Despite immigrants’ contributions to our communities and economy, our current immigration system still fails to provide a way for millions of immigrants to apply for legal status and citizenship. Instead, the system wastes billions of dollars on dangerous and unnecessary detention, frequently violates basic principles of fairness and due process, and fails to deliver on our legal and moral obligation to protect people fleeing persecution.

If elected, Vice President Kamala Harris has an opportunity to chart a new course. At the ACLU, we urge the Harris-Walz administration to champion policies that recognize the value of immigrants’ contributions to the United States, that humanely manage the border, that restore asylum and respect the rights of arriving immigrants, and that strengthen ways to lawfully come to this country.

Learn more in our breakdown.

The Facts: A Harris-Walz presidency must prioritize immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship and protection from deportation.

Specifically, we encourage a Harris administration to use its executive authority to protect longtime members of the immigrant community, including by issuing additional designations for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and protecting parents and other caregivers from deportation. We will also urge Harris to work with Congress to prioritize reform efforts that will provide a pathway to citizenship and strengthen American families and communities.

To support meaningful asylum and border management reforms, Harris must go beyond “toughness” as the measure of policy. She will instead need to embrace and communicate the fact that a functional asylum system furthers our values and benefits American communities. Her administration will need to invest in solutions that restore and modernize the asylum system, ensure fairness for people seeking protection, and support the communities that receive new immigrants.

Why It Matters: Today, the vast majority of undocumented immigrants have lived in the United States for more than a decade, but under our current system they often cannot obtain legal status as there is no “line” for them to get into or “right way” to get citizenship. Right now, an estimated one in 10 American children live with someone who lacks legal status, including parents and siblings. These families live in fear of being broken apart through deportation. Many are at risk of deportation to countries they do not consider home — having left those countries as children — or where they would be unsafe due to conflict and crisis.

At the same time, global migration is at an all time high, yet people fleeing violence and persecution are left with few options to seek safety in the U.S. as the government has sought to restrict the legal right to seek asylum. These anti-asylum policies leave many vulnerable people in danger and do nothing to improve border management, our immigration court system, or coordination to receive our new neighbors.

How We Got Here: Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump aggressively attacked and undermined our nation’s asylum laws. Soon after Joe Biden’s inauguration, his administration restarted the refugee processing system, giving hope to many that the Trump era of scapegoating immigrants and dismantling our humanitarian protection system was over. However, the Biden administration never restored the asylum system. To the contrary, Biden initially elected to continue his predecessor’s unlawful “expulsion” policy. When it ended, he rolled out a new, extreme border restriction that largely mimicked two Trump-era policies, which courts had held as illegal.

In June 2024, the Biden administration doubled down on this approach with its illegal “Securing the Border” rule, further limiting access to protection for everyone at the border who is not able to obtain a rare port appointment to seek asylum. Adding to this, states like Texas have attempted to take enforcement of the federal immigration laws into their own hands, both at and beyond the border. Evidence has repeatedly demonstrated that state and local immigration enforcement leads to racial profiling and arbitrary detention — including of U.S. citizens — and terrorizes entire communities.

Our Roadmap: To start, the ACLU will urge a Harris-Walz administration to take aggressive executive action to dismantle the system of mass immigrant detention. Specifically, we are asking Harris to issue an executive order on immigrant detention that includes a moratorium on any new detention facilities, requires a review and closure of detention facilities with records of abuse, and phases private and contract detention centers. We will also encourage a Harris administration to exercise executive power to expand pathways for people inside and outside the United States — including our nation’s military veterans and people who have been wrongfully deported — to safely seek lawful status. The administration must also call for Congress to reduce funding for immigrant detention, and initiate a review of every person currently in immigration custody.

We will also work to persuade a Harris administration to restore access to asylum and end the Biden administration’s anti-asylum policies in favor of a balanced strategy that recognizes and protects the right to asylum while improving border management. Should a Harris-Walz administration adopt the Biden administration’s illegal anti-asylum policies, we will continue our legal fights against them.

We will also challenge state laws that target immigrant communities for harassment, racial profiling, arrest, banishment, or removal. We will urge the Harris-Walz administration to end the federal government’s collaboration with state and local anti-immigrant programs that violate civil rights, and to protect all communities from abusive, politically-motivated policies. Lastly, as we have done time and again, we will mobilize our members to elevate the will of the American people to take a balanced approach to immigration and for the U.S. to live up to its values.

What Our Experts Say: “A Harris administration could provide a critical opportunity to ensure a balanced and humane approach to U.S. immigration policy that recognizes the contributions of immigrants to our communities. Poll after poll, including research from the ACLU, shows that Americans support fair, orderly, and efficient policies that improve border management while offering a pathway to citizenship for our longtime neighbors – and a Harris administration should deliver on the will of the American people.” — Maribel Hernández Rivera, director of policy and government affairs for border and immigration at the ACLU

“If elected, a Kamala Harris administration has an opportunity to chart a new course on U.S. immigration policy and ensure a pathway to citizenship for longtime residents, while doing the critical work to restore our nation’s asylum system. As we have under every administration in the last two decades, we will continue to challenge the government when it violates the constitution and laws, as with prolonged immigration detention, detention of people in abusive conditions of confinement, anti-asylum bans, and immigration proceedings that violate due process and basic standards of fairness.” – Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project

What You Can Do Today: Even as the number of deaths in ICE custody has risen dramatically, the Biden administration is actively attempting to expand the detention system with new contracts to private prison companies despite persistent records of abuse and medical negligence. Tell the Biden administration to release medically vulnerable people from ICE detention and shut down the mass detention machine once and for all.

In a moment when hostile state legislators have used unlawful redistricting efforts and discriminatory voting laws to attack our electoral systems, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has committed to protecting our democracy.

On the campaign trail, Harris has promised to push for passage of essential federal voting rights protections, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (JLVRAA), the Freedom to Vote Act (FTVA), and the Native American Voting Rights Act (NAVRA). If elected, Harris has the opportunity to build on the Biden-Harris administration’s record of championing measures that increase voting access. The ACLU is determined to hold a Harris-Walz administration accountable for promoting fair representation, preventing discriminatory voting laws, and strengthening our democracy for years to come.

Learn more in our breakdown.

The Facts: A Harris-Walz administration must advocate for federal legislation to protect voting rights, specifically passage of the JLVRAA, the NAVRA and provisions of the FTVA. The JLVRAA would restore the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 to its fullest strength and undo the harm created by Shelby County v. Holder, in which the Supreme Court struck down the VRA’s core “preclearance” requirement that mandated jurisdictions with long records of racially-discriminatory voting practices seek federal approval before altering their voting laws and practices. The FTVA, if passed, would establish essential voting-access provisions that make it easier for everyone to register and cast their ballots; help safeguard against partisan and racial gerrymandering; increase protections for marginalized voters like those with disabilities and those with prior felony convictions; and establish other much-needed national standards for federal elections. Lastly, the NAVRA is essential to protect Indigenous communities from discriminatory voting practices and address the unique barriers to voting that Native people face.

While the passage of such federal legislation ultimately depends on Congress, if elected Harris is responsible for demanding that Congress act swiftly and boldly. A Harris presidency must also continue to robustly implement Executive Order 14019 on Promoting Access to Voting, which encourages federal agencies to provide nonpartisan voter registration opportunities for all eligible citizens. While the Biden-Harris administration has made laudable strides in implementing this executive order, a Harris-Walz administration must push the federal government to move even quicker to enforce the order’s provisions to the fullest.

In addition, a Harris-Walz administration must advocate for a useful, accurate, and fair census in 2030. This census will determine the allocation of seats in Congress as well as the distribution of billions in public funding until 204o. A Harris-Walz administration should ensure that the Census Bureau is equipped with the tools and resources needed to execute a successful count in 2030, and protected from efforts to manipulate the census.

Why It Matters: The right to vote is the very foundation of our democracy. We are counting on a Harris presidency to build on the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to protect and expand voting access, ensure an accurate census, and shore up faith in and the strength of our democracy. The presidency’s influence can reinvigorate the effort to restore and fortify federal voting rights legislation that will protect the right to vote for years. A Harris-Walz administration can also demonstrate how every level of government can act now to increase access to voter registration and education.

How We Got Here: For years, pro-voting rights work has been stymied by a divided Congress or has been thwarted by partisan efforts to manipulate electoral systems to disenfranchise entire populations of voters, particularly voters of color.

As vice president, Harris has been the face of the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to expand voting rights, including launching new efforts across federal agencies to offer nonpartisan voter registration opportunities. Harris has also championed efforts to advance critical voting legislation that has been repeatedly introduced across multiple congressional sessions, including the JLVRAA, the NAVRA, and the FTVA.

Our Roadmap: After Donald Trump pushed the “Big Lie“ that the 2020 election was fraudulent, a wave of state-based voter suppression bills were introduced in response to victories by candidates who support civil rights and civil liberties, and who were elected by diverse constituencies. The ACLU challenged many of these laws and, today, we stand ready to go back to court to take on new suppressive laws, policies, and practices that could follow a Harris win. In addition to filing our own lawsuits, we will call on the Department of Justice under a Harris-Walz administration to enforce federal statutory protections of the right to vote to the fullest.

Additionally, the ACLU will work with our partners to pass critical voting rights legislation. Under a Harris presidency, we will continue to testify in support of the JLVRAA, lobby and brief Congress members about the bill’s importance, and educate constituencies on the bill’s impact on voters of color. So that the JLVRAA and other critical voting rights legislation are not blocked in the Senate, the ACLU will double down on its coordinated effort to reform the filibuster.

Lastly, during a potential Harris presidency, the ACLU will continue pressing state and local officials to leverage every available tool to increase access to voting, including by expanding same-day registration, automatic voter registration, and early and mail voting. If elected, Harris must continue efforts to end the denial of equal representation to Washington D.C. residents, and correct the longstanding voting rights injustices people living in U.S. territories face. Finally, as we have in the past, we will engage our organizers and members in a public education campaign on the impact of the census in everyday life and the importance of counting every person, laying the groundwork for the most accurate census in 2030.

What Our Experts Say: “Expanding voting rights is crucial to ensuring every citizen's voice is heard in our democracy. Vice President Harris has promised to address long-standing challenges and enhance access to the ballot for all eligible voters. If she is elected, we will use every tool at our disposal, including litigation, to hold her to these commitments and protect and advance voting rights and fair representation at every level of government.” — Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project

What You Can Do Today: As the election approaches, discriminatory election practices continue to impact voters of color, highlighted by a surge in anti-voter measures in recent years. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is a crucial step towards ensuring fair and inclusive elections. Add your name to our petition urging Congress to support this vital legislation.

For the past four years, the Biden-Harris administration has made LGBTQ rights a cornerstone of its policy agenda. Among other efforts, the Biden-Harris administration has consistently sued states to block anti-trans laws and policies, including asking the Supreme Court to lift bans on medically-necessary health care for trans adolescents.

While there remains work to be done to protect the LGBTQ community, we have seen significant progress under the Biden-Harris administration in undoing the anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ policies of Donald Trump’s administration. Given this strong record, should Harris win in November, we’re calling on her administration to continue to ensure that the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ people are protected and prioritized across the federal government.

Learn more in our breakdown.

The Facts: Given the significantly anti-trans policy environment that has emerged over the past four years, the ACLU would push a future Harris administration to build on the foundation established during Joe Biden’s presidency by using the power of the federal government to protect LGBTQ people from harm in as many ways as possible.

The Biden-Harris administration ordered federal agencies to protect LGBTQ people against discrimination by ensuring that the Supreme Court’s historic decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the court held that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, applied in the contexts of not just employment, but housing, health care, and credit lending. The administration also reopened the military to transgender service members, reversing the Trump administration’s ban. Additionally, the administration expanded access to gender-affirming health care through government healthcare programs, including in federal prisons, and expanded access to accurate gender markers on federal government identification documents, such as passports.

While a pro-equality president can do a lot to protect the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ people, they cannot achieve the long-sought goal of comprehensive federal protections on their own. From the earliest days of her service in the Senate, Harris consistently made clear her support for the Equality Act — legislation to provide LGBTQ people with explicit, comprehensive protection against discrimination – and, as vice president, has consistently urged Congress to pass the legislation. However, if Harris is elected and faced with a divided Congress, similar to what we have now, it will be essential for the Harris-Walz administration to remain vigilant against efforts to put anti-LGBTQ measures, including those banning access to gender-affirming care, in must-pass legislation, such as bills that fund the federal government.

Why It Matters: In addition to Trump-era policies that sought to actively disenfranchise LGBTQ people, without federal-level protections, the LGBTQ community continues to face discrimination in nearly every aspect of daily life.

In the last two years, states have considered 1,197 anti-transgender bills. Of those, 129 have been passed into law. Anti-trans or anti-LGBTQ laws restrict access to needed health care for adults and children, deny individuals the right to live freely and safely as they are, and hinder the ability to simply exist free from discrimination.

How We Got Here: From its first day in office, the Biden-Harris administration set about undoing many of the Trump administration’s regressive anti-LGBTQ federal policies and enhancing federal protections.

However, when a new presidential administration takes office in January 2025, the LGBTQ community will still be confronting a dismal policy landscape in about half the country where trans adolescents — and increasingly trans adults — face unlawful discrimination. In many states, trans people cannot access gender-affirming medical care; are unable to use restrooms in schools and other government buildings; find that updating gender markers on identity documents is challenging or impossible; and cannot fully participate in society as their authentic selves.

Our Roadmap: To help a future Harris-Walz administration pass comprehensive federal nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people, we will continue to push Congress to reform the Senate filibuster and pass pro-equality legislation, like the Equality Act. The Biden-Harris administration has championed the Equality Act, but a vocal anti-LGBTQ minority has used the filibuster to delay its passage through Congress. The ACLU is prepared to use public pressure — including aggressive lobbying and grassroots mobilization — to compel Congress to finally act.

While the passage of explicit, comprehensive legislation protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination is the ACLU’s top LGBTQ priority in Congress, there are many other actions that a Harris-Walz administration should take to safeguard the rights of LGBTQ people. For example, one of the most significant and powerful ways for a Harris-Walz administration to support the needs of trans people is to issue an executive order on day one directing federal agencies to examine ways that they can affirmatively enhance access to gender-affirming care in federally funded programs. An executive order like this would provide clear direction to federal agencies, and do so in a way that will serve the goal of comprehensively addressing this issue.

Additionally, we expect Harris to work with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to use litigation to protect trans people across the country from discriminatory state laws. The ACLU will continue this work in communities across the country by engaging our activists to join the fight for LGBTQ equality in their home states.

What Our Experts Say: “The Biden-Harris administration has a strong record of protecting and expanding the freedom of LGBTQ people at a time when those freedoms have faced an unprecedented assault. With further attacks on our rights and a landmark Supreme Court case on the horizon, we would encourage a Harris-Walz administration to continue this commitment and do everything in their power to protect our rights, our health care, and our freedom to be ourselves without fear.” — James Esseks, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project

What You Can Do Today: Recently, dangerous and discriminatory efforts to strip trans people of their rights, including efforts to use the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to limit care for trans servicemembers, have only increased. These tactics affect everyone. Write to your Congress member today to stop this assault on our freedom and on our lives.

In U.S. classrooms and libraries, a coordinated attack on students’ right to learn is underway.

Since January 2021, 44 states have introduced bills or taken other steps to restrict how teachers can teach about racism and sexism in the classroom. These unlawful efforts impact students as young as five or six, and exist throughout the education system, reaching high school students and those at higher education institutions. In addition to censoring classroom conversations, lawmakers and school boards have also enacted sweeping book bans that further restrict access to diverse viewpoints.

The ACLU has challenged classroom censorship laws and book bans nationwide as part of its broader efforts to defend education equity. To better understand who these censorship attempts harm and how young people are being impacted, this back-to-school season, we spoke to high school students from across the country at the ACLU’s annual National Advocacy Institute about how classroom censorship has impacted their right to learn.

I am not able to take AP Psychology or AP African American History. I am also unable to find a lot of the books that I like because they are being banned and removed from my local libraries. I have to work harder to find information and, because it is harder, I sometimes just decide not to look for it.

As a woman of color, I haven’t fully felt that I identify with much of the history taught in my classrooms. I think book banning, and taking away certain avenues of education for students to learn about their background and where they came from … is really harmful to students, especially youth who are trying to find their sense of community and where to belong.

If I'm in the classroom and I can't get an array of perspectives from an array of different authors, I feel that I'm not getting an education representative of our America. If I can't read authors who look like me, who look like my black and brown friends, [who look like] my friends of AAPI descent, then what am I really learning? I'm learning America from the perspective of only one kind of person, and that's not the education that I want, nor is it the education that any student should receive.

Students learn from being able to read books, voice our opinions, and hear the opinions of others. As someone who's Jewish and has had family murdered in the Holocaust, I understand firsthand that when you start to ban books and label books as forbidden the people in those books soon find themselves also labeled forbidden… Information, the right to knowledge, and the right to converse freely are what protect all of our other rights that we care about so deeply.

History isn’t as pretty and simple as some people want to make it seem. It’s very complicated. You really need to have access to all of the information you can get and hear a lot of different opinions …Having access to all viewpoints allows me to expand my knowledge and makes learning a lot more interesting.

Banning books is one of the ways that we are actively stunting educational growth for young students. I think that, for kids, the library is often a haven for where they can go and just garner so many new perspectives and gain an idea of what change can possibly be.

As a kid, I got into advocacy from reading The Hunger Games and seeing the rise of Katniss Everdeen and the revolution. And so, if books like that, like Fahrenheit 451, like The Hunger Games, or Of Mice and Men are banned, these narratives are being erased. Kids can’t get that sort of education and perspective that can encourage them to make change later on as leaders of the future.

