AI is Infringing on Your Civil Rights. Here鈥檚 How We Can Stop That
Searching for an apartment online, applying for a loan, going through airport security, or looking up a question on a search engine 鈥� you might not think anything of these exchanges other than that they are mundane things you do, but, in many of these instances, you鈥檙e actually interacting with artificial intelligence (AI).
Avoiding AI in our quotidian activities feels impossible nowadays, especially when it is now used by public and private organizations to make decisions about us in hiring, housing, welfare, , and other high-stakes areas. While proponents of AI usage boast about how efficient the technology is, the decisions it makes about us are oftentimes uncontestable, discriminatory, and infringe on our civil rights.
However, inequity and injustice from artificial intelligence need not be our status quo. Senator Ed Markey and Congresswoman Yvette Clarke have just re-introduced the , which will help ensure AI developers and deployers do not violate our civil rights. The ACLU strongly urges Congress to pass this bill, so we can prevent AI systems from undermining the equal opportunities our civil rights gave us decades ago.
Why Do We Need the AI Civil Rights Act of 2025?
The AI Civil Rights Act shores up existing civil rights law so their protections now apply to artificial intelligence.
Whether you are looking at the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Fair Housing Act, The Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, or a multitude of other civil rights statutes, current civil rights laws may not be easily enforced against discriminatory AI. In many cases, individuals may not even know AI was used, deployers may not be aware of its discriminatory impact, and developers may not have tested the AI model for discriminatory harms. By covering AI harms in several consequential areas -- employment, education, housing, utilities, health care, financial services, insurance, criminal justice, identity verification, and government welfare benefits -- the AI Civil Rights Act provides interlocking protections against discrimination, testing protocols and notice requirements in numerous sectors for people who have their civil rights eroded by AI systems.
Ensuring AI Doesn't Become a Tool for Discrimination
One of the most important aspects of the AI Civil Rights Act is that it will allow us to better defend against discriminatory AI outputs. A decision from an AI model can often appear objective, but when you open up the algorithm, it can have a disparate impact on protected groups. Disparate impact, in the context of artificial intelligence, is a form of discrimination where an AI model disproportionately harms one group over another in its decision making and has been seen within healthcare, financial services, criminal justice, and other significant areas.
Unfortunately, disparate impact claims can be onerous to bring forward. For one, to prevail on a disparate impact claim, plaintiffs need to demonstrate that an algorithm disproportionately harms a protected group and that a less discriminatory practice exists. However, the difficulty of meeting this burden can be exacerbated when AI companies refuse to disclose their algorithms for these evaluations by claiming they are For another, not all civil rights laws , and President Donald Trump is constantly rolling back the use of disparate impact in civil rights enforcement. This continual weakening of disparate impact protection makes it even more difficult to file AI-related discrimination claims.
To help with this, the AI Civil Rights Act addresses algorithmic discrimination by making it explicitly unlawful for AI developers or deployers to offer, license, promote, sell, or use an algorithm in critical life areas like housing and employment that causes or contributes to a disparate impact. Centering disparate impact in the AI Civil Rights Act ensures that concrete protections exist for individuals affected by discriminatory AI models.
Transparency and Accountability in AI Systems
Beyond safeguarding against AI-powered discrimination with disparate impact protections, the AI Civil Rights Act gives us the transparency we desperately need from AI developers and deployers. The AI Civil Rights Act requires developers, deployers, and independent auditors to conduct pre-deployment evaluations, impact assessments, and annual reviews of their algorithms. These evaluations will be critical in helping determine whether a model has harmful effects on people's civil rights and where, if at all, it can be deployed in a specific sector.
The AI Civil Rights Act also brings clarity to the long-debated question of who should be held accountable for the civil-rights harms caused by algorithmic systems. If passed, the AI Civil Rights Act will make developers and deployers the parties responsible for taking reasonable steps to ensure their AI models do not violate our civil rights. These steps can include documenting any harms that can arise from the model, being fully transparent with independent auditors, consulting with stakeholders who are impacted by AI models, guaranteeing that the benefits of using an algorithm outweigh the harms, and more. If developers and deployers are found violating the act, they risk facing civil penalties, fees, and other consequences at federal, state, and individual levels. The accountability mechanisms in the act are pivotal to empowering individuals against algorithmic harm while ensuring that AI developers and deployers understand that it is their duty to have low risk models.
What is Next?
If we want our AI systems to be safe, trustworthy, and non-discriminatory, the AI Civil Rights Act is how we start.
鈥淎I is shaping access to opportunity across the country,鈥� says Cody Venze, ACLU senior policy counsel. 鈥溾�楤lack box鈥� systems make decisions about who gets a loan, receives a job offer, or is eligible for parole, often with little understanding of how those decisions are made. The AI Civil Rights Act makes sure that AI systems are transparent and give everyone a fair chance to compete."
