicant鈥檚 ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions by asking candidates to interpret facial expressions and match them to descriptions of emotions. Emotify鈥檚 assessment closely mirrors clinical diagnostic tests for autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions, and it may screen out or disproportionately impact qualified individuals with those conditions. 鈥淭here is a long and ugly history of job requirements designed to cut out disabled applicants. Well-qualified autistic people are routinely denied employment over things like not making eye contact, or not making small talk, that have nothing to do with ability to do the job. Baking that discrimination into an app doesn't make it any less discriminatory,鈥� said Colin Killick, executive director at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. 鈥淲hen hiring tools exclude qualified applicants based on characteristics unrelated to their ability to do the work, they raise serious concerns under discrimination laws.鈥� 鈥淲hen employers use assessment tools that are more likely to reveal a person鈥檚 disabilities rather than their ability to do the job, employers risk missing out on highly qualified candidates. These hiring tools pose an unacceptable risk of amplifying existing discrimination in the workplace and exacerbating harmful barriers to employment for people with disabilities,鈥� said Brian Dimmick, senior staff attorney with the ACLU鈥檚 Disability Rights Program. 鈥淣o applicant should be subjected to a hiring assessment that so closely mirrors clinical diagnostic tools. It's patently unlawful in the early stages of a hiring process, and vendors marketing such products and employers using them in this way risk liability,鈥� said Olga Akselrod, senior counsel, ACLU Racial Justice Program. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 more, vendors should not be marketing assessments that carry a high risk of discrimination based on disabilities, race, and other protected characteristics. Both vendors and employers have a legal obligation to thoroughly vet any assessments to ensure that they comply with anti-discrimination laws.鈥� 鈥淐alifornia has been a leader in protecting people from the harms of discriminatory automated systems, such as AI screening tools that can introduce racial, gender, and disability bias into the hiring process,鈥� said Grayce Zelphin, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. 鈥淏y investigating Criteria鈥檚 employment products, the California Civil Rights Department has an opportunity to defend qualified job applicants from unlawful discrimination.鈥� The use of Emotify during the hiring process could violate California鈥檚 Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Because the assessment parallels the content of clinical diagnostic tools and is likely to reveal information pertaining to a disability, it likely constitutes a disability-related inquiry, or medical or psychological examination, and is likely to result in unfairly excluding applicants. Both FEHA and the ADA prohibit employers from making disability-related inquiries or requiring medical examinations before a conditional offer of employment, only permitting inquiries into an applicant鈥檚 ability to perform job-related functions at that stage of the hiring process. In addition, Criteria also sells other pre-employment hiring products that raise concerns around discrimination detailed in the complaint, including a cognitive aptitude assessment, personality assessments, and artificial intelligence-based video interviewing and proctoring tools. The AI technologies can introduce or amplify bias by performing worse for disabled applicants, people with accents, and Black, Latine, and Indigenous speakers, leading to hiring decisions that may unfairly disadvantage qualified candidates. The complaint urges CRD to investigate Criteria鈥檚 hiring technologies and practices to determine whether they violate California鈥檚 civil rights protections. A copy of the complaint can be found here.

WASHINGTON 鈥� The Supreme Court today rejected Arizona鈥檚 request to stop a court-appointed receiver from assuming control and management of health care provided to more than 25,000 people incarcerated in Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) prisons. The decision allows the receivership ordered by a federal judge to move forward after a decade of litigation over unconstitutional and deadly conditions in Arizona prisons. The lawsuit, Jensen v. Thornell, was filed in 2012 by the Prison Law Office, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of Arizona, and Disability Rights Arizona. For more than a decade, ADCRR has been on notice about the systemic health care failures in its prisons and has yet to address the issue, despite multiple court orders and interventions. In July 2026, after years of reporting from independent experts detailing the deadly consequences of the state鈥檚 failure to comply, Judge Silver ordered a receiver to oversee prison health care. 鈥淎rizona has spent years fighting accountability at every turn while people in its prisons continue to suffer and die from preventable causes,鈥� said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU鈥檚 National Prison Project. 鈥淒uring that time, the state has paid millions of dollars in fines and spent enormous sums litigating this case, and people in ADCRR custody pay the highest price of all. The question is not whether there is a crisis 鈥� that has been documented time and time again. The question is whether Arizona will stop fighting and start fixing it. Today鈥檚 decision clears the way for a receiver to do what the state has failed to do for more than a decade. Court-appointed independent monitors have repeatedly documented preventable deaths, permanent injuries, and needless suffering because of the state鈥檚 failure to comply with court orders. In one case, a man died after ADCRR discontinued his necessary anti-seizure medication without reviewing his medical history. In another, a man who suffered a heart attack and underwent heart surgery died after the state failed to provide him follow up care or properly manage his medication. Monitors also documented five suicides in the first three months of 2024 that they concluded may have been prevented had the state followed the court鈥檚 orders. Additional quotes are as follows: 鈥淭his outcome will allow the critical and long-awaited work of the receiver to move forward, and for class members to obtain the relief the district court ordered years ago,鈥� said Maya Abela, deputy legal director at Disability Rights Arizona. 鈥淔urther delay would have only served to increase the risk of harm to incarcerated people in Arizona鈥檚 state-operated prisons, and we are glad the Court recognized that this must not be allowed to occur.鈥� 鈥淭he decision from the Supreme Court confirms what we鈥檝e known 鈥� a court-ordered receiver must be allowed to step in and address the serious deficiencies within the state prison system and ensure ADCRR is being held accountable to their constitutional duties,鈥� said Tara DeGeorge, legal director at the ACLU of Arizona. 鈥淔or far too long, people in ADCRR custody have been unjustly subject to inadequate medical and mental health care resulting in unnecessary medical complications and even death. ADCRR has had more than enough time to address the dire crisis 鈥� the only option left for successful reform is through a receivership.鈥� 鈥淒espite more than a decade of litigation, Arizona鈥檚 prisons continue to be plagued by widespread and shocking medical and mental health neglect. We are relieved that the Supreme Court鈥檚 decision today will allow the receiver to begin the necessary, life-saving work of reforming the prisons鈥� healthcare system,鈥� said Sophie Hart, managing attorney at the Prison Law Office.

Following the Oregon Department of Corrections鈥� unconstitutional treatment of a transgender prisoner, a habeas court ordered her removal from segregated housing, an individualized gender-affirming care assessment, a psychiatric evaluation, and identification of an appropriate cellmate. However, the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the psychiatric-evaluation and cellmate orders, finding them 鈥渢oo attenuated鈥� to qualify as habeas relief. The ACLU鈥檚 State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the ACLU of Oregon, joined an amicus brief by the law firm Sugerman Dahab arguing that habeas courts have broad discretion to remedy violations and resulting harms. The brief explains that the Court of Appeals鈥� 鈥渃lose connection鈥� test unduly constricts habeas relief, and which should be construed to encompass not only the need to halt ongoing constitutional violations, but also the need to mitigate various harms that may arise from those violations.

Family members of individuals incarcerated in Adams County Jail are challenging a ban on in-person visits on the grounds that it violates their right to familial association under the Colorado Constitution. The district court denied their motion for a preliminary injunction, in part based on its ruling that individuals cannot sue directly under the Colorado Constitution to stop violations of their individual rights if other remedies are theoretically available under state or federal law. If that ruling is left to stand, state constitutional protections could exist in name only, leaving courts unable to stop violations if a plaintiff could potentially proceed under a narrower statutory claim that might provide lesser relief or fail on the facts of the case. This case could therefore have far-reaching implications for the enforceability of constitutional rights across Colorado.