My school district has dealt with book bans and curriculum censorship…I really saw a burden come on our educators and our students where we didn't feel like we were being adequately represented in the curriculum, and we didn't feel that we were able to grow in our knowledge in a very truthful and real way. We need to have the opportunity to explore our knowledge at a deeper level and not be restricted by adults that think that we're not smart enough to understand.

If my teachers weren’t allowed to talk about issues I cared about, I would honestly feel a little bit belittled, especially because teachers are very looked up to. They’re the people that we learn from, who educate us since we're little. And if our role models can't speak to something that we're passionate about, what does that say about our passions? Are those belittled as well? Are our feelings belittled? Are we invalidated? I think that it instills in us from a young age that we can only say certain things and can't speak our mind.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade set off a wave of new attacks on abortion, causing a catastrophic public health crisis and rapidly eroding our civil liberties and reproductive freedom. So far, 14 states have banned abortion completely, and others have severely limited access to abortion by criminalizing it after the earliest weeks of pregnancy.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s nominee, has already indicated her support for abortion access and other forms of reproductive health care. At one of her first campaign events, she stated that if Congress “passes a law to restore reproductive freedom, as president of the United States I will sign it into law.”

The ACLU promises to hold Harris accountable for keeping this campaign promise if she is elected in November. Learn more in our breakdown:

The Facts: The Biden-Harris administration made abortion rights and reproductive health a priority during their four years in office. But anti-abortion politicians have had control of at least one body of Congress ever since Roe was overturned, preventing meaningful congressional action on abortion. Enacting federal legislation to protect the right to abortion throughout the country is a crucial and desperately needed step to rectify the harms of overturning Roe.

To be clear, abortion care was not accessible for far too many even before the end of Roe. If elected, Harris must carry out her promise to restore reproductive freedom by taking bold action to ensure that everyone can get an abortion if they need one, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they have. She must not only demand legislation that codifies abortion rights and invalidates state bans and restrictions, but that also ends discriminatory barriers to abortion care, such as insurance coverage bans like the Hyde Amendment.

Why It Matters: Right now, millions of people of reproductive age live hundreds of miles from the closest abortion provider. In 2023 alone, more than 171,000 people were forced to travel outside of their home state to secure abortion access. As a result of abortion bans and other restrictions, countless people are being forced to continue their pregnancies against their will. Some states have gone so far as to criminalize the provision of abortion care in medical emergencies where the inability to get an abortion puts the pregnant person’s health, life, and future fertility in danger.

In the two years since Roe was overturned, however, there has been a groundswell of public support for abortion rights and rising opposition against bans and restrictions on abortion care. People in states across the country — including Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin — have repeatedly demonstrated their support for reproductive health care access since Roe was overturned.

How We Got Here: Making good on his campaign promise to end Roe, President Donald Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who were part of the majority opinion that overturned the 50-year-old decision and took away the constitutional right to abortion. Since then, extreme politicians have increased their attacks on our reproductive freedom, enforcing bans that push care out of reach entirely in 14 states and attempting to use junk science to take an abortion pill off the shelves nationwide. These politicians even threatened to put doctors in prison for providing emergency abortion care to pregnant patients facing complications.

Our Roadmap: As a presidential candidate in 2020, Harris committed to working with Congress to pass a federal bill to codify abortion rights. She also promised to end the Hyde Amendment, which places restrictions on Medicaid coverage for abortion and has forced one in four low-income women seeking an abortions to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. The Biden-Harris administration took steps to remove this harmful restriction and, if Harris is elected, the ACLU will urge her administration to build on past progress to fulfill her campaign commitments.

In addition to ending the Hyde Amendment and protecting abortion access, the threat of misusing the Comstock Act as a national abortion ban must be eliminated. The Comstock Act is an 1873 anti-obscenity law that regulates the use of the mail and common carriers to send or receive anything that is “indecent, filthy, or vile” or “intended for producing abortion.” Trump’s advisors are threatening to misapply this law, claiming incorrectly that the Comstock Act functions as a national abortion ban. To ensure that no future anti-abortion president can weaponize this antiquated law, Harris must urge Congress to repeal it. The ACLU has already asked lawmakers to introduce the Stop Comstock Act, and we will demand that any legislation codifying abortion rights also repeals the Act.

Additionally, we urge a potential Harris administration to robustly defend pregnant people’s rights and ensure all hospitals satisfy their obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals that receive Medicare funds to provide emergency stabilizing treatment, including abortion, to any patient who needs it. The ACLU will continue to work in the courts and with coalition partners to defend emergency abortion care, including urging Congress to swiftly respond in the event of a Supreme Court decision that eliminates these protections.

Lastly, while the Biden-Harris administration made steps toward expanding reproductive health care and contraception access, it must go further. If Harris is elected, the ACLU will work with her administration to urge Congress to make needed investments in Title X, a federally-funded family planning program that helps low-income people obtain critical health care services for free or at a reduced cost.

What Our Experts Say: “If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election this year, it will be because she prioritized reproductive freedom as a central tenet of her campaign, but that promise must be met with bold and urgent action. Harris has the opportunity to ensure that Congress enacts federal protections for abortion that reflect the American public's overwhelming support for reproductive freedom. That means demanding Congress send her a bill to sign that ensures everyone who needs abortion care can access it.” — Madison Roberts, ACLU senior policy counsel for reproductive freedom.

What You Can Do Today: Since Roe was overturned, abortion bans have gone into effect in states across the country. Today, anti-abortion extremists continue to attack medication abortion and emergency abortion care. It’s past time to make a change. Join our campaign to urge your congress members to pass federal legislation that safeguards our reproductive freedom.

This piece was published before Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to represent the Democratic Party. No significant facts have been changed or added.

Donald Trump has long identified himself as the candidate of “law and order” but, during the Trump administration, “law and order” translated to a severe approach to criminal punishment and policing that failed to make us safer.

Today, his proposed policies for a second term promise to double down on these ineffective tough on crime tactics. If reelected, a second administration threatens to accelerate mass incarceration and roll back decades of progress by encouraging aggressive policing practices, enacting draconian sentencing regimes, and expanding the use of the death penalty.

At the ACLU, we won’t let our country go backward. If Trump returns to office, we’re prepared to meet these unconstitutional policies with the same fierce response as we did during the last Trump administration. Learn more about our roadmap in our breakdown.

The Facts: According to Trump’s campaign, “there is no higher priority than quickly restoring law and order and public safety in America.” But, just as it was during President Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign against the war on drugs, “law and order” under a second Trump administration is a “shorthand message promising repression of the Black community.”

Specifically, Trump’s law enforcement policies call for further protections for abusive police, including condoning the use of force against protesters, which he once described as a “beautiful thing to watch.” This rhetoric risks encouraging state actors to take a similarly brutal approach. Beyond rhetoric, however, Trump is also likely to immediately rescind President Joe Biden’s 2022 executive order on policing. Doing so would eviscerate one of the most substantial federal actions on police reform since George Floyd’s murder and roll back important changes to use of force standards, including restrictions on chokeholds and carotid restraints. These expected policies will have an outsized impact on marginalized communities, especially the Black community, which is far more likely to experience police abuse. We also know that a second Trump administration intends to deputize local law enforcement to aid an unprecedented mass deportation effort that would decimate communities.

Additionally, Trump has promised that, if reelected, his administration will accelerate mass incarceration efforts by directing federal prosecutors to seek the most serious charges and maximum sentences, pressuring local prosecutors to take a similarly draconian approach, and re-incarcerating thousands of people on home confinement. His administration will also expand the use of the death penalty – despite Americans’ increasing opposition to capital punishment – by broadening the category of crimes punishable by death, sentencing more people to die, and killing every person on federal death row.

While Trump will have a singular impact on the federal system, ultimately, state and local governments control most of the substantive parts of state criminal legal systems, including policing, prosecution, sentencing, and conditions in prisons and jails. Today, there are over 1.6 million people in state and local jails and prisons, compared to just over 200,000 in federal jails and prisons. But even without direct control of state systems, Trump will play an important role in setting the tone for state policies and many of his plans will have a ripple effect across the country.

Why It Matters: The Trump administration has already shown its capacity for brutal criminal legal system policies. In its final year, for example, the Trump Administration executed 13 people, more than half of whom were people of color. Trump executed more people than any administration in 120 years. Trump’s embrace of capital punishment is longstanding. In the 1980s, as a private citizen, he paid $85,000 from his own funds to publish a page-wide advertisement calling for the execution of five Black and Latine boys wrongfully accused as the “Central Park Five.”

But the impact of a second Trump administration doesn’t limit itself to any single area of the criminal legal system. He has proposed punitive policies that promise to dehumanize individuals at every point in the carceral system – from traffic stops to confinement conditions to sentencing. This tough on crime approach is also ineffective. Creating safe and healthy communities requires investing in programs that address the root causes of crime and disorder, like after-school programs, alternatives to policing, violence intervention teams, substance abuse treatment, employment pipelines, and affordable housing.

How We Got Here: During Trump’s time in office, he threatened to bring the National Guard into major cities to quell violence, and risk dangerously escalating tensions and exposing peaceful protestors to excessive or deadly force. He also encouraged the militarization of the police by rescinding President Barack Obama’s executive order limiting the distribution of military-grade weapons to state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies.

Trump and his administration were so committed to ineffective tough on crime policies that they even, at times, reversed their own progress on criminal legal system reform. In 2018, the ACLU worked with the Trump administration to secure the bipartisan First Step Act that then-President Trump signed into law. The First Step Act was significant legislation intended to improve federal prison conditions, reform overly harsh federal sentencing provisions, and provide increased programing and re-entry transition services to people incarcerated in federal prisons. Despite the promise of the Act, many of its key reforms were later undermined by the Trump administration.

Trump’s time in office also underscored the need to continue to hold his administration accountable for its unlawful actions. From 2017-2021, the ACLU filed more than 430 legal actions against the administration, including lawsuits aimed at defending the right to protest against police brutality, protecting the health and humanity of incarcerated people during the Covid-19 pandemic, and stopping mass surveillance by law enforcement.

Our Roadmap: If Trump returns to office, he can expect that he will be met with the same fierce response the ACLU brought during his last administration.

Specifically, we will use the courts to halt the Trump administration’s attempt to carry out one of, if not the largest, carceral events in our nation’s history: the senseless return to prison of nearly 3,000 individuals released on federal home confinement during the pandemic. Additionally, we will use litigation to challenge any efforts to return to unconstitutional methods of execution, and expose the racism and cruelty inherent in the death penalty, as we continue to seek its total abolition.

The ACLU will also advocate for Congress to constrain the funneling of military equipment to local police, fight for legislation to end sentencing disparities, and, under any administration, continue to push for the full implementation of the First Step Act. Importantly, we’ll use our expertise and resources to advise and assist members of Congress on how to prevent a future Trump administration from manipulating our legal system.

Lastly, since much of the American criminal legal system takes place at the state and local level, our state-level work will be more critical than ever with Trump in office. The ACLU and our affiliates will continue efforts to reduce opportunities for violent encounters with police, including by advocating for state use-of-force standards and the deprioritization of non-safety related traffic stops.

What Our Experts Say: “Trump has told us what he wants to do with a second term: fuel mass incarceration, encourage law enforcement to engage in unconstitutional policing practices, and expand the death penalty. We know from this country’s history that these extreme and immoral policies harm communities and infringe upon our rights and humanity. The ACLU is prepared to meet the Trump administration with the same fierce response as we did during his last term in office should he be reelected.” – Yasmin Cader, director of the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality

What You Can Do Today: Congress can take action immediately to reduce disparities in our criminal legal system — starting by ending extreme sentencing. Send a message urging them to act today.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States means that any president can now use their official powers to commit crimes under the assumption they are now presumptively immune. A future president could turn the armed forces against their opponents, turn government agencies against their critics, or reenact some of America’s worst mistakes.

No president ever – from the founding of the country to now – has ever had this sort of power and protection. Until now. How much do you know about the history of rejecting Kings?

Take our quick quiz below and see if you can get a perfect score.

Click to see Quiz

This piece was published before Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to represent the Democratic Party. No significant facts have been changed or added.

Donald Trump’s four years in office were marked by gross abuses of executive power, including efforts to trample protest and dissent — key freedoms at the heart of our participatory democracy.

He deployed federal agents and surveillance to silence Black Lives Matter protesters or anyone he deemed to oppose his policies, threatened to use his power as president to punish his political enemies, and attacked journalists who criticized him. If elected to a second term, we expect the Trump administration to double down on attempts to further limit our First Amendment rights and use the power of the federal government to attack political rivals, stifle dissent, and undermine checks and balances on presidential power.

For more than 100 years, the ACLU has defended our most fundamental rights and freedoms — including our right to express ourselves free from government interference. We won’t stop now. If Trump is reelected, we’re prepared to use the courts, Congress, state and local power, and our organizing muscle to challenge unlawful attempts to surveil Americans, suppress speech, and undermine democracy. Learn more in our breakdown:

The Facts: In 2020, the Trump administration threatened to use force to quell protests, and actually did deploy federal agents and National Guard troops who arrested and used excessive force against protestors and journalists. If Trump secures a second term, this abuse of power is likely to recur and even escalate. Trump has already indicated that his administration would consider invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to America’s cities — potentially targeting those with large BIPOC and immigrant communities — to suppress the right to protest. Trump has also indicated that his administration would attack online free expression by forcing media companies and online platforms to carry conservatives’ preferred speech.

As president, with federal law enforcement agencies under his control, Trump could carry out attacks on advocacy organizations and individuals he opposes. Indeed, on the campaign trail, Trump has praised violent crackdowns on campus protests, aligning with his previous attacks on academic freedom. In particular, he has threatened to deport student protestors who are not U.S. citizens, merging his attacks on free speech with his attacks on immigration. We also expect Trump to use his authority to further target media members and the freedom of the press to suppress negative stories about him or his administration.

Furthermore, Project 2025 has made clear that a second Trump administration intends to dismantle the already insufficient guardrails that prevent the president from abusing the executive branch’s power. The Supreme Court already removed one such guardrail in Trump v. United States, ruling that the president cannot be criminally prosecuted for “official acts,” including using the Justice Department for his personal and political bidding. Trump can use a politicized Justice Department and the vast array of federal agencies to attack voters, protestors, journalists, abortion care providers and patients, his political opponents and any others he perceives as “enemies.” Even now, Trump allies in Congress are trying to use their investigative tools to chill free speech, including targeting civil society organizations and activists engaged in protected advocacy, such as opposing the war in Gaza or supporting LGBTQ rights.

The dangers of the federal government targeting its opponents and vulnerable populations are multiplied by mass surveillance mechanisms that the ACLU has long fought to constrain. A second Trump administration could leverage surveillance programs such as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which authorizes the collection of communications between U.S. persons and people outside the United States, and which Congress has dangerously expanded to allow the government to search Americans’ private communications and information without a warrant and without notice.

Why It Matters: By punishing political enemies and stifling protest and dissent, a second Trump administration would break many of the checks and balances on the executive branch, and undermine the foundations of a functioning democracy.  A second Trump administration will also pose a threat to our historic American tradition of robust, open political competition marked by spirited dissent and the foundational notion that the people have the final say.

How We Got Here: Early in his presidency, Trump sent National Guard troops to stop Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington, D.C., threatened to deploy the military more broadly to quell protests in other U.S. cities, and sent federal law enforcement agents around the country to break up protests by force, including arresting protestors and journalists.

Trump has also already shown how he will target his perceived enemies, whether they be political rivals, media members, or everyday citizens. He's promised prosecution or harm towards President Biden and Biden administration officials, poll workers, former military generals, former officials in his own administration who fell out of favor, protesters, journalists, migrant or immigrant communities, and many others.

Additionally, when it comes to surveilling Americans, there is already a history of law enforcement and intelligence agencies’ abuse of surveillance programs that give the government the right to collect private information from American citizens. It is all too easy to foresee a second Trump administration using these overbroad and dangerous spying powers to surveil and discriminate against political opponents and people and communities already in its crosshairs. Protesters, communities of color, immigrants, and people seeking abortions or gender-affirming care all face even greater risks to their privacy and rights.

Our Roadmap: The ACLU will always rise to defend protesters, journalists, and others who are subjected to abusive criminal prosecutions or other punitive actions from the government. To combat a second Trump administration’s intention to trample historical checks and balances, and the apparent willingness of many within and outside of government to help, we will work with allies to urge the American people to exercise their First Amendment rights — like the right to protest — so that Trump’s excesses are met with the direct power of the people. And, if a second Trump administration does misuse executive authority, the ACLU will go to court to stop efforts to breach Americans’ privacy, discriminate based on race or ethnicity, or retaliate against dissenters or seek to silence them.

Should a Trump administration again deploy the military and federal agents to quell peaceful protests and interfere with journalists reporting on protests, the ACLU and its affiliates network will be on the ground fighting to protect our rights. As we did during Trump’s first presidency, we will bring lawsuits on behalf of protesters and the media addressing any speech or due process-related violations as outlined in the First and Fourth Amendments.

Importantly, we will urge state and local leaders who value civil liberties to lead efforts to resist abuses of federal executive power and limit the reach of the federal government’s power within their jurisdictions. For instance, states can limit — or eliminate — cooperation agreements between state and local law enforcement and federal law enforcement to minimize the grounds federal authorities can intervene in protests. They can also prevent voluntary data sharing that could be used for federal surveillance purposes or to support politically motivated investigations and prosecutions.

The ACLU also works with a bipartisan coalition of civil libertarians on Capitol Hill who recognize the danger of overly broad executive power. To protect our free press, we’re already working to urge Congress to enact the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act (PRESS Act), which would prevent the federal government from compelling journalists to reveal their sources and work product. We’re also calling on our elected leaders to install stronger guardrails against political influence over the Justice Department. Lastly, we’re pushing policymakers to limit government surveillance and protect Americans’ private communications from unlawful collection by passing the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.