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Press ReleaseNov 2025
Capital Punishment
Racial Justice
New Aclu Report Exposes Systemic Failures Behind Wrongful Death Penalty Convictions. Explore Press Release.New ACLU Report Exposes Systemic Failures Behind Wrongful Death Penalty Convictions
NEW YORK 鈥� The 老熟女午夜福利 released Fatal Flaws: Innocence, Race and Wrongful Convictions today, a new report exposing how racism, human error, and systemic failures have made wrongful convictions, and particularly the wrongful conviction of Black men, an inevitable consequence of the death penalty system. Fatal Flaws underscores the devastating and irrevocable human cost of a flawed system 鈥� one that robs people of decades of life while waiting for an exoneration, or in the worst of cases 鈥� costs innocent life. Despite growing public opposition to the death penalty, there have been more executions this year than any year over the past decade, including of people who had compelling innocence claims. 鈥淓very wrongful conviction reveals not just individual failure, but the patterns of systemic injustice baked into the death penalty itself,鈥� said Megan Byrne, senior staff attorney at the ACLU鈥檚 Capital Punishment Project. 鈥淭he death penalty was built on a foundation of racism, and those roots still shape how it works today. When you combine that history with human bias and political pressure to reach convictions in high profile cases, it becomes clear why wrongful death sentences are not rare accidents, they鈥檙e the predictable result of a fundamentally flawed system that fails the accused and the community at large. The only way to prevent wrongful convictions is to end the death penalty once and for all.鈥� Since the modern death penalty era began in 1973, at least 200 people have been exonerated from death row across the United States. At least 21 others who were likely innocent have already been executed. The report examines the factors that led to these wrongful convictions and highlights the human stories behind them, including Glynn Simmons, who spent 48 years wrongfully imprisoned, the longest known wrongful incarceration in U.S. history. Key findings in the report include: Official misconduct from police or prosecutors, including coercing witnesses, concealing exculpatory evidence, falsifying reports, or condoning perjury, is the single most common factor in wrongful death penalty convictions, and particularly for Black exonerees. The report highlights certain counties notorious for this type of misconduct. False testimony or perjury occurs in nearly 70 percent of wrongful death penalty cases, and it is the single most common factor for Black and Latine exonerees. Eyewitness misidentification has contributed to one in five wrongful death penalty convictions. Misidentifications are especially likely when the witness and suspect are of different races. Unreliable forensic evidence plays a role in roughly one in three exonerations. Many discredited forensic techniques like bite mark and hair analysis continue to be used in death penalty cases and lead to wrongful convictions. Racial bias in jury selection stacks the deck against defendants. Death qualification and racial bias that leads to the exclusion of Black jurors produce conviction-prone juries that do not represent the community. The report calls on state legislatures and executives repeal the death penalty, expand post-conviction relief and accountability, ensure fair and diverse juries, create meaningful remedies and reparative support for people who have been wrongfully convicted, and strengthen executive clemency and innocence review commissions. Fatal Flaws: Innocence, Race and Wrongful Convictions is the second volume of a multi-part series on the death penalty. The first volume, Fatal Flaws: Revealing the Racial and Religious Gerrymandering of the Capital Jury, exposes how the process of 鈥渄eath qualification鈥� warps juries in capital trials. The full report can be found here: /publications/fatal-flaws-innocence-race-and-wrongful-convictions -
Press ReleaseNov 2025
Racial Justice
Disability Rights
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WASHINGTON 鈥� Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it will transfer critical work to other federal agencies 鈥� an unprecedented move that undermines the department鈥檚 core mission and threatens students鈥� civil rights. This action represents a deliberate attempt to dismantle the agency from within, despite the fact that only Congress has authority over the department. 鈥淭he Trump administration claims core education programs can be carried out elsewhere, yet it has offered no explanation for how agencies like Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, or State will uphold the education access requirements Congress explicitly entrusted to the Department of Education,鈥� said ReNika Moore, director, ACLU Racial Justice Program. 鈥淔ederal law requires these programs to remain within the Department of Education, and transferring them through interagency agreements violates that mandate.鈥� These offices, staffed by career professionals with deep knowledge of how to best serve students and educators, are responsible for administering K-12 and higher education programs, supporting Native students, and safeguarding the rights of students with disabilities. Although the plan calls for Labor to administer K-12 programs that are 鈥渂etter aligned with workforce and college programs,鈥� it is silent concerning the continued administration of congressionally mandated funding programs for school districts to develop high quality curriculum, provide accommodations and services for children with disabilities, help children meet state academic content and performance standards, provide before- and after-school programs, reduce class sizes, improve graduation rates, expand the availability of pre-schools, provide mental health supports, implement language instruction to assist English learners, and provide education to migratory students. The removal of these critical offices from the department guts the structure Congress established in 1979 to guarantee that students, regardless of race, national origin, sex, or disability, receive fair and equitable opportunities to learn. 鈥淪ecretary McMahon is violating laws that only Congress can change. By transferring these offices across agencies that lack the expertise to lead education policy, the administration is breaking the law, eliminating academic supports to close education achievement gaps, deliberately weakening civil rights oversight, and putting millions of students at risk,鈥� said Kimberly Conway, ACLU senior policy counsel and former attorney advisor with Department of Education鈥檚 Office for Civil Rights. 鈥淐ongress must immediately intervene to halt this unlawful restructuring, safeguard the integrity of the department鈥檚 civil rights and education offices, and demand that the department comply with the law and keep its central role in ensuring equal educational opportunity for every student. -
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Privacy & Technology
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Gun-toting Police Swarm, Handcuff Young Black Man After Ai Mistakes Doritos Bag For A Gun. Explore 老熟女午夜福利 & Commentary.Gun-Toting Police Swarm, Handcuff Young Black Man After AI Mistakes Doritos Bag For a Gun
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老熟女午夜福利 & CommentaryNov 2025
Racial Justice
Civil Liberties
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