What Our Experts Say: “Donald Trump has made no secret of his disregard for the rule of law and his intent to corrupt the immense powers of the federal government to target his opponents and break the institutions that could pose checks and balances to presidential power. In a second term, unleashed and feeling invulnerable from legal and political repercussions, he would pose an unprecedented challenge to our constitutional values. But the ACLU is ready.” — Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs

“The ACLU has always worked to stop the executive branch from abusing its power at the expense of individual freedom and vulnerable communities. The Trump presidency, with its false declarations of national emergencies in service of discrimination and total disregard for the rule of law, demonstrated what we’ve always known – that relying on unwritten norms for presidential behavior is grossly insufficient. If there is a second Trump administration, we are prepared to defend people it attacks, including protestors, dissenters, and journalists.” — Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director of the ACLU

What You Can Do Today: The ACLU has long advocated for robust legislation that safeguards against all kinds of government overreach, including the unlawful warrantless surveillance of our private communications. Show your support by calling your representative to support the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act now.

The Supreme Court’s 2023-24 term will be remembered for one case above all: Trump v. United States, in which the court granted former President Donald Trump immunity from criminal liability for attempts to use his office to obstruct the peaceful transition of power after he lost the 2020 election.

At the ACLU, we submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case urging the justices to affirm that no person – including presidents – are above the law. And yet, the court’s six Republican-appointed justices abandoned the Constitution and its original meaning, voting instead to manufacture an immunity that effectively turns presidents into kings.

The justices’ ostensible justification for providing such immunity is baseless. They surmised that without knowing that they can commit crimes with impunity, presidents will be deterred from energetically doing their job. Yet, until this decision, every president faced the risk of prosecution if they committed crimes and there is no evidence that American presidents have been shy about exercising their authority. The court’s decision underscores the absolute necessity for organizations like ours to pursue constitutional checks on presidents while in office—and for voters to vote like their rights depend on it to hold presidents accountable.

While the presidential immunity case has rightfully dominated the public’s attention, the Supreme Court’s most recent term also involved many other important decisions. It issued important decisions protecting First Amendment rights, turned back a challenge to medication abortion, and addressed Second Amendment rights in a challenge to a law banning possession of guns by persons subject to domestic violence protective orders. The court also dealt several blows to our rights, denying constitutional protections for homeless people punished for sleeping in public, for Black voters subject to discrimination in South Carolina, and for an American citizen whose noncitizen husband was denied a visa without explanation.

A review of the term’s civil rights and civil liberties decisions offers a mixed picture, but make no mistake: This is a court ready to create brand new constitutional protection for former President Trump, while turning away the claims of the powerless.

In a pair of much-watched cases involving reproductive health, the court preserved access to abortion without addressing the merits of the disputes. In one case, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, doctors who opposed abortion sued to challenge FDA rules that eased access to medication abortion, the most common form of abortion. The lower courts ruled against the FDA, but the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the challenge, ruling that the doctors lacked “standing” to challenge the FDA rules because they were not personally harmed by these rules. While this is a win for medication-abortion access, the fight is far from over. Politicians have vowed to continue efforts to restrict access to abortion nationwide.

The second abortion case, Moyle v. United States, asked whether a federal law requiring emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to all patients experiencing an emergency required those hospitals to provide abortions where that is the necessary treatment — even if state law forbids abortions under those circumstances. The case originated in Idaho, where state law prohibits abortion except where necessary to save the life of the mother. After a federal district court properly ruled that the federal law overrides the state ban in emergency situations, the Supreme Court intervened prematurely and paused the lower court’s ruling until it could weigh in. But after hearing arguments, the court ultimately dismissed the case, thereby resurrecting the lower court ruling protecting access to abortion in emergencies. For now, the case will continue in the lower courts.

This term the court focused on civil liberties involving the First Amendment. In National Rifle Association v. Vullo, the ACLU represented the NRA in a case arguing that New York’s top financial regulator had violated the NRA’s First Amendment when she targeted it for its political views and sought to compel banks and insurance companies to blacklist the group. The court ruled unanimously in our favor. While the ACLU often disagrees with what the NRA advocates, we defended their rights before the Supreme Court because of the First Amendment principle at stake. Had we lost this case, governors in red states would have been free to employ similar tactics against immigrants’ rights groups, gay rights groups, or the ACLU itself. The case establishes that, while government officials are free to express their views, they may not use their official authority to coerce others to punish a group for its political ideas.

The court also issued important decisions protecting free speech online. While the Internet is far from new, decades after its advent the nation is still grappling with how to approach our speech rights online. In two cases challenging Texas and Florida laws that regulated the terms by which large social media platforms moderate the content they display, the court declared, as the ACLU argued in a friend-of-the-court brief, that social media platforms, like newspapers and bookstores, have a First Amendment right to choose how to curate the content they display, sell, or publish. In another pair of online speech cases, the court ruled that where government officials speak in their official government capacity on their personal online profiles, citizens blocked from those profiles can sue to challenge their exclusion.

The term’s only voting rights case saw the six Republican-appointed justices band together to overturn a unanimous lower court decision finding that South Carolina had engaged in racial gerrymandering. In this case, in which the ACLU was counsel, along with the Legal Defense Fund and Arnold & Porter, the court sided with Republican legislators, disregarded its own precedent, and made racial gerrymandering challenges much more difficult going forward.

After a lengthy trial, a three-judge court unanimously found that South Carolina had impermissibly used race to draw the lines between two adjoining districts, to the detriment of Black voters. The mapmakers had moved more than 100,00 more voters than necessary to equalize populations across the districts. They had disproportionately relocated heavily Black neighborhoods, and the mapmakers had programmed their computers to display the racial impact of every line drawing choice. In the end, they ensured that the Black voting population did not rise above 17 percent, a ratio they considered crucial to cement a Republican advantage. The trial court found that the South Carolina legislature used race for partisan purposes when drawing their map, which the Supreme Court has long ruled is unconstitutional discrimination. In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, however, the court ruled that politics and race are both potential explanations for a legislature’s redistricting, and that reviewing courts must assume “good faith” even where trial courts have found that the legislators relied on race.

In an important immigration case, the court ruled that U.S. citizens have no constitutional right to object to the denial of a visa to their noncitizen spouses—even if the denial means they will be unable to live together in this country. In Dept of State v. Munoz, Luis Asencio-Cordero, a long-time partner of a U.S. citizen, sought to become a permanent resident through marriage. Under our byzantine immigration law, he had to leave the country and obtain a visa to re-enter as an immigrant. When he did so, a State Department consular officer denied his visa without any factual explanation. His partner, Sandra Muñoz, sued, saying that in light of the burden on her marriage, she had a right to know the basis for the denial so that they could respond.

This was not an unreasonable or unprecedented claim. The court had previously held, that where the denial of a visa infringes on U.S. citizens’ constitutional rights, the government’s visa denial must at least be based on a “facially legitimate and bona fide” reason. Muñoz argued that a citizen’s right to live with her spouse in her home country ought to be grounds for protection. But in another 6-3 ruling, the court ruled that she had no right whatsoever.

By the same 6-3 vote, the court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments” does not bar punishing homeless people for sleeping in public, even when they have nowhere else to go. In Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reasoned that punishing someone without a home for sleeping outside was “cruel and unusual” because it punished them for the status of being homeless. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for his conservative colleagues, rejected that claim and concluded that the Grants Pass law punishes the conduct of sleeping in public, not the status of being homeless. But to be homeless is to have nowhere to sleep. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent, “Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime.”

Even as this term ends, the court has already agreed to hear two important cases next term in which the ACLU is counsel. The first, United States v. Skrmetti, is a constitutional challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Tennessee is one of many states that have in recent years intruded upon the medical autonomy of parents, children, and their doctors by banning gender-affirming care, expressly because it is designed to depart from, rather than conform to, the individual’s sex assigned at birth. The ACLU has challenged these laws, arguing that they violate equal protection by discriminating on the basis of sex and gender identity. They also intrude on the rights of parents to decide what is best for their children. In the second case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the court has agreed to hear whether the First Amendment bars Texas from requiring adults to submit digital identification to obtain access to websites containing constitutionally protected sexual speech.

Today’s Supreme Court is a challenging forum. That’s why the ACLU has launched our State Supreme Court Initiative to advance and protect civil rights and civil liberties under state constitutions, which can be more protective than the U.S. Constitution. But as this term illustrates, we can still win important victories in the federal courts — including the Supreme Court. One thing should remain clear: the ACLU will never stop fighting, in every forum available, for your rights and liberties, and for a more just America.

This piece was published before Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to represent the Democratic Party. No significant facts have been changed or added.

Donald Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him is not only a lie—no widespread voter fraud was detected in that election—it’s a lie that breeds public mistrust in our electoral system. Today, he is already casting doubt on the 2024 election, saying he will accept the results “if everything is honest.” The implication is that if Trump loses then the election may not have been honest, and that a free and fair election this November is only one in which he wins.

A second Trump administration will likely perpetuate policies that undermine our electoral systems. As outlined in Project 2025 policies, evidenced on the campaign trail and in interviews, if Trump is reelected, his administration will likely attempt to manipulate the 2030 census to deny representation and federal resources to millions; abuse executive power to suppress voting and interfere with elections; and roll back federal progress on voting access.

In a country that has a long history of voter suppression and continues to struggle with voter turnout, four years of constant attacks on our voting rights risks long-term, pervasive harm. At the ACLU, we’re fighting back. We defeated the Trump administration’s efforts to manipulate our electoral process before, and we’ll use every tool at our disposal to do so again. Learn more in our breakdown:

The Facts: During a second term, not only would Trump seek to intimidate and disenfranchise marginalized voters, he would lay the groundwork to further question election outcomes that are adverse to him and his allies. Trump is likely to deploy the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other federal agencies to launch bad-faith investigations into voters and election officials, including against those he believes “rigged” the 2020 election. A second Trump administration is also likely to make good on earlier promises to send federal law enforcement to voting locations—a move that would serve just one purpose: to suppress voter turnout by intimidating voters.

Importantly, a second Trump administration would likely attempt to manipulate the 2030 census by adding a citizenship question. Census population counts impact apportionment of representatives, funding, and other resource allocation. Additionally, the Trump administration would also seek to reverse nonpartisan federal efforts to promote and expand access to voting, particularly for marginalized communities. That includes rescinding Executive Order 14019, which focuses on increasing language access, mitigating barriers for individuals with disabilities, and increasing voter education and registration opportunities under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Why It Matters: A second Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the right to vote will have consequences far beyond the 2024 election. Since the census is conducted every 10 years, manipulation of the census and apportionment will deny millions of voters equal representation and fair resource allocation for at least a decade. Trump’s likely plan to add a citizenship question to exclude noncitizens from apportionment would result in significant undercounting of historically vulnerable or underrepresented populations, specifically Latine and Asian communities and those living in urban areas, which would have reverberating negative impacts on district maps and allocation of funding.

Furthermore, Trump has stated that whether the upcoming election may be challenged is subject to the “fairness of the election” and whether he wins. This rhetoric yet again demonstrates a willingness to potentially abuse executive powers.

How We Got Here: Trump has consistently attempted to manipulate the census to carry out his agenda. Between 2018 and 2020, the ACLU successfully fought off two such attempts. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of ACLU-represented plaintiffs, blocking the first Trump administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the census. That question would have caused diverse communities in places like California, Illinois, and New York to lose representation and cut their allotted share of billions of dollars in federal funding. In 2020, we sued again to stop the Trump administration from excluding undocumented immigrants from the figures used to apportion seats in Congress. Our lawsuit caused enough delay that the efforts could not be enacted before President Joe Biden took office and rescinded the policy.

Our Roadmap: Should a second Trump administration take office, we are ready to go to court to block efforts to undermine our electoral process. If a second Trump administration uses the president’s authority to empower his allies to perpetuate the false narrative of illegal voting or gathering information that can be weaponized against voters, we’ll pursue litigation to expose the lies. If Trump attempts to solidify his anti-voters efforts by deploying federal law enforcement officers, the National Guard, or other military personnel to intimidate voters or election workers, we’ll again use the courts to protect our right to vote.

We know that Trump’s efforts to remove noncitizens from the census count is blatantly unlawful. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, representatives in Congress are apportioned based on the “whole number of persons in each State.” If Trump attempts to bypass the requirement that all persons be included in the count by purposefully depressing response rates by adding a citizenship question, or by wholly removing noncitizens from the tabulation, we’ll see him in court.

The courts alone, however, won’t be enough. The grave threats that a second Trump presidency poses to democracy demand robust defensive and proactive responses from Congress. Our expert lobbyists will brief lawmakers on the detrimental impact that an inaccurate census count would have on their home state and urge them to act as a barrier against attempts to incorporate a citizenship question or otherwise politicize the census count. The ACLU will also work with Congress to advance legislation essential to protect our democracy, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (JLVRAA), which restores and strengthens the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to prevent racial discrimination in voting, as well as core provisions of the Freedom to Vote Act (FVA), which increases access to the ballot.

We’ll also use our political power and presence in all 50 states to demand that state and local officials implement policies to protect and strengthen voting rights. We will fight to ensure that states provide local election officials with ample and consistent funding every appropriations cycle for updated equipment, election worker training, messaging campaigns to counter mis/disinformation, and measures to ensure election worker security. Finally, we will advocate for states to enact policies barring state and local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal law enforcement in any Trump-directed effort to intimidate voters through their presence at or near polling or ballot return locations.

What Our Experts Say: “A second Trump term would be catastrophic for every aspect of our elections: from who is counted when it comes to allocating our political power and billions in federal funds, to who is able to cast a ballot, to whether our election administrators can perform their jobs and voters can have their voices heard free from intimidation. He has promised to end our democratic processes, but we are prepared to fight in the courts, the streets, and the halls of Congress to defend our democracy and protect our right to vote.” — Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project

What You Can Do Today: We stand ready to fight back against Trump's attempts to limit the right to vote, but we can't do it without you. Join us as we grow our movement of democracy defenders.

The Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents immunity from prosecution for criminal acts committed while in office not only gives Donald Trump a free pass for his past crimes, but sets a dangerous precedent for all future presidents.

Before Trump, no one had even argued that presidents are absolutely immune from criminal liability after they leave office. Indeed, every president – including Trump himself – assumed the opposite. In his impeachment trial Trump’s lawyers argued against impeachment by conceding that an acquittal would not be the end of potential accountability, because he could be criminally prosecuted after he left office. That concession was in line with all prior presidents’ acceptance that the United States is a place where all citizens, including the president, are equal under the law.

No more. In Trump v. United States, the court’s Republican-appointed justices — including the three Trump appointees — announced a brand new constitutional immunity from criminal liability for presidents’ “official acts,” or anything a president may do using the powers of the office. The court’s decision ensures that future presidents — including Trump himself should he win reelection in November — will know that they can escape criminal accountability for blatantly criminal acts, no matter how corrupt. Even acts that strike at the heart of our democracy, like resisting the peaceful transition of power, could not be prosecuted.

The court tried to cast its opinion as restrained, emphasizing that it rejected former President Trump’s most extreme claim: that presidents can only be prosecuted for crimes for which they had already been impeached. But as Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in a powerful dissent, there is nothing measured about the opinion or its consequences. The court grants absolute immunity against criminal prosecution for any of a president’s “core” executive acts, which the court went on to define as including any use of the Justice Department—an ostensibly and traditionally independent agency–for criminal investigation. And it grants “presumptive” immunity for any acts within the “outer perimeter of his official responsibility.” While the latter immunity is in theory rebuttable, the court set such a high standard for rebutting it that it may be effectively absolute as well.

The court did hold that a president can be prosecuted for unofficial, purely private acts, a proposition even Trump did not dispute. But the court’s conception of official acts is strikingly broad. Worse, the court also held that official acts cannot even be used as evidence to support a crime committed in the president’s personal capacity, making it even more difficult for prosecutors to indict a president even for purely private criminal acts. The court purports to leave much of the work of hashing out the details in Trump’s case to lower courts. But the standards it announced will make holding any president criminally accountable extraordinarily difficult.

The immediate consequence of the decision is that it sends the current federal prosecution of former President Trump for interfering in the 2020 election into disarray. True, that prosecution is not yet dead. Formally, the Supreme Court only conclusively disqualified one set of allegations — those involving Trump’s communications to the Department of Justice — from the indictment. But as a practical matter, the fact-laden inquiry in which the district court must now engage, and any appeals thereto, will take many months if not years to resolve — all before any trial can commence. In addition, President Trump has already moved to wipe out his criminal conviction in New York State.

As Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent in the notorious Korematsu case upholding the federal government’s internment of Japanese Americans, the court’s opinion sits like a loaded weapon for future presidents, who can now avoid criminal liability for all manner of criminal ends so long as they do so through arguably “official” authorities.

As Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent:

The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

If former President Trump manages to win November’s election, it does not take much imagination to see just what kinds of retribution, or worse, the court has now greenlighted him to pursue against his political enemies.

But it’s important to remember that while this decision removes the possibility of criminal accountability, other forms of accountability remain. As long as this misguided decision remains the law, we must fight presidential abuses of power in other ways. In particular, we must resist encroachments on our rights and liberties, criminal or otherwise, before they happen — through civil lawsuits, the ballot box, and in the halls of power across the country. During the Trump administration, we filed more than 400 legal actions to defend constitutional rights and liberties from his administration’s unprecedented assaults — and often succeeded in halting illegal acts.

If he is elected again, we will be ready to do the same. Already our teams have drafted our response to the civil liberties and civil rights abuses outlined in Trump’s transition project, and we promise to challenge any acts – official or not – that violate the Constitution.

The threat of criminal prosecution is an important incentive to keep presidents from breaking the law. It’s largely gone now thanks to the Supreme Court. But it is only one form of accountability and constraint — one that, we should remember, had never been resorted to in the past. As they always have done, the courts can still enjoin illegal presidential behavior. Congress has important powers of oversight, the purse, and lawmaking that can check even a rogue president. And perhaps most important, by voting like our rights depend on it, we can all help ensure that future presidents will leave the court’s loaded gun in its holster.

This piece was published before Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to represent the Democratic Party. No significant facts have been changed or added.

When Donald Trump’s administration ended in 2020, two-thirds of Americans believed that Trump had increased racial tensions in the U.S. The Trump administration's sustained assault on political, civic, and legal efforts to promote racial justice and the administration’s transparent pursuit of an agenda based on white supremacy had pushed the country to its breaking point.

Today, Trump and his supporters have doubled down on this agenda. As part of a larger backlash against racial justice efforts that ignited in the aftermath of the 2020 killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, the 2025 Presidential Transition Project has now made its anti- diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies a cornerstone of their continued attacks on racial equity and free speech.

In addition to abandoning civil rights enforcement on behalf of marginalized groups, Trump and his supporters plan to intensify right wing attacks on education, employment, and economic opportunity initiatives, and to censor academic discussions about race, gender, and systemic oppression. At the ACLU, we won’t retreat. We’re prepared to challenge the Trump administration’s policies at every level of government. Learn more in our breakdown:

The Facts: Based on Trump’s campaign promises – and the detailed policy proposals of Project 2025 – we can expect a second Trump administration to supercharge efforts to reverse gains in civil rights and racial justice in America. Specifically, Trump has promised to continue his attacks on so-called “divisive concepts” and take federal funding from schools with curricula, books, or classes that address race, racism, gender, and sexuality. Trump has also promised to eliminate school administrator positions that oversee DEI initiatives, and to resuscitate the discredited 1776 Commission, which was a presidential advisory committee created in September 2020 by then-President Trump that was tasked with “restoring patriotic education in schools.”

Emboldened by the 2023 repeal of affirmative action in college admissions, a second Trump administration intends to abandon efforts to advance and legally defend affirmative action and DEI policies within military academies, federal minority contracting programs, and other federal programs shown to open opportunities – as well as create inclusive education and workplace environments – unfairly denied to people of color, women, and other marginalized groups. On the regulatory side, a second Trump administration would not only refuse to enforce civil rights regulations on behalf of individuals from historically marginalized groups, but to actively weaken these protections in housing, education, health care, and other essential resources.

Ultimately, Trump has made clear that his goal is to eradicate all programs designed to address profound and persistent inequalities in American life – with the effect of further entrenching, and indeed worsening, systemic inequality.

Why It Matters: Policies that seek to eradicate DEI programs, restrict conversations about race or gender in the classroom, or otherwise attack civil rights efforts are not only unlawful, but undermine our ability to repair decades of discriminatory practices and thrive as a nation. At the state level, we know that efforts to ban books or school curricula addressing the reality of systemic discrimination not only trample on students’ and educators’ constitutional rights, especially their First Amendment rights, but also threaten the retention and academic success of all students.

At the federal level, we know that a second Trump administration would dismantle or refuse to enforce critical DEI programs and initiatives that date back decades. In public health, for example, there are significant disparities in care that are closely linked to structural racism. To remedy historical discrimination and address health outcome disparities, public and private scholarship and fellowship programs have been set up to support pathways to the medical profession for underrepresented medical professionals. Without support for these programs, the race-gap in healthcare would only widen.

How We Got Here: From 2017-2021, the Trump administration used its federal legal and policy authority to bolster far-right attacks on educational and economic opportunity initiatives. For example, the administration used its investigative and legal authority to target efforts by the private sector and institutions of higher education to address inequality.

Specifically, the prior Trump administration consistently subverted traditional legal tools and principles designed to combat unlawful discrimination. It ceased enforcement of, and attempted to dismantle, disparate impact liability -- a bedrock tool for effective civil rights enforcement. The administration also revoked federal guidance designed to address race- and disability-based discrimination in student discipline policies and practices and banned, by executive order, the U.S. Armed Forces, federal agencies, federal contractors, and recipients of federal grants from providing employees with trainings related to race and gender discrimination.

In the Trump administration’s final days, it also launched the 1776 Report, which deceptively recasts the civil rights movement as corrupting progress toward racial equality. Designed to “restore patriotic education in schools,” the 1776 Report compared progressivism to fascism, claimed the civil rights movement embraced ideas similar to those held by defenders of slavery, and sought to downplay the legacy of racism in U.S. history. Historians uniformly condemned the report, pointing out that it was littered with factual inaccuracies, partisan politics, and a lack of serious scholarship.

Our Roadmap: The ACLU filed more than 430 legal actions against the Trump administration, including many lawsuits against that administration’s anti-DEI policies — from fair housing to book bans. If Trump is reelected, we’ll continue to use the courts to combat these discriminatory tactics. That includes asking the court to block any administration’s efforts to undermine the Fair Housing Act.

We will also push Congress to consistently vote against anti-DEI bills and efforts to strip federal funding from such programs, and to amplify through hearings and public statements how these programs work and the reasons why these programs remain critical. We’ll also work with states and municipalities to advance civil rights protections in the public sector and defend inclusive curricula at the K-12 level. Lastly, we’ll provide critical guidance and support to institutions and school districts to combat historical discrimination that is still constitutionally sound, despite aggressive messaging to the contrary.

What Our Experts Say: “Trump and his supporters leveraged last year’s Supreme Court decision on affirmative action to undermine and create confusion around DEI initiatives – even though DEI and affirmative action are two different issues. The ACLU is determined to educate the public on this racist agenda, and continue to defend vital efforts that counteract historical discrimination and unequal access to opportunities. – ReNika Moore, director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program

“It’s important for Americans to realize that Trump’s plans to intensify efforts to eliminate inclusive education practices and policies is a First Amendment issue, as much as it is a civil rights issue. Trump and his supporters are proposing to control what we think and learn by using the government to censor a viewpoint it doesn’t like out of existence.” – Kim Conway, senior policy counsel

What You Can Do Today: The ACLU has challenged classroom censorship laws and book bans across the country. Today, we’re expanding on that work by pushing back against attempts to restrict DEI programs. We won’t stand for the erasure of marginalized communities in our schools. Join us in this critical fight for free speech and equitable education.

Fifty five years after a police raid at a popular drag bar in Greenwich Village led to the Stonewall uprising, interactions between police and queer folks can certainly appear a lot different than they did in the 1960s. The laws banning crossdressing, obscenity, and same-sex sexual relations that enabled police to harass LGBTQ people have largely been overturned in court. The pride parades that commemorate the Stonewall uprising now often have a police escort. Many police departments have hired LGBTQ community liaisons, fly rainbow Pride flags in June, and issue proclamations honoring Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Far from signs of progress, however, these symbolic gestures obscure the many ways police harassment, profiling, and violence continue to target sexual and gender minorities, with poor, Black, and transgender people often facing the worst of it. In our new report, Policing Progress: Findings from a National Survey of LGBTQ+ People’s Experiences with Law Enforcement, we found that routine and widespread mistreatment by police continues to fuel mistrust between LGBTQ people and the very law enforcement that claims to protect and serve them.

Using survey data collected by NORC at the University of Chicago, the ACLU, in collaboration with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, Irvine, found disparities between LGBTQ people and non-LGBTQ people, and within the LGBTQ community in reported experiences with police. As a group, LGBTQ people reported more adverse treatment by police than non-LGBTQ people. This is particularly pronounced among bisexual, transgender, and nonbinary people, who more commonly experience insulting language and physical force from the police.

More than one in four (27 percent) transgender people report experiencing physical force by police. Black transgender people were the most likely to have experienced physical force by the police among all LGBTQ people. Transgender and nonbinary respondents (45 percent and 33 percent, respectively) were significantly more likely than LGBTQ cisgender men (15 percent) to have experienced insulting language by the police.

This kind of mistreatment can range from misgendering transgender people, profiling someone as a sex worker because of their gender expression, subjecting them to needless physical searches, and even physical and sexual violence. For example, earlier this month, a transgender man won a $275,000 settlement after being forced by New York prison officials to undergo four separate and illegal genital examinations. A 2021 survey of transgender people currently held in New York prisons found an astonishing three quarters reported at least one act of sexual violence by a corrections officer.

The ACLU has combated instances of police abuse in the LGBTQ community, including in 2019, when the New York Civil Liberties Union reached a settlement with the NYPD on behalf of Linda Dominguez, a 45-year-old transgender Latina, after they charged her with “false personation” for carrying an ID with her former name (or “deadname”) on it. Officers chained her to a pipe and verbally harassed her following her arrest. Two years prior, in 2017, the ACLU of the District of Columbia settled with the Metropolitan Police Department on behalf of Lourdes Ashley Hunter, executive director and co-founder of the Trans Women of Color Collective, after police entered her home without a warrant, physically assaulted her, and left her with multiple injuries.

It’s no wonder then that our report also found widespread mistrust among LGBTQ people towards law enforcement, with the very members of the LGBTQ community that face the highest rates of victimization reporting the least willingness to seek help from police.

Only 69 percent of bisexual and 60 percent of queer people indicated that they would call the police for help in the future, compared to 80 percent of gays and lesbians and 87 percent of straight, cisgender people. Less than two-thirds of Latine LGBTQ people surveyed said they would be likely to call the police for help in the future, compared to nearly three-fourths of white LGBTQ people. Less than two-thirds of transgender respondents were likely to call the police for help in the future, compared to 82 percent of cisgender LGBQ men. Approximately one-quarter of nonbinary people were willing to call the police for help.

At the ACLU, our advocacy recommendations have centered around the multiple, concrete steps communities and local governments can take to help ensure the safety of LGBTQ people from police harassment and violence, including:

• Reducing negative encounters between police and community members. Law enforcement must end policies and practices that require or incentivize officers to engage in aggressive tactics, such as quotas for citations or arrests, stop-and-frisk, and ceasing enforcement of consensual sex work.
• Adopting specific policies and practices that ensure fair and equitable treatment of LGBTQ+ people. We urge police to place prohibitions on the use of explicitly hateful language and frisks and searches aimed at determining someone’s gender.
• Reconsidering police presence in public LGBTQ+ spaces and events, such as pride parades and festivals.
• Implementing strong oversight with meaningful community involvement to provide transparent and accessible complaint processes and require law enforcement agencies to take corrective action when complaints suggest a pattern of problems.
• Repealing existing laws that explicitly criminalize LGBTQ+ people and expression, and opposing any proposed anti-LGBTQ+ laws, including those that would criminalize necessary medical care or criminalize drag.

Many states continue to advance laws that seek to further police LGBTQ life, including efforts to censor drag performers and criminalize transgender people who use public restrooms consistent with their gender identity. As outlined in our memo, Trump on LGBTQ Rights, former President Donald Trump and the extremists behind Project 2025 want to go even further, weaponizing the federal government to criminalize gender nonconformity and ordering the Department of Justice to repeal protections for incarcerated transgender people.

But many of these problems are perpetuated at the local level–often by the very same cities and municipalities who proudly host pride parades or fly rainbow flags on their police cruisers. LGBTQ people and our allies shouldn’t be fooled by flashy but shallow shows of support or lofty social media statements from police departments about “inclusion.” More than half a century after Stonewall, communities have a duty to move past symbolism and move us closer to a future built on safety, respect, and freedom.

Emily Greytak, ACLU; Jordan Grasso, University of California, Irvine; and Stefan Vogler, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign contributed to this article.

Today, the Supreme Court declined to issue a ruling in Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States. Instead, it sent the case back down to the lower courts where anti-abortion extremists will continue to fight to strip pregnant people of the basic right to emergency care, including when their life is at risk.

While the court’s decision temporarily restores the ability of doctors in Idaho to provide emergency abortions required under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act —EMTALA— by dismissing the case without affirming once and for all that pregnant people have a right to the emergency abortion care they need to protect their health and lives, the court continues to put pregnant patients at unnecessary risk.

Below, we break down why the case matters, and what happens next.

EMTALA requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in emergency situations. Since it was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the federal government–across Democratic and Republican administrations–has consistently recognized that EMTALA requires hospitals to provide emergency abortion care to any patient who needs it. For nearly 40 years, EMTALA has been a crucial tool in guaranteeing the right to emergency care for pregnant patients in need.

Although the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade did not diminish these longstanding federal protections, extremist politicians still tried to prevent people experiencing emergency pregnancy complications from getting care in emergency rooms. In this case, Idaho, which has a near total abortion ban, went all the way to the Supreme Court for the power to criminalize emergency abortions required under EMTALA.

The ACLU and the Cooley Law Firm filed a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of EMTALA. We explained that the law clearly requires hospitals to provide emergency abortion care, regardless of state abortion bans like Idaho’s and others, and that pregnant people cannot be excluded from EMTALA’s protections. The court’s concurring opinion authored by Justice Elena Kagan, and joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in part, echoes the arguments we laid out in our brief.

The Supreme Court had the opportunity to affirm that every pregnant person in this country is entitled to the emergency care they need to protect their health and lives, and it failed to do so. The court’s refusal to safeguard the right to emergency abortion care–and put an unequivocal end to extremist attacks by anti-abortion politicians on this essential health care –puts pregnant patients at risk and devalues equality under the law.

Importantly, the court’s order does nothing to stop the chaos and confusion unleashed by abortion bans across the country, which still prevent providers from giving appropriate medical care to patients when they need it most. While the court’s order does provide a temporary reprieve for pregnant patients in Idaho facing medical emergencies, it also allows extremist politicians in the case to continue to fight to put doctors in jail simply for providing essential care. And, alarmingly, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, wrote a dissenting opinion that provides a roadmap for just how they would strip pregnant people of the right to emergency abortion care should this case return to the Supreme Court.

The dissenting opinion also indicates a willingness to endorse an extreme strategy to give legal rights to embryos and fetuses that will override the rights of the pregnant person, and could lead not only to a national abortion ban, but bans on other forms of reproductive health care like fertility treatment and birth control.

This case proves that this battle is far from over. Extremist politicians are coming for our reproductive freedom and will not stop until abortion, including emergency abortion, is banned in all 50 states. They already went all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to put doctors in jail for providing life-and health-saving emergency abortion care, and they will do it again if we let them.

At the ACLU, we’ll continue to use every tool at our disposal to fight attacks on our bodily autonomy. We urge Congress to act now and pass federal protections for abortion rights that will end extreme bans in states and protect access to care nationwide.

In a win for the separation of church and state, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma’s approval of the nation’s first religious public charter school violates the state constitution and charter-school statute, as well as the U.S. Constitution. The decision affirms what we already knew: A religious school can’t be a public school, and a public school can’t be religious.

Last year, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School applied to the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board to become a public charter school. The school, which would have been managed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, proclaimed in its application that it would carry out “the evangelizing mission of the [Catholic] Church” by fully embracing its religious teachings and incorporating those teachings “into every aspect of the School.” The school also acknowledged that it would discriminate in admissions, student discipline, and employment, as necessary to satisfy the Catholic Church’s religious doctrine, and that it would not accommodate a student’s disability if doing so would violate the school’s Catholic beliefs.

Despite warnings from the Oklahoma attorney general, education groups, and civil rights organizations that public schools—including charter schools—cannot legally teach a religious curriculum or discriminate against students and employees, the Virtual Charter School Board approved St. Isidore’s application and entered into an agreement allowing the school to begin operating for the upcoming school year. Today, in ordering the state board to rescind its contract with St. Isidore, the Oklahoma Supreme Court sent a pointed message: Our public schools are for education, not evangelizing.

The court held that charter schools, which are funded by the state, created as government entities, and expressly characterized in state law as “public schools,” are, of course, just that – public schools. As a result, the court explained, a religious public charter school violates not only the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, but also Oklahoma’s charter school law and constitution, which forbid public schools from imposing religious teachings on students. “Enforcing the St. Isidore contract would create a slippery slope and what the [state constitution’s] framers warned against—the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention,” the court stated.

The ruling comes in response to a petition filed with the Oklahoma Supreme Court by the Oklahoma attorney general, who sought to rescind the Charter School Board’s contract with St. Isidore. Although some people may be surprised that a Republican attorney general would object to the nation’s first religious public charter school, safeguarding the separation of church and state is not, and never should be, a partisan issue.

That’s why the ACLU, along with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Education Law Center, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case supporting the attorney general. Even before the attorney general filed his petition, we brought suit in Oklahoma state court on behalf of parents, faith leaders, and public-school advocates who don’t want their tax dollars used to fund a religious public school that discriminates against students and staff and promotes religious doctrine.

Church-state separation is a cornerstone of our democracy. It’s critical to preserving the right of every person to decide for themselves—without pressure from the government—which religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice. It also ensures that the government doesn’t undermine religion either by co-opting it for political purposes or rendering religious institutions dependent on the state to spread their faith. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the separation between religion and government is particularly crucial in our public schools, which, by design, freely serve all students equally regardless of religious background or preference.

St. Isidore is, and has always been, free to open as a private religious school that taxpayers would not be forced to support. It is not free, however, to assume the mantle of a public school—including all the associated legal and financial benefits—while flouting the Oklahoma and U.S. Constitutions. The Oklahoma Supreme Court recognized as much, explaining, “What St. Isidore requests from this court is beyond the fair treatment of a private religious institution receiving a generally available benefit…It is about the state’s creation and funding of a new religious institution violating the Establishment Clause.”

This piece was first published in Slate on 6/21/24.

The U.S. Supreme Court today broke from its recent embrace of gun rights, leaving in place a federal criminal law that makes it a felony for anyone subject to a civil domestic violence restraining order to possess a gun.

As an advocate for survivors of domestic violence, today’s outcome comes as a relief. Indeed, it is the result my organization, the ACLU, asked the court to reach.

Even so, liberals shouldn’t take the decision as cause for great celebration. That’s because, while there is no doubt in my mind that preventing perpetrators of domestic violence from obtaining guns will help prevent further violence, this case was not about whether the respondent should have been able to buy a gun. The question was whether he should be sent to prison for having one.

As a feminist, I care about both gender-based violence and the violence of imprisonment. Gun laws, in particular, have helped to fuel mass incarceration and contributed to disproportionate imprisonment of Black people and other people of color.

Funneling the problem of gender-based violence into the criminal legal system may not sound so bad if the alternative is no response at all. That’s the problem the court faced in United States v. Rahimi. But that’s a false choice, constructed via decades of reliance on criminal legal responses to violence in America’s legislatures, executive branches, and state and federal courts.

The Supreme Court itself has played a part in creating this dilemma. In 2000, for example, the court heard a case brought by a survivor against a college classmate whom she alleged had raped her repeatedly. She was able to sue her attacker because of a novel provision of the Violence Against Women Act that empowered survivors to seek a civil remedy from those who harmed them.

The court, however, made quick work of VAWA’s civil provision, finding that Congress lacked the power to create any such remedy at all. But it left in place criminal provisions carrying lengthy terms of imprisonment. Stripped of its civil provision, the original VAWA became known not as an innovative law but a regressive one—and part of the notorious 1994 crime bill.

A second decision in 2005 doubled down. After her estranged husband violated a restraining order and kidnapped her three kids from her yard, Jessica Lenahan (then Gonzales) contacted police multiple times over 10 hours asking them to help retrieve her children. Police refused, saying there was nothing they could do—until the father arrived at the police station and opened fire. Only then did the police act, killing Lenahan’s husband and finding the children already dead in his truck.

Lenahan sued the police, but she didn’t fare any better in the courts. Looking to history and tradition, the Supreme Court couldn’t find any right to have her restraining order enforced. What it did find was a “well established tradition of police discretion.” This history, the court noted without irony, meant that the state was free to both disregard survivors like Lenahan who asked police for help and bulldoze over survivors who asked the state not to interfere in cases of domestic assault.

Viewed in the context of the court’s history with domestic violence, survivors should think twice before embracing today’s decision as a victory for women. It can be understood not as a departure from the VAWA and Lenahan decisions, but a continuation of them: In all three cases, the only winner was the carceral system.

Our nation’s prioritization of the criminal legal system to the exclusion of all else is particularly troubling given that many people who experience domestic violence opt not to pursue criminal charges, knowing that they may encounter disbelief and hostility from law enforcement or find themselves subject to abuse charges when they report being victimized. Others worry that the criminal legal system will magnify the harms they are experiencing by jeopardizing their family’s economic security or inflicting further violence through incarceration. As feminist legal scholar Aya Gruber has written, hyperfocus on the criminal legal system has “diverted feminist energy and capital away from addressing the underlying conditions that make women, especially marginalized women, vulnerable to personal and state violence.”

But we can advocate for alternate pathways to meaningful safety.

There is not strong evidence to support the deterrent effect of after-the-fact criminal sanctions for gun possession, yet such punishments are where Congress has focused. The civil licensing regime that prohibits selling guns to people in Rahimi’s position, for example, exists only as a piggyback measure off of the underlying criminal law.

As the ACLU pointed out in a friend-of-the-court brief, that add-on has prevented more than 77,000 gun sales since 1998. Congress would be wise to decouple gun sales from criminal law and to focus more on prevention—particularly given the likelihood that the court may soon void other criminal gun laws, with staggering ripple effects on rules governing gun sales.

Other efforts may include imagining new civil remedies for harms once considered exclusively criminal. The civil process, unlike the criminal one, can offer survivors agency: the decision whether and when to seek relief and the option to discontinue the case if that best serves their needs. To ensure equitable access to courts, attorney’s fees and other incentives to represent survivors can be built in.

Reimagining safety is possible, but only if we reject the idea that prison is the best—or the only—way to address domestic violence. Survivors deserve better than what the carceral legal system has left us. We all do.

A freshly pressed tuxedo shirt. A black bowtie and a crisp black tuxedo jacket, topped off by my curly red afro. On that day last fall, I knew I looked good. I felt like myself. I was so excited to take my senior class portrait. It was a rite of passage I’d been looking forward to for a long time.

I think back fondly on the memories I made at Harrison Central High School in Mississippi. I loved playing basketball with the Red Rebelettes, volunteering with the honor societies, or having so much fun with my friends. I take pride in my accomplishments and experiences.

Most of all, I am immensely proud of who I am – a gay woman of color.

I was eager to take my senior portrait for the yearbook and create a keepsake for my friends, family, and high school community to remember me for years to come.

With my school’s approval, my mom and I scheduled my portrait appointment at the local photography studio. When I arrived, the photographer told me that if I wore my tuxedo then my senior portrait would not be included in the yearbook. I was told my school district required girls to wear a drape – a black off-the-shoulder top that mimics the look of a formal gown. Only boys could wear tuxedos.

I was devastated.

Throughout high school I consistently wore traditionally masculine clothing. Wearing masculine clothing is a central part of the way I express my gender and my sexual orientation. I could not believe that based on my sex, I would be forced to either wear a drape, or have my senior portrait excluded from the yearbook.

My mom and I decided that I would not accept this unfair and sexist rule. I held firm and took my senior portrait – a photograph meant to represent me – in my tuxedo.

When my mom contacted Harrison County Superintendent Mitchell King to ask for my portrait to be included in the yearbook, she got an outright rejection. Superintendent King insisted on enforcing the school district’s requirement that girls must wear drapes for their senior portraits.

My mom kept fighting for my rights. She bought a full-page senior ad and included my senior portrait in it. But in late March, a school staff member told my mom that the principal hadn’t approved the use of my portrait in the ad yet.

By this time, I’d attended my senior prom, wearing – you guessed it – a tuxedo. I received nothing but compliments. No one said that my attire violated the dress code. I was utterly confused at this point. What was so wrong about me wearing a tuxedo in my senior portrait?

When I received my yearbook, I discovered that the school district had deleted me from the graduating senior section of the yearbook entirely. Not only did they refuse to use my portrait, they also refused to print my name, academic honors, sports, or activities. They deleted my portrait from the ad my mom paid for in the yearbook. It was as if my time at Harrison Central never happened.

Not being recognized in the yearbook really hurt. When I look at the senior section today, I see all my peers, I see where my name and accomplishments should have been, and yet I am not there. It feels like the school district erased who I am and what I have achieved.

Despite what happened with the yearbook, I was so excited for my graduation ceremony. I was going to graduate with high honors and experience this once-in-a-lifetime event. As the crowd waited for the seniors to walk the stage, the school played a slideshow with portraits of each member of the graduating class. My family eagerly waited to see my portrait, but it never came. The slideshow skipped right past me.

While I have happy memories of celebrating with my family, it still hurts that the school excluded my portrait from the graduation ceremony. But I won’t let the school – or anyone – stop me from choosing to be myself. The school has no right to try to shame me or erase me or my pride. I am looking ahead to brighter times, starting with playing basketball and studying sports management in college.

I am also committed to ensuring that the next student who shows up at the portrait studio is free to choose a tuxedo or a drape for their senior portrait based on who they are, not who the school thinks they should be. That’s why I joined other Harrison County students in fighting back against the School District’s discriminatory actions by filing a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Education. No student should be forced to conform to rigid sex stereotypes to take part in high school, let alone at capstone events like the yearbook and graduation.

You only graduate from high school once. Together with the ACLU and the community that supports my authentic self-expression, we won’t let schools silence, exclude, or erase us for taking pride in who we are and daring to be ourselves.

This month, the Supreme Court refused to consider a request by anti-abortion groups to impose nationwide restrictions on mifepristone, a safe medication used in most U.S. abortions and for miscarriage care. Without addressing whether mifepristone should be further restricted, the court found that these anti-abortion plaintiffs lack “legal standing” – meaning they do not have a sufficient connection to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulation of mifepristone to be able to challenge the agency’s decisions in court.

The court’s decision is a relief, but we should not be dazzled by the fact that the justices did the right thing based purely on a legal technicality. While the Supreme Court refused to allow these particular anti-abortion groups to bring this case, extremist politicians have vowed to continue to use the courts and the law to strip away access to medication abortion nationwide. Below, we break down why this case matters, and what happens next.

The plaintiffs in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA are organizations and doctors who want to see all abortion banned nationwide. To further their agenda, they used junk science to target access to mifepristone, a medication used in most U.S. abortions. They filed this lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas, where they could guarantee it would be heard by a Trump-appointed district court judge with a record of hostility to abortion. That district judge rubber-stamped all of their requests, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals largely did the same – overriding the consensus of the FDA and every leading national medical authority in order to impose medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone.

In its decision, the Supreme Court did not address the plaintiffs’ arguments that mifepristone should be severely restricted. The court found that the lawsuit suffered from a critical defect: the anti-abortion groups and doctors who brought the case lack legal standing. As the court explained, these anti-abortion plaintiffs don’t prescribe mifepristone and have no actual connection to the FDA’s regulation of the drug. Instead, “the plaintiffs want [the] FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain.” But under the Constitution, “a plaintiff ’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.”

For now, the court’s decision preserves the state-level patchwork access to medication abortion that has existed since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022. That means that, for the time being, people across the United States can continue to fill their mifepristone prescriptions through mail-order and retail pharmacies, just as they would for any other similarly safe medication – without having to travel, sometimes hundreds of miles, just to pick up a pill. Health care professionals with specialized training, like nurse-practitioners, will also maintain the ability to prescribe mifepristone where state law allows. Furthermore, in the U.S. nearly 1 in 5 abortions relies on telemedicine. For many people – including low-income patients, people of color, folks in rural areas, and women in abusive households – retaining accessibility options, such as telemedicine, is essential – especially when it may be impossible to arrange and afford lengthy transportation and childcare, to secure time off work, or to escape the surveillance of an abuser in order to access time-sensitive care.

The court’s order also forestalls the dire consequences the American Cancer Society and many other patient advocacy groups warned of should the court override the FDA’s actions and undermine drug development and impede access to critical medications well beyond reproductive health care.

There is no credible dispute about mifepristone’s safety. The nation’s leading medical associations describe the science confirming its safety as “overwhelming.” While all drugs carry risks, medical experts have explained that mifepristone is among the safest medications used in medical practice today – safer than Viagra or penicillin – with serious complications experienced by fewer than 1 percent of patients.

By contrast, the plaintiffs’ evidence rested on testimony and research from a few anti-abortion doctors who travel the country peddling junk science about abortion safety. As the ACLU explained in a friend-of-the-court brief, when other courts have heard these folks testify, time and again, they have discredited them. For instance, Dr. Ingrid Skop – cited 17 times in the appellate court’s ruling– had her testimony on abortion thrown out by a Florida court two years ago for being “inaccurate.” Dr. Skop admitted under oath in 2020 that she is “not a really good researcher,” so it’s no surprise that her research on mifepristone was published by a fringe advocacy group known for promoting blatantly false conspiracy theories, such as that President Barack Obama hypnotized listeners with his speeches. Several of the studies relied on by these plaintiffs have been retracted because they are so profoundly flawed. Another study is based on 98 anonymous blogs.

Maintaining access to mifepristone has never been more crucial. Since it was approved in 2000, nearly 6 million people in the United States, and millions more globally, have used this medication. Today, medication abortion comprises almost two-thirds of all abortions in this country.

Play the video

The Supreme Court refused to allow these particular anti-abortion groups to bring this case, but extremist politicians are waiting in the wings to continue this campaign to strip away access to medication abortion nationwide. Indeed, the same Trump-appointed district judge in Texas has already permitted Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri to intervene in the district court proceedings on the same side as the anti-abortion groups. And these extremist politicians have said that they will try to continue this case in Texas – even though the Supreme Court just found that the original plaintiffs lack standing – or else bring copycat lawsuits in other jurisdictions.

Moreover, in the coming weeks, the Supreme Court will decide another abortion case that will determine whether politicians can force doctors to withhold emergency room care from their patients suffering severe pregnancy complications. These cases show how far politicians will go to prevent people from getting the reproductive health care they need.

Since Roe was overturned, every time an abortion issue has been put to the ballot, the people have voted in favor of access. Politicians are relentless in their attacks, but a majority of this country believes that people must have the power to make personal decisions during pregnancy. We’ll continue using every tool at our disposal to fight back against these cruel and deeply unpopular attacks on our health, our futures, and our bodily autonomy.

Join us in this fight to expand and restore our rights by urging legislators to pass federal legislation that safeguards our reproductive freedom – including abortion, birth control, AND IVF care.

Donald Trump’s administration initiated a sustained, years-long effort to erase protections for LGBTQ people. This included an effort to “define ‘transgender’ out of existence,” erode protections for transgender students and workers, and weaken access to gender-affirming health care that most transgender people already struggled to access.

While President Joe Biden’s administration reversed much of the Trump-era abuses, just last month on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to dismantle a new Biden administration policy that will offer protections for transgender students under Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

The ACLU is prepared to defend the LGBTQ community, including transgender individuals, from a second Trump administration’s anticipated attempts to weaponize federal law against them. Learn more in our breakdown:

The Facts: Trump has promised that, if reelected, his administration will rescind federal policies that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and will assert that federal civil rights laws don’t cover anti-LGBTQ discrimination. In addition to rolling back existing protections, a second Trump administration will proactively mandate discrimination by the federal government wherever it can. Lastly, and perhaps most ominously, if Trump returns to the White House, we expect his administration to use federal law – including laws meant to safeguard civil rights – as a cudgel to override critical state-level protections for transgender students and to force state and local governments, as well as private organizations, to allow or even perpetuate discrimination

Why It Matters: A second Trump administration would strip LGBTQ people of protections against discrimination in many contexts, including employment, housing, education, health care, and a range of federal government programs. The Trump administration’s proposed policies would ban transgender people from serving openly in the armed forces and block gender-affirming medical care for transgender people enrolled in federal healthcare programs, such as Medicare. The effects of these cruel – and unconstitutional – discrimination efforts would be devastating, as thousands of transgender people would immediately lose access to needed medical care and the right to live freely without fear. In essence, a potential second Trump administration would seek to erase transgender people from public life entirely by using federal laws – including obscenity laws – to criminalize gender nonconformity.

How We Got Here: The Trump administration was openly hostile toward the LGBTQ community and vehemently opposed the Equality Act, which would have ensured that existing civil rights protections cover sexual orientation and gender identity in the way that they already do for race, disability, veteran status, and more. The Trump administration also blocked basic job protections for LGBTQ people, insisting that employers should be free to fire workers for their sexual orientation or gender identity. The Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration also eliminated nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people established under the Affordable Care Act.

Critically, the Trump administration had an enormous impact on the courts, including the Supreme Court. Getting courts to understand the experience of transgender people and the impact of discriminatory policies on their lives was difficult even before Trump reshaped the judiciary. It is that much harder today because of the viewpoints of the judges and justices Trump appointed to the federal courts and Supreme Court.

Our Roadmap: Should a second Trump administration take office, the ACLU will use the courts to affirm that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination under federal law, to invalidate policies mandating discrimination across the federal government, and to shut down Trump’s expected efforts to weaponize the Constitution and federal laws to require discrimination against LGBTQ people by state and local governments and private entities.

Litigation is not our only pathway to push back against anti-LGBTQ policies. Congress can, and must, use the power of the purse and its oversight and investigative authorities to constrain a second Trump administration’s extreme anti-LGBTQ agenda. The ACLU will aggressively lobby members of Congress who support the transgender community to use the appropriations process, in particular, to hinder Trump’s ability to mandate anti-trans discrimination and weaponize federal law against LGBTQ rights.

The ACLU also has a comprehensive state-level plan of attack. We will advocate for states and school boards to protect LGBTQ students by enacting guidance regarding updating student names and pronouns, and by creating inclusive rules on gender-based activities, best practices for school records, and ways to support transgender students living under a federal government that discriminates against them. We’ll also urge states to support policies that prevent their governments from being complicit in a second Trump administration’s efforts to attack the legitimacy of transgender people in our world. Lastly, we will mobilize public support on behalf of vulnerable children and youth to deter further draconian policies and help reshape the political narrative around transgender justice.

What Our Experts Say: “We have seen the disastrous consequences of a hateful campaign targeting LGBTQ people and their families with discriminatory laws, forcing many from their home states and denying many more the freedom to get the health care they need to live their lives openly, and even to decide what name to go by. We are determined to use every tool at our disposal to oppose any attempt to deny LGBTQ people the freedom to live and love freely and openly.” – Mike Zamore, national director for policy & government affairs

“For four years, President Trump and his administration left no stone unturned in their effort to attack the right of LGBTQ people to live and work as who we are. We fully expect a second Trump administration to go further, weaponizing federal law to override state level protections and mandate discrimination by schools and health care providers nationwide. Regardless of the election’s outcome, we stand ready to fight to uphold the fundamental freedom we are guaranteed by the Constitution to live our lives as we choose.” – James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project.

What You Can Do Today: As wave after wave of extreme measures to criminalize and strip trans people of rights and safety continue, the time to act is now. Tell your members of Congress to protect trans people from discrimination today.

Sign up now to receive key issue memos as they’re released — and breaking alerts for all our work for civil liberties.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has promised to pursue even more extreme anti-immigrant policies if he wins a second term. These policies would disregard fundamental principles of democracy and the rule of law to devastate immigrant communities and erode freedoms for all Americans.

The ACLU is prepared to hold our executive branch to account. Just this week, we announced that we’ll challenge the Biden administration’s executive actions to illegally restrict people’s right to seek asylum – just as we previously challenged Trump’s actions. If Trump is reelected, we will continue to push to protect people and their rights against unlawful overreach. Learn more in our breakdown:

Trump On Immigration

The Facts: If reelected, Trump has promised to use totalitarian tactics to carry out the largest mass detention and deportation program in the nation’s history. Experience from smaller-scale detention sweeps shows that his proposed policies will lead to people being stopped, arrested, or detained simply because they “look foreign,” and his program will necessarily entail numerous other legal violations as well. Trump and his supporters also seek to dismantle our asylum system – creating more chaos at the border — and attack families by ending birthright citizenship and depriving undocumented children of their right to a public education. Trump has also vowed to reinstate family separation at the border – a cruel policy the ACLU blocked during his presidency.

Why It Matters: While many of the immigration policies we saw during Trump’s presidency were halted or delayed through litigation, the immigration policies we’ll likely see during a second Trump administration are far crueler, more extreme, and more fundamentally damaging to core rights and freedoms than any in living memory. If Trump is reelected, his plan to deport millions of people a year and severely restrict legal immigration will violate key legal protections – including our right to due process – and make xenophobia and racism the touchstones of American immigration policy. Simply put, these policies would harm all of us by tearing apart immigrant families, communities, and the fabric of American society.

How We Got Here: There’s no doubt that a second Trump administration will pick up and expand the anti-immigrant campaign it began in 2016. During his first term, the Trump administration instituted a Muslim ban, tried to deport Dreamers and others with temporary legal protection, separated families seeking asylum, and fought to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Our Roadmap: Through coordinated action at all levels and branches of government, we’re prepared to fight the Trump administration’s attack on immigrant rights. We’ll call on legislators to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from conducting mass deportations and pass measures to begin shrinking the ICE detention machine. We’ll also work with states and localities to build a civil rights firewall to protect residents to the full extent possible and ensure that a Trump administration can’t hijack state resources to carry out its draconian policies. And, if Trump sends a bill to Congress that effectively ends asylum, we’re prepared to mobilize our supporters nationwide to stop it because we know that a strong majority of voters support the U.S. asylum system.

In addition to working for policy change at every government level, we’re prepared to litigate cases to protect people’s rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, as well as other legal provisions, against the mass deportation program. We’ll use the full power of the Fourteenth Amendment and Supreme Court precedent to protect birthright citizenship and ensure immigrant children have equal access to education. Lastly, should a second Trump administration try to bring back family separation at the border, we’ll take them to court for violating our settlement agreement.

What Our Experts Say: “These policies have no place in a democracy that protects or respects civil liberties and the rule of law. From the courts to the halls of Congress, we will use every tool at our disposal, including litigation, to defend the rights of immigrants and protect all members of our communities from the widespread damage these policies would cause.” – Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project

“Xenophobia and racism would become the touchstones of American immigration policy under a second Trump administration, if he is re-elected. That’s why we must begin mobilizing with local and state governments now to protect communities nationwide from extreme anti-immigrant policies.” – Naureen Shah, deputy director of government affairs at the ACLU

What You Can Do Today: ICE detention is known for abuse, pervasive medical neglect, and complete disregard for the dignity of people in its custody. Needlessly locking up people seeking a better life does nothing to make our communities safer. Take action now: Tell your congress member to support cuts for ICE detention capacity.

Sign up now to receive key issue memos as they’re released — and breaking alerts for all our work for civil liberties.

In less than six months, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will once again face off for the presidency. While a presidential rematch is relatively rare — this marks the first time since 1956 — the outcome of this particular rematch will have an outsized impact on our civil rights and civil liberties. Beyond any one issue being on the ballot this November — freedom is on the ballot in no uncertain terms.

While the ACLU does not endorse or oppose candidates for elected office, we know that a potential second Trump administration and a potential second Biden administration will be drastically different when it comes to our civil rights and civil liberties. A second Trump administration will be disastrous for our most fundamental rights and freedoms, while a second Biden administration will bring a mix of challenges and opportunities that largely leaves these rights and freedoms intact. At the ACLU, we’re prepared for either scenario. Our legal, policy, and advocacy experts have identified the constitutional challenges that each candidate will bring, and the concrete actions the ACLU will take in response.

Starting next week, we will share our findings in a series of 13 memos — seven memos on a potential second Trump administration and six on a potential second Biden administration — to be released through August. The memos will address a range of issues, including immigrants’ rights, abortion access, LGBTQ justice, racial equity, police reform, and more.

To move the national discourse beyond agonizing over potential challenges to analyzing potential solutions, our memo series outlines not only the threats to our freedoms, but also includes comprehensive, substantive, and actionable solutions the ACLU will use to block the punches — egregious attempts to ignore the Constitution — or lessen the blows.

I believe in the strength of our commitment because I’ve seen what our organization is capable of accomplishing when our freedom is on the line. In 2016, the ACLU was the only national organization to issue a comprehensive plan for the policies of a potential Clinton administration, but also those of a potential Trump administration. That plan laid the groundwork for us to file 434 legal actions against the Trump administration, including the first lawsuit to halt the Trump Muslim ban within hours of its enactment.

Our detailed analysis of Trump’s policies foreshadowed a constitutional crisis that, nearly a decade later, continues to impact our nation as a whole. Today, our analysis once again prepares us to continue that fight, over the course of the next administration and beyond, just like we did in 2016.

Right now, Trump maintains a lead in most polls. While much can change between now and November, we must be prepared for the possibility that Trump may return to the White House. We know that a second Trump administration will be significantly more aggressive and effective in executing its plans to fundamentally erode our democracy, take away our freedoms, and violate our Constitution.

If Trump wins, we stand ready to meet his administration head on — in the courts, in Congress, at the state and local level, on the street, and at the ballot box. Already, we’ve taken note of the extremist rhetoric he’s used on the campaign trail, including promises to:

• Erase protections for LGBTQ people across the entire federal government and mandate discrimination, including banning transgender people from serving in the armed forces.
• Pursue retrogressive immigration policies — including reinterpreting the 14th Amendment to apply only to people who are born in the United States and have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident — that harm communities of color.
• Restrict refugee resettlement and asylum and end deportation protections for DACA recipients and those with Temporary Protected Status.
• Appoint justices who will carry out the Trump administration’s intentions to use antiquated laws to ban abortion or limit access to contraception.
• Eliminate race-conscious instruction in schools and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training in the workplace.
• Undermine press freedoms by regularly attacking media organizations he dislikes, and invoke the Insurrection Act to intimidate opponents and shut down dissent.
• Renew efforts to make it harder for Americans to vote and to spread false, debunked theories to undermine confidence in the integrity of our voting system.
• Promote unconstitutional and brutal state policing and federal law enforcement practices, dehumanize people in our criminal legal system, and accelerate mass incarceration.

Four years after Trump was elected, our nation was reeling from relentless attacks on fundamental rights and freedoms. When President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office, the ACLU released a wish list that called on the Biden administration to do two things: reverse Trump-era policies, and protect and extend our freedoms as part of a vision for our country that included justice, fairness, and equality for all.

Since then, the Biden administration has made progress toward this vision by expanding voting rights and abortion protections, as well as advocating for equal access for transgender individuals and for students’ right to receive an inclusive education. We remain concerned, however, that the administration has not fulfilled its critical civil rights and civil liberties responsibilities across a range of issues, including:

• Fully banning racial and other profiling. The Biden administration has permitted profiling for national and homeland security purposes, and at the border. These contexts can be pretexts for law enforcement to target Muslims, communities of color, and immigrants.
• Ending suspicionless surveillance of Americans under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Biden administration instead pressured Congress to dramatically expand Section 702, resulting in legislation that creates new ways for the government to spy on us without a warrant.
• Restoring the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to its full strength. While restoring the Voting Rights Act requires congressional action that has been blocked, the Biden administration has yet to fully implement its executive order promoting access to voting.
• Ending the federal death penalty – a commitment Biden campaigned on in 2020 – and fully implementing the reforms promised in his executive order on policing.

The ACLU is determined to hold a future Biden administration accountable for, among other things, protecting the right to abortion and contraception, preserving our asylum system and providing a path to citizenship, safeguarding the right to vote for all Americans, and bringing necessary reforms to our criminal legal system. The ACLU’s commitment to this work remains unchanged now, and for years to come.

In less than six months, our nation will send one of these candidates back to the White House. But this election is not just about who will be president — it’s about our freedom, our future, and the trajectory of our democracy. Rest assured, however, that no matter who wins, the ACLU will be ready to use all of the tools at our disposal — litigation, legislation, advocacy, and grassroots mobilization – to ensure that our nation lives up to the promise of the Constitution.

pImagine this: You lost your phone, or had it stolen. Would you be comfortable with a police officer who picked it up rummaging through the phone’s contents without any authorization or oversight, thinking you had abandoned it? We’ll hazard a guess: hell no, and for good reason. /p pOur cell phones and similar digital devices open a window into our entire lives, from messages we send in confidence to friends and family, to intimate photographs, to financial records, to comprehensive information about our movements, habits, and beliefs. Some of this information is intensely private in its own right; in combination, it can disclose virtually everything about a modern cell phone user. /p pIf it seems like common sense that law enforcement shouldn’t have unfettered access to this information whenever it finds a phone left unattended, you’ll be troubled by an argument that government lawyers are advancing in a pending case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, iUnited States v. Hunt/i. In iHunt/i, the government claims it does not need a warrant to search a phone that it deems to have been abandoned by its owner because, in ditching the phone, the owner loses any reasonable expectation of privacy in all its contents. As a basis for this claim, the government cites an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement that applies to searches of abandoned property. But that rule was developed years ago in the context of property that is categorially different, and much less revealing, than the reams of diverse and highly sensitive information that law enforcement can access by searching our digital devices. /p pThe Supreme Court a href=https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf#page=24has cautioned against/a uncritically extending pre-digital doctrines to modern technologies, like cell phones, that gather in one place so many of the privacies of life. In a a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/ninth-circuit-cell-phone-abandonment-amicus-huntfriend-of-the-court brief/a in iHunt/i, the ACLU and our coalition partners urge the Ninth Circuit to heed this call, and hold that even if the physical device may properly be considered abandoned, the myriad records that reside on a cell phone remain subject to full constitutional protection. Police should have to get a warrant before searching the data on a phone they find separated from its owner./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markCases about abandoned property are a poor fit for digital-age privacy/h2 /div pAs the Supreme Court a href=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/13-132/case.pdfrecognized/a more than 10 years ago, when the storage capacity of the median cell phone was a great deal less than it is today, advances in digital technology threaten to erode our privacy against government intrusion if courts apply to the troves of information on a cell phone the same rule they would use to analyze a search of a cigarette pack. In a case called iRiley v. California/i, the Supreme Court held that even though police may warrantlessly search items in a suspect’s pockets during arrest to avoid the destruction of evidence or identify danger to the arresting officers, a warrantless inspection of the information on an arrestee’s phone went too far. Why? Because phones, “[w]ith all they may contain and all they may reveal,” are different. /p pHere too, the information on a cell phone is qualitatively and quantitatively unlike the items that underpin precedents permitting warrantless searches of abandoned property. The most recent of those precedents was decided in 1988, long before cell phones became a “a href=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/13-132/case.pdfpervasive and insistent part of daily life/a.” In case you’re keeping score, 1988 was the year Motorola debuted its first “bag phone,” a href=https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/162235#slide=gs-212075an early transportable telephone the size of a briefcase/a that needed to be lugged around with a separate battery and transceiver. In that case, the Supreme Court held that people lose their legal privacy in items, like curbside trash, that they knowingly and voluntarily leave out for any member of the public to see. But when you fail to reclaim a lost or abandoned phone, do you knowingly and voluntarily renounce all of your data, too? Our brief argues that the Ninth Circuit should not use the same reasoning that has historically applied to a href=https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep486/usrep486035/usrep486035.pdfgarbage left out for collection/a and a href=https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep362/usrep362217/usrep362217.pdf#page=24items discarded in a hotel wastepaper basket/a after check-out to impute to a cell phone’s owner an intent to give up all the revealing information on their device, just because it was left behind./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markCell phones contain vast amounts of diverse and revealing information, unlike other categories of objects/h2 /div pThe immense storage capacity of modern cell phones allows people to carry in their palm a volume and variety of private information that is genuinely unprecedented in cases concerning searches of abandoned property. Our cell phones provide access to information comparable in quantity and breadth to what police might glean from a thorough search of a house. Unlike a house, though, a cell phone is relatively easy to lose. You carry it with you almost all the time. It can fall between seat cushions or slip out of a loose pocket. You might leave it at the check-out desk after making a purchase or forget it on the bus as you hasten to make your stop. Even if you eventually give up looking for the device, thereby “abandoning” it, this doesn#8217;t evince any subjective intent to relinquish to whoever might pick it up all the information the phone can store or access through the internet./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markCloud backups mean that the data on a phone often isn’t lost even when the device goes missing/h2 /div pAn additional reason that the privacy of the information on a cell phone shouldn’t hinge on a person’s ongoing possession of their device is that you can still access and control much of the data on your phone independently of the device itself. While modern cell phones store extraordinary and growing amounts of data locally, a lot of this information resides also on remote servers — think of the untold messages, contacts, notes, and images you may have backed up on iCloud or its equivalents. If you have access to a computer or tablet, all this information remains yours to view, edit, and delete whether or not your phone is handy. Trade in your cell phone, and you can seamlessly download this information onto a new device, reviewing voicemail messages and carrying on existing conversations in text without interruption. In this sense, a cell phone is more properly analogized to a house key than a house, something we use to access vast amounts of information that’s largely stored elsewhere. It would be absurd to suggest that a person intends to open up their house for unrestrained searches by police whenever they drop their house key. Yet this is essentially the position the government in the iHunt /icase argued, successfully, in the trial court: Because the defendant discarded his phone, any piece of information stored on that phone was fair game, regardless of whether it was backed up. /p pThe Ninth Circuit has an opportunity in iHunt/i to correct the trial court’s error and clarify that the rule governing police searches of the information on a lost or abandoned cell phone does not defy common-sense intuitions about what information we mean to give up when we lose track of our devices. The information on your cell phone is highly private and revealing. If the police want authority to review it, the Constitution requires of them something simple — get a warrant./p

pemExecutive Director Anthony D. Romero spoke to graduates at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. He stressed the critical need to protect free speech on college campuses. He calls on universities to uphold the principles of open debate and academic freedom, while also prioritizing the safety and well-being of students from discrimination and violence. Romero inspires graduates to seize leadership opportunities with bravery and compassion, recognizing their potential to make a positive impact on the world./em/p pa href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23x7S79H88APlay the video/a/p img width=1280 height=720 src=https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/anthony-romero-commencement-speech-colin-powell-school-city-college-ny-video-thumbnail.jpeg class=attachment-16x9_1400 size-16x9_1400 alt=Anthony Romero giving the commencement speech at the Colin Powell School of City College of New York. decoding=async srcset=https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/anthony-romero-commencement-speech-colin-powell-school-city-college-ny-video-thumbnail.jpeg 1280w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/anthony-romero-commencement-speech-colin-powell-school-city-college-ny-video-thumbnail-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/anthony-romero-commencement-speech-colin-powell-school-city-college-ny-video-thumbnail-400x225.jpeg 400w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/anthony-romero-commencement-speech-colin-powell-school-city-college-ny-video-thumbnail-600x338.jpeg 600w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/anthony-romero-commencement-speech-colin-powell-school-city-college-ny-video-thumbnail-800x450.jpeg 800w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/anthony-romero-commencement-speech-colin-powell-school-city-college-ny-video-thumbnail-1000x563.jpeg 1000w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/anthony-romero-commencement-speech-colin-powell-school-city-college-ny-video-thumbnail-1200x675.jpeg 1200w sizes=(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px / pWhen I was coming up here, it felt like I was coming home. I spent my early childhood not far from here, in the Castle Hill projects of the Bronx. Google maps says it’s only six miles from here, but it feels like worlds away. After the Bronx, we moved out to New Jersey, and I came back to New York after law school. I’ve now spent most of my adult life here in New York City. So, as a proud New Yorker – a proud Nuyorican – it is a special honor to be asked to speak at an institution woven so thoroughly and wonderfully into the fabric of the greatest city on earth./p pAs graduates of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, you have chosen to hone your leadership skills in a world where it is easier to retreat than to lead. At a time when it’s easier to give up and climb into a cocoon where the internet delivers your food, your clothes, and your opinions to your door. But thank God you chose a different path – as leadership has never been more important than it is now. You have decided to become a part of something bigger – to fight for the changes this nation and this world so desperately need. And I am grateful that you’ve chosen this path./p pHaving made the journey from public housing to this commencement podium, I feel joyful as I look out over a crowd of young people about to embark on your own journey. Standing here at your graduation, I can’t help but recall my own. With my Papi, Mami, my sister. All dressed in our Sunday best. Over the years, my heritage as a proud Puerto Rican was a source of great strength for me. It shaped my upbringing and continues to inform my worldview to this day. Looking out at this diverse sea of students, I suspect many of your ancestors may not have arrived on the Mayflower either. But all of you – each and every single one of you – earned your place to be here. And for many of you in the Class of 2024 – just like me and my family – you’ve had to overcome extraordinary odds to reach this moment./p pI’m sure that somewhere in this class, I am looking at the next Felix Frankfurter, a City College graduate who became one of the greatest Supreme Court Justices ever to serve on the Court. Or the next Faith Ringgold, the brilliant artist and activist for gender equity and racial justice. Or the next Herb Sandler, a titan of industry who would ultimately give away a significant portion of his wealth to organizations and causes championing free speech, civil rights and social justice. Or, of course, the next Colin Powell, who broke racial barriers throughout his career and served his country for decades in military and civilian life./p pYou have accomplished a great deal and you should be proud – real proud. But let’s also remember to give credit to folks who helped you along the way. Your friends, of course. Your professors and administrators at City College. And the people who sacrificed to provide for you. The people who worked overtime to pay for tuition. The people who kept immaculate homes you came back to. The people who cooked you your meals. Who put a roof over your head. The people who had dreams for you. The people who pushed you. Believed in you. Hugged you. Picked you up when you fell down. The people who taught you how to walk. Say your first words. The people who taught you how to read. The people who showed you the meaning of the word LOVE. Of course, I am talking about your families. Your loved ones./p pAnd graduates, you can feel real proud that you’re in that cap and gown …. that you’re about to walk across this stage – styling your way as you get your diploma. But you know that that diploma is as much theirs as it is yours. So why don’t you, the graduates, get on your feet and join me in giving the moms and dads, tías and tíos, grandmeres, dadis, bubbies, nanas, abuelas and countless others, a round of applause for everything they have done to make this day happen. Thank you./p pSince we are talking about people who supported us along the way, I’d like to say a few words about someone who chose to be part of my journey – my late friend and former mentor Herb Sandler, City College Class of 1951. Founder and CEO of Golden West Financial. Herb used what he learned here to make enough money in banking that he could have built himself a castle and forgotten the problems faced by regular folks. But instead, he used what he learned at City College – and what he learned growing up poor on the Lower East side – to reach out and lift up others, as well./p pHerb used his wealth to advance freedom and justice for everyone in America. Over the years, he gave me advice, support when I was struggling, and love when I needed it./p pHerb was a true believer when it came to freedom of speech. He valued hearing divergent viewpoints – even when those viewpoints were critical of his industry, his bank or himself, personally. The press was sometimes unkind and even unfair to him, but Herb walked the walk when it came to free speech and a free press. He always believed that the answer to criticism, even if unfair or unfounded, was more speech – not less. He believed in open debate. Not censorship./p pAnd he understood the centrality of real journalism to our democracy. With his philanthropy, he helped create Pro Publica, one of the most important institutions doing tough, nonpartisan reporting./p pAt the ACLU, we believe deeply that freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and academic freedom are all interconnected – that they’re all critically important to a functioning democracy. The ability to collect and impart information. The ability to discuss, debate and even hotly contest ideas. This is especially true for challenging ideas. Controversial ideas. Even repugnant ideas. We have zealously fought for the rights of people and groups of varied ideologies and beliefs to speak their minds. From gun owners and gun opponents; anti-LGBTQ organizations and pro- LGBTQ groups, Trump supporters and anti-Trump activists./p pThat’s why the ACLU fights so passionately to protect freedom of speech on college campuses right now when it is under attack./p pAs a domestic organization, the ACLU takes no position on wars between foreign countries. Yet we champion the right of students to express themselves. Whichever side they are on, whatever it is they believe./p pUniversities have a responsibility to ensure they maintain an environment in which all students can thrive and learn, but it’s not their job to protect students from hearing or engaging with upsetting or even hurtful ideas. In fact, it’s the universities’ job to prepare the leaders of tomorrow by exposing them to challenging worldviews, competing analyses. The leaders of tomorrow – you the Class of 2024 – need to be comfortable with the contestation of facts and the clash of ideologies./p pSometimes this is a hard line to walk. As passionately as students care, free speech is not a license for violence, property destruction, or physical intimidation or harassment of other students./p pAnd as worried as administrators are, they must respect their students’ free speech rights and honor the long and important tradition of student campus activism./p pThat means that universities must not single out particular viewpoints for censorship, discipline, or disproportionate punishment. Whether students carry Palestinian, Israeli, or American flags, whether they are progressives, moderates, or conservatives, everyone must be accorded the same rights and accept the same responsibilities./p pUniversities have also an obligation to protect students from discriminatory harassment and violence. This year, too many universities have failed to meet this obligation to their Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Israeli, and Palestinian students./p pAt the same time, universities must not penalize students for expressing their views, even if they do so in deeply offensive terms./p pThey can announce and enforce reasonable content-neutral time, place, or manner policies on protesting activity, but they must leave ample room for students to express themselves./p pUniversities must also recognize that armed police on campus can endanger students – students of color in particular – and should be a measure of last resort./p pAnd, finally, administrators must recognize that many of the pressures that are being placed on them are coming from politicians seeking to exploit campus tensions. Recognizing the source of these pressures is the first step, resisting them is the second./p pClass of 2024, you are graduating at a challenging moment. No one would blame you if you wanted to reconsider your career in leadership and public service right now./p pBut I’m guessing that’s not going to happen. You are New York City tough. You are City College trained. You follow in the footsteps of Frankfurter, Reinggold, Sandler and Powell. You are meant for more. Much has been given to you and even greater things are expected from you./p pReach out and make a difference in peoples’ lives like your parents and professors did. Get off the beaten path, discover new communities. Respect and engage with people whose passions and opinions differ from your own. Speak your mind with courage and clarity, but also stand up for the right of your opponents to do the same. Become part of institutions that will magnify your voice and drive change./p pLeadership isn’t ordained from above. It doesn’t come from yelling the loudest and it certainly isn’t possible from a self-imposed isolation chamber. It comes from your heart. From your mind. From the sweat of your brow. It comes from your communities; from the institutions you will populate and lead – and from the people whose lives you will touch./p pCongratulations, graduates. And thank you in advance for what I know you are going to achieve. The world desperately needs the 2024 graduates of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. It will be thrilling to watch you rock it. And now, give yourselves the round of applause you so deeply deserve./p

pThe outcome of the 2024 election will have a profound impact on access to abortion care in this country. Donald Trump’s allies have drawn up an agenda for a potential second presidential term, and they have made clear that if Trump is elected, he will dust off a 150-year-old federal statute called the Comstock Act to iban all abortions nationwide/i without any need for congressional action./p pYou read that right: Anti-abortion groups are peddling the radical theory that abortion could be banned in every state the moment he takes office./p pAnd because anti-abortion politicians know that the American people a href=blankoppose/a having our reproductive rights taken away, they’re trying to keep these plans under the radar until it’s too late—advising Trump and anti-abortion groups to a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/us/politics/trump-allies-abortion-restrictions.htmlkeep quiet/a about their plan to impose a back-door abortion ban until after the election./p pIt’s long past time to shine a spotlight on this outrageous scheme, and why it’s just plain wrong./p pThe Comstock Act is an 1873 anti-obscenity law that, among other things, makes it a crime to mail anything that’s “indecent, filthy, or vile” or “intended for producing abortion.” Its namesake, Anthony Comstock, was an infamous Victorian-era anti-vice crusader who, as the Supreme Court has explained, “believed that anything remotely touching upon sex was obscene.” Comstock took credit for arresting thousands and driving at least 15 people to suicide through his anti-vice crusades./p pTrump’s anti-abortion allies are trying to revive this zombie law, claiming that the Comstock Act is a dormant national abortion ban already on the books, just waiting to be enforced by a Trump Department of Justice. According to anti-abortion extremists, the Comstock Act makes it a crime to send or receive drugs or articles that are used in abortion care by mail or common carriers like UPS and FedEx. That interpretation of the law is wrong; it flies in the face of how courts and the Department of Justice have long interpreted the law. But if anti-abortion judges buy into this unfounded theory, it would effectively amount to a nationwide abortion ban because the medication and equipment used in abortion care are transported by mail and common carrier./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/campaigns-initiatives/abortion-criminal-defense-initiative target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=2800 height=1400 src=https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610.jpg 2800w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-768x384.jpg 768w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-1536x768.jpg 1536w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-2048x1024.jpg 2048w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-400x200.jpg 400w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-600x300.jpg 600w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-800x400.jpg 800w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-1000x500.jpg 1000w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-1200x600.jpg 1200w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-1400x700.jpg 1400w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/12/3dbe18c0063d3b7aed43c26f2ed07610-1600x800.jpg 1600w sizes=(max-width: 2800px) 100vw, 2800px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/campaigns-initiatives/abortion-criminal-defense-initiative target=_blank Abortion Criminal Defense Initiative /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/campaigns-initiatives/abortion-criminal-defense-initiative target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/campaigns-initiatives/abortion-criminal-defense-initiative target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pThat likely means that abortion medication like mifepristone won’t even leave the factory. It means that companies that produce medical instruments, ultrasound machines, and other items used in abortion care couldn’t send them to abortion providers, and abortion providers couldn’t obtain the materials they need./p pThe plan to enforce the Comstock Act as an abortion ban is spelled out in the Heritage Foundation’s a href=https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf180-Day Playbook/a, which details nearly 900 pages’ worth of “actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration.” The scheme is echoed by Jonathan Mitchell, Trump’s lawyer before the Supreme Court and the architect of Texas’s abortion bounty-hunter law, S.B. 8, who has a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/us/politics/trump-allies-abortion-restrictions.htmlmade clear/a that a Trump Department of Justice would wield the Comstock Act as a backdoor abortion ban: “We don’t need [Congress to pass] a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books.”/p pMitchell wants Trump and anti-abortion groups to “keep their mouths shut [on Comstock] as much as possible until the election.” Once in office, they plan to shut down abortion care nationwide without any need for congressional action./p pTo be clear, the argument that the Comstock Act is a dormant national abortion ban is legally wrong. That’s true for many reasons:/p ul liFirst, starting in the early twentieth century, federal appellate courts reached a consensus that the Comstock Act only criminalizes sending and receiving materials to be used for iotherwise unlawful /iabortion and contraception. The courts’ uniform conclusion was that the Act does not apply to drugs and articles sent and received for ilawful/i abortion care. Importantly, courts reached this consensus well before the Supreme Court’s recognition of the constitutional right to contraception and abortion in iGriswold v. Connecticut/i, and iRoe v. Wade/i; the interpretation in no way turned on the existence of a constitutional right./li /ul ul liSecond, Congress was well aware of the court decisions that the Comstock Act doesn’t apply to lawful abortions. If Congress disagreed with the courts, it could have changed the law. Instead, Congress repeatedly reenacted the Comstock Act’s abortion provisions without modifying the language in response to the decisions. This means that Congress concurred with courts narrowing the scope of laws under the principle of congressional ratification. As the Supreme Court explained in iTexas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project/i, “[i]f a word or phrase has been #8230; given a uniform interpretation by inferior courts #8230;, a later version of that act perpetuating the wording is presumed to carry forward that interpretation.”/li /ul ul liThird and relatedly, the United States Postal Service, the agency that enforces the Comstock Act’s mailing restrictions, also concurred with the courts’ settled interpretation of the Act, and in 1970 informed Congress of its position. This timeline bolsters the conclusion that Congress accepted the appellate courts’ narrowing construction of the law./li /ul ul liFourth, the Department of Justice has publicly endorsed this interpretation of the Comstock Act in a December 2022 Office of Legal Counsel a href=https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/file/1560596/dl?inlineopinion/a. As the opinion explains, “[b]ased upon a longstanding judicial construction of the Comstock Act, which Congress ratified and USPS itself accepted,” the Comstock Act “does not prohibit the mailing, or the delivery or receipt by mail, of [abortion-inducing medications] where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully./li /ul pIn short, Trump’s allies’ argument that the Comstock Act can be enforced as a national abortion ban defies the settled determination by federal courts and the Justice Department that the law does not apply to lawful abortion care./p pBut we have seen anti-abortion extremists manipulate the law to ban abortion before. iRoe/i was settled law for decades until a reconstituted Supreme Court reversed course in iDobbs /iand allowed states to ban abortion. And before iDobbs/i, Trump’s lawyer, Jonathan Mitchell, managed to impose an abortion ban in Texas that ought to have been struck down as unconstitutional, but that survived because of its manipulative bounty-hunter enforcement scheme./p pSo when Mitchell, who is on the short list to become Trump’s attorney general, endorses the dangerous Comstock scheme, the threat is deadly serious./p

pApplying for jobs can be a difficult and frustrating experience: you’re putting forward your qualifications to be judged by a prospective employer. We all want to be treated fairly. We want our qualifications to speak for themselves. But for job seekers who have been historically excluded or discriminated against because of their race, gender identity, or disability, there can be another question lurking in the background: Am I being judged, not for my ability to do the job, but for my identity?/p pAutomated decision-making tools, including those using artificial intelligence, or AI, and algorithms, have been widely adopted in hiring. Today seven out of 10 employers use them. We have a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/how-artificial-intelligence-might-prevent-you-from-getting-hiredpreviously written/a about AI and some of the newer ways that it’s impacting hiring, including how it lacks transparency and can harbor serious flaws that lead to bias and discrimination. But these tools are just the latest frontier in a long history of employment tests that can discriminate and harm job seekers. For example, one of the landmark civil rights cases, a href=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/401/424/Griggs v. Duke Power Co (1971)/a, was about a company’s use of bogus tests to a href=https://www.eeoc.gov/meetings/meeting-january-31-2023-navigating-employment-discrimination-ai-and-automated-systems-new/mooreblock the promotion of Black workers/a./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/how-artificial-intelligence-might-prevent-you-from-getting-hired target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1200 height=628 src=https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/70424f4c0d4ad921d1e27da6125a765d.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/70424f4c0d4ad921d1e27da6125a765d.jpg 1200w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/70424f4c0d4ad921d1e27da6125a765d-768x402.jpg 768w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/70424f4c0d4ad921d1e27da6125a765d-400x209.jpg 400w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/70424f4c0d4ad921d1e27da6125a765d-600x314.jpg 600w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/70424f4c0d4ad921d1e27da6125a765d-800x419.jpg 800w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/05/70424f4c0d4ad921d1e27da6125a765d-1000x523.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/how-artificial-intelligence-might-prevent-you-from-getting-hired target=_blank How Artificial Intelligence Might Prevent You From Getting Hired /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/how-artificial-intelligence-might-prevent-you-from-getting-hired target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletAI-based tools are used throughout hiring processes, increasing the odds of discrimination in the workplace./p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/how-artificial-intelligence-might-prevent-you-from-getting-hired target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pWhen tests and tools that have a long history of problems are combined with new technologies like AI, risks of harm only increase, exacerbating harmful barriers to employment based on race, gender, disability, and other protected characteristics. While the harm of racial discrimination in employment tests has long been recognized and challenged, there has been less awareness about how these tests impact applicants who, in addition to facing racial discrimination, face discrimination based on their disabilities./p pThe use of personality assessments in hiring processes has become increasingly common. Yet these tests often ask general questions that may have little to do with the ability to do the job and capture traits that are directly linked with characteristics commonly associated with autism and mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. This creates a high risk that qualified workers with these disabilities will be disadvantaged compared to other workers and may be unfairly and illegally screened out./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/know-your-digital-rights-digital-discrimination-in-hiring target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=750 height=375 src=https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/11/9adf74e5819f7726f6dd759d712b47eb.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt=A graphic featuring a diverse group of individuals. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/11/9adf74e5819f7726f6dd759d712b47eb.jpg 750w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/11/9adf74e5819f7726f6dd759d712b47eb-400x200.jpg 400w, https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2023/11/9adf74e5819f7726f6dd759d712b47eb-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/know-your-digital-rights-digital-discrimination-in-hiring target=_blank Know Your Rights | Know Your Digital Rights: Digital Discrimination in Hiring /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/know-your-digital-rights-digital-discrimination-in-hiring target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletEqual access to job opportunities is a core component of economic justice. Increasingly, employers are using automated tools in their hiring.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/know-your-digital-rights-digital-discrimination-in-hiring target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pTo push back, we a class=Hyperlink SCXW161865474 BCX0 href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-complaint-to-the-ftc-regarding-aon-consulting-inc target=_blank rel=noreferrer noopenerfiled a complaint/a to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Aon, a major hiring technology vendor, alleging that Aon is deceptively marketing widely used online hiring tests as “bias-free” even though the tests discriminate against job seekers based on traits like their race or disability. The ACLU and co-counsel have also filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against both Aon and an employer that uses Aon’s assessments on behalf of a biracial (Black/white) autistic job applicant who was required to take Aon assessments as part of the employer’s hiring process./p pTwo Aon products, a “personality” assessment test and its automated video interviewing tool, which integrate algorithmic or AI-related features, are marketed to employers across industries as cost-effective, efficient, and less discriminatory than traditional methods of assessing workers and applicants. However, these products assess very general personality traits such as positivity, emotional awareness, liveliness, ambition, and drive that are not clearly job related or necessary for a specific job and can unfairly screen out people based on disabilities. The automated features of these tools exacerbate these fundamental problems, particularly as Aon incorporated artificial intelligence elements in its video interviewing tool that are also likely to discriminate based on disability, race, and other protected characteristics./p pCognitive ability assessments, another staple in hiring, must also be subject to scrutiny, as they have long been shown to disadvantage Black job candidates and other candidates of color and may also unfairly exclude individuals based on disability. These tests, touted to measure aspects of memory, as well as several others it markets, have racial disparities in performance./p pFor autistic and other neurodivergent job applicants and applicants of color, cognitive ability assessments pose a significant barrier to employment. Not only do they fail to accommodate diverse needs, but they also perpetuate discrimination based on race, disability, and other traits. Employers should not use assessments that carry a high risk of discrimination. Employers risk screening out people who could be successful employees, impacting diversity in the workplace, and could face legal liability, even where the assessments are designed and administered by third-party vendors. Employers have a legal obligation to thoroughly vet any assessments they use for compliance with anti-discrimination laws, and if they decide to use an assessment, they must provide meaningful notice so that disabled workers can make an informed choice whether to seek accommodations or alternative processes./p pBut vendors must also be accountable for the tools they market. Employers can hold vendors accountable by demanding that vendors truly design their products to be inclusive – including by incorporating the perspectives and experiences of people with disabilities and other protected groups into their design process #8212; and conduct thorough auditing for discrimination based on race, disability and other protected characteristics. They can also demand transparency and decline to purchase their products if they fail to do so. And vendors can and should also be held legally accountable for their discriminatory products and deceptively marketing them. As the EEOC recently a href=https://www.eeoc.gov/litigation/briefs/mobley-v-workday-incargued/a in a federal case about discrimination in an online hiring product, vendors can be held accountable under employment discrimination laws, and our FTC complaint should serve as notice to vendors that we will seek to hold them accountable under consumer protection laws as well./p pAs the hiring landscape continues to change and job applicants face new hiring tools, we must strive for a future where skills and potential, not bias, determines our opportunities. The ACLU stands ready to defend the rights of individuals wronged by discriminatory practices. Together, we can dismantle discriminatory barriers and build a more inclusive workforce for all./p

pFor more than 100 years, the ACLU has defended students’ First Amendment rights across the United States. Since April, more than 2,000 people have been a href=https://www.aclu.org/podcast/special-edition-what-were-seeing-at-campus-anti-war-protestsarrested/a or detained for participating in anti-war protests on campuses across the country. And it’s not just anyone and everyone protesting on campus who’s getting arrested or facing unjust repercussions. Specifically, authorities are disproportionately targeting those protesting for the rights of Palestinian people./p p“We will defend anyone whose free speech and association are being challenged and stifled by the government. But especially in this moment, we#8217;re not seeing ‘both sides’ be stifled in the same way,” said Allegra Harpootlian, a senior communications strategist with the ACLU. She’s part of the team who helped put this comic series together. /p p“The majority of censorship and repression has been directed toward people who are supporting the Palestinian people, and that was definitely true in the case of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Florida./p imagegrid :images='[{quot;srcquot;:quot;https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/SJP-4X5-FINAL-P1.pngquot;,quot;altquot;:quot;*quot;,quot;slugquot;:quot;sjp-4x5-final-p1quot;,quot;titlequot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_1quot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_2quot;:quot;quot;,quot;descriptionquot;:quot;quot;,quot;urlquot;:quot;quot;,quot;display_descriptive_text_in_gridquot;:true},{quot;srcquot;:quot;https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/SJP-4X5-FINAL-P2.pngquot;,quot;altquot;:quot;*quot;,quot;slugquot;:quot;sjp-4x5-final-p2quot;,quot;titlequot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_1quot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_2quot;:quot;quot;,quot;descriptionquot;:quot;quot;,quot;urlquot;:quot;quot;,quot;display_descriptive_text_in_gridquot;:true},{quot;srcquot;:quot;https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/SJP-4X5-FINAL-P3.pngquot;,quot;altquot;:quot;*quot;,quot;slugquot;:quot;sjp-4x5-final-p3quot;,quot;titlequot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_1quot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_2quot;:quot;quot;,quot;descriptionquot;:quot;quot;,quot;urlquot;:quot;quot;,quot;display_descriptive_text_in_gridquot;:true},{quot;srcquot;:quot;https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/SJP-4X5-FINAL-P4.pngquot;,quot;altquot;:quot;*quot;,quot;slugquot;:quot;sjp-4x5-final-p4quot;,quot;titlequot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_1quot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_2quot;:quot;quot;,quot;descriptionquot;:quot;quot;,quot;urlquot;:quot;quot;,quot;display_descriptive_text_in_gridquot;:true},{quot;srcquot;:quot;https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/SJP-4X5-FINAL-P5.pngquot;,quot;altquot;:quot;*quot;,quot;slugquot;:quot;sjp-4x5-final-p5quot;,quot;titlequot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_1quot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_2quot;:quot;quot;,quot;descriptionquot;:quot;quot;,quot;urlquot;:quot;quot;,quot;display_descriptive_text_in_gridquot;:true},{quot;srcquot;:quot;https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/SJP-4X5-FINAL-P6.pngquot;,quot;altquot;:quot;*quot;,quot;slugquot;:quot;sjp-4x5-final-p6quot;,quot;titlequot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_1quot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_2quot;:quot;quot;,quot;descriptionquot;:quot;quot;,quot;urlquot;:quot;quot;,quot;display_descriptive_text_in_gridquot;:true},{quot;srcquot;:quot;https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/SJP-4X5-FINAL-P7.pngquot;,quot;altquot;:quot;*quot;,quot;slugquot;:quot;sjp-4x5-final-p7quot;,quot;titlequot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_1quot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_2quot;:quot;quot;,quot;descriptionquot;:quot;quot;,quot;urlquot;:quot;quot;,quot;display_descriptive_text_in_gridquot;:true},{quot;srcquot;:quot;https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/SJP-4X5-FINAL-P8.pngquot;,quot;altquot;:quot;*quot;,quot;slugquot;:quot;sjp-4x5-final-p8quot;,quot;titlequot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_1quot;:quot;quot;,quot;subtitle_2quot;:quot;quot;,quot;descriptionquot;:quot;quot;,quot;urlquot;:quot;quot;,quot;display_descriptive_text_in_gridquot;:true}]' alignment='top' :images-per-row-desktop='4' :images-per-row-mobile='2' /imagegrid pThe a href=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-rules-florida-officials-do-not-intend-to-deactivate-university-of-floridas-students-for-justice-in-palestinestory/a of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Florida is so emblematic of attempted censorship, that I made a comic about it, with the help of a team at the ACLU. In it, we aim to provide young people with important information about unlawfully silencing free speech that could apply to them iright now/i. We also want to highlight stories of bravery by students who fought for their rights./p pThe process of creating the comic began months ago. It’s been a long journey, and for good reason; illustrative journalism – especially pieces that include minors or young people – requires close attention to detail, and careful depiction of a subject. But in this case, I knew it was especially important to consider legality and safety when mixing the story with illustration./p pLike I described in the Qamp;A for the a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/how-comics-can-spark-conversations-about-race-and-history-in-the-classroomfirst comic/a in this series, it’s important for the person or group I’m portraying to feel comfortable with the visual representation I’m creating of them. The students who were a part of the case challenging threats to deactivate the University of Florida’s SJP organization also needed an additional layer of safety: individual anonymity./p video controls source src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/SJPtimelapse1.mp4 type=video/mp4 / Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. /video pEven outside of especially sensitive cases like this one, It’s important for journalists to consider the safety of young people when writing news about them that may leave them vulnerable to negative consequences, which is why I offer the option of anonymity to the demographic more often than not. Young people are taking a greater risk in sharing their difficulties than most older adults – many are yet to begin their public, adult lives. As a journalist determined to bring stories of injustice towards youth and young adults to light, my job is to represent their struggles and victories in a way that helps them and others like them, not to harm their future./p pIn the past few years especially, activists have been subject to a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/some-steps-to-defend-against-online-doxxing-and-harassmentdigital attacks/a that go beyond the verbal, such as doxxing and hacking, which is why protecting the identities of young people was just as, if not more, pressing in this piece. The safety of University of Florida SJP members was a core concern from the beginning of bringing their case./p pHarpootlian, the ACLU communications strategist on our comics team, was also part of the group advising the students on safety protocols at the time of the case./p p“We know there is no perfect solution to digital privacy, but we also e have a duty to keep our clients safe. We took this case on right around the time that two students had been shot in Vermont, and Florida is a concealed-carry state. It is a state that has had violence against activists,” she said. “We didn#8217;t want to put students in harm#8217;s way.” /p video controls source src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/SJPtimelapse2.mp4 type=video/mp4 / Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. /video pSo I did the same. That’s why the comic is set in the first-person plural perspective – the “we” in the panels. In telling stories of struggle and resilience, I didn’t want to single out one student, just for them to fall in harm’s way for telling their story. /p pIt wasn’t a challenge to maintain detail and narrative despite not being able to work with a specific perspective. So much of what these students went through happened with each other – they faced their challenges as a collective./p pCollectively, students in the University of Florida’s chapter of Students for Justice for Palestine were afraid of the consequences of threatened disbandment. Collectively, the students – who come from all backgrounds, including those who are not Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, or Jewish – felt the stigmatization of the phrasing used in the a href=https://www.flbog.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Deactivation-of-Students-for-Justice-in-Palestine.pdfmemorandum/a that called for the group’s disbandment./p pAnd collectively, that same group of students continued to speak out, despite the pressure that came from, in the words of the judge who oversaw the case, the most powerful person in Florida./p div class=mb-8 wp-pullquote standard div class= wp-pullquote-inner p#8220;It wasn’t a challenge to maintain detail and narrative despite not being able to work with a specific perspective. So much of what these students went through happened with each other – they faced their challenges as a collective.#8221;/p /div /div pThis piece is meant to reflect the perspective of some of the students who make up the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Florida. The final panel of the comic displays resolute students continuing to march even after months of threatened repercussions. The panel’s text reads, “Our chapter believes that speaking up for Palestine is speaking up for humanity.” /p pDespite the arduous experience of taking Florida officials to court, the University of Florida SJP members said they were proud to have fought for the First Amendment rights of all students. At a time when free speech and free expression in schools are under attack across the country, the students at the University of Florida are not alone, and they must not be silenced./p

div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardTHIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN TRANSLATED INTO AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE/h3 /div pa href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D0g-nVqiBcPlay the video/a/p img width=1110 height=740 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/american-sign-language-interpreter-signing-b.jpg class=attachment-16x9_1400 size-16x9_1400 alt=A closeup of an American Sign Language interpreter#039;s hands as they sign. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/american-sign-language-interpreter-signing-b.jpg 1110w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/american-sign-language-interpreter-signing-b-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/american-sign-language-interpreter-signing-b-400x267.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/american-sign-language-interpreter-signing-b-600x400.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/american-sign-language-interpreter-signing-b-800x533.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/american-sign-language-interpreter-signing-b-1000x667.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px / pA five-year effort to get equal access for deaf and hard-of-hearing people on parole and probation in Georgia has ended in victory. The American Civil Liberties Union and our legal partners reached a a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/settlement-agreement-cobb-v-georgia-department-of-community-supervisiongroundbreaking settlement/a that requires the Georgia agency responsible for supervising people on probation and parole – the Georgia Department of Community Supervision or “GDCS” – to dismantle the discriminatory hurdles that make it harder for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to avoid prison and live safely in their communities. We hope that other states look to this agreement when determining what is required for their supervision agencies to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act./p pFor years, our clients lived in constant fear of reincarceration. Supervision officers often held important meetings with people who used American Sign Language (ASL), but failed to provide ASL interpreters or other needed accommodations. They “explained” the rules of supervision to people who could not hear or understand these rules, but who nonetheless risked prison or jail if they didn’t follow them./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/for-people-with-disabilities-on-parole-and-probation-accessible-communication-is-essential target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1200 height=628 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/e067fc19bbc6b7aed77be8129845b4e7.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/e067fc19bbc6b7aed77be8129845b4e7.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/e067fc19bbc6b7aed77be8129845b4e7-768x402.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/e067fc19bbc6b7aed77be8129845b4e7-400x209.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/e067fc19bbc6b7aed77be8129845b4e7-600x314.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/e067fc19bbc6b7aed77be8129845b4e7-800x419.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/e067fc19bbc6b7aed77be8129845b4e7-1000x523.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/for-people-with-disabilities-on-parole-and-probation-accessible-communication-is-essential target=_blank For People with Disabilities on Parole and Probation, Accessible Communication is Essential /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/for-people-with-disabilities-on-parole-and-probation-accessible-communication-is-essential target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletOur clients were repeatedly denied sign language interpretation necessary to understand the conditions of their release. They paid the price with.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/for-people-with-disabilities-on-parole-and-probation-accessible-communication-is-essential target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pTwo of our clients had this exact fear realized when ineffective communication resulted in them a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/for-people-with-disabilities-on-parole-and-probation-accessible-communication-is-essentialbeing incarcerated while/a the case was ongoing. Supervision officers also failed to take disability into account in other ways, too. They knocked on the doors of individuals they knew were deaf, and then accused them of failing to cooperate when they didn’t answer a knock at the door that they couldn’t hear./p pOur clients’ heroic and sustained efforts have helped to guarantee equal rights for all deaf and hard-of-hearing people on supervision in Georgia. Starting now, each current and future deaf and hard-of-hearing person on supervision in Georgia will undergo a communication assessment that will allow the state to create a communication plan that considers the range of situations a deaf or hard-of-hearing person may experience while on supervision, and the types of accommodations they may need./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/language-access-is-a-civil-right-for-both-children-and-adults target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1200 height=628 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9636b5e3f45539ce55fb7cedd041ff4b.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9636b5e3f45539ce55fb7cedd041ff4b.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9636b5e3f45539ce55fb7cedd041ff4b-768x402.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9636b5e3f45539ce55fb7cedd041ff4b-400x209.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9636b5e3f45539ce55fb7cedd041ff4b-600x314.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9636b5e3f45539ce55fb7cedd041ff4b-800x419.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9636b5e3f45539ce55fb7cedd041ff4b-1000x523.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/language-access-is-a-civil-right-for-both-children-and-adults target=_blank Language Access is a Civil Right, For Both Children and Adults /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/language-access-is-a-civil-right-for-both-children-and-adults target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletWhy the ACLU supports the right of Deaf and Hard of Hearing children to access language./p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/language-access-is-a-civil-right-for-both-children-and-adults target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pImportantly, GDCS has agreed to provide Deaf interpreters for people who need them. Deaf interpreters are sign language interpreters who are also deaf. A Deaf interpreter will work with a hearing ASL interpreter to provide effective communication, especially for deaf adults who have experienced a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/language-access-is-a-civil-right-for-both-children-and-adultslanguage deprivation/a — a neurodevelopmental disorder with negative and long-lasting effects on the deaf adult’s language, cognitive, and socioemotional development. Long periods of incarceration with no ability to communicate with other people who know ASL can compound the effects of language deprivation. Hearing-sign language interpreters alone are typically unable to bridge the communication gap between deaf adults with language deprivation and their supervision officers. This communication gap can often lead to serious and preventable misunderstandings between the deaf person and the supervision officer that a Deaf interpreter could solve./p pFor example, in one instance a probation officer relied on a single, hearing interpreter — present on a computer — to explain a form with confusing conditions to a client. The client struggled to understand the interpreter and asked to take a photo of the form so he could ask the ACLU’s legal team to provide a Deaf interpreter to translate the form in a way he understood. Had the ACLU not stepped in to secure a Deaf interpreter, our client would not have fully understood what the form said, nor would he have been able to ask several clarifying questions, and would have risked reincarceration. This settlement ensures that any use of video interpretation, known as VRI, is clear, not relegated to a small cell phone screen, and that supervisees actually understand the directions being given./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cobb-v-georgia-department-of-community-supervision/settlement-agreement target=_blank tabindex=-1 /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cobb-v-georgia-department-of-community-supervision/settlement-agreement target=_blank NOTICE TO THE CLASS: COBB V. GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY SUPERVISION › Settlement Agreement /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cobb-v-georgia-department-of-community-supervision/settlement-agreement target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletThis is the ASL translation and plain language version of Cobb v Georgia Department of Community Supervision Settlement Agreement./p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cobb-v-georgia-department-of-community-supervision/settlement-agreement target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pGDCS will also now provide better accommodations for deaf or hard-of-hearing clients who cannot read and write English. Historically, the agency provided critical information about supervision only in writing. With this a href=https://www.aclu.org/cobb-v-georgia-department-of-community-supervision/settlement-agreementsettlement/a, a lack of fluency in reading or writing English will no longer be a barrier to successfully completing supervision. If the deaf or hard-of-hearing person cannot understand written documents due to their disability, GDCS has agreed to use appropriate accommodations and provide the written information in another accessible format. This will help prevent future incidents of confusion when people receive documents with important instructions that they do not understand. We have also produced a href=https://www.aclu.org/cobb-v-georgia-department-of-community-supervision/georgia-department-of-community-supervision-ada-policyASL and plain language translations of the new ADA Policy/a so that signers and those with limited literacy can access the ADA policy at any time./p pMany people on supervision in Georgia are required to complete programs or classes as a condition of their supervision, but, in the past, the sponsors of many of these programs have refused to provide ASL interpreters and other necessary accommodations to our clients. GDCS will now require that the providers of any classes or programs required for people on supervision, comply with federal disability laws by providing necessary accommodations, such as interpreters, for effective communication./p pWhile we’ve won this fight in Georgia, the work is not yet done. Every parole and probation department in the country has the obligation under federal disability laws to provide not only effective communication to deaf and hard-of-hearing people, but also any a href=https://www.aclu.org/publications/reducing-barriers-a-guide-to-obtaining-reasonable-accommodations-for-people-with-disabilities-on-supervisionreasonable accommodations/a that people with disabilities need to have an equal opportunity to successfully complete supervision. In reality, probation and parole departments regularly fail to determine whether their people with disabilities need accommodations, let alone provide those accommodations./p pRight now, we’re a href=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/class-action-lawsuit-challenges-discriminatory-post-conviction-supervision-system-in-washington-d-cchallenging this failure/a in Washington, D.C., where people with mental health disabilities are nearly twice as likely to face reincarceration or other punishment for “technical violations,” or minor rule violations like missing an appointment with a supervision officer. And in Georgia, we now begin a four-year period of monitoring the state’s compliance with the agreement. As part of that monitoring, GDCS will provide us with documentation to show that they are complying with the agreement and providing effective communication. If they violate it, we’ll see them back in court./p

pThe Supreme Court’s docket this term includes many of the complex issues American society is currently facing, including gun control, free speech online, race-based discrimination in voting, reproductive rights, presidential immunity from criminal accountability, and more./p pThe ACLU has served as counsel or filed friend-of-the-court briefs in all of the cases addressing these hot-button issues. The court will decide all its cases by the beginning of July. Here are eight undecided cases to watch, and what they mean for the future of our civil liberties./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markReproductive freedom: Protections for medication abortion and access to abortion during medical emergencies /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardFDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine/h3 /div pbThe Facts:/b Anti-abortion doctors, who do not prescribe medication abortion, are asking the Supreme Court to force the Food amp; Drug Administration (FDA) to impose severe restrictions on mifepristone – a safe and effective medication used in this country in most abortions and for miscarriage management – in every state, even where abortion is protected by state law./p pbOur Argument: /bThe FDA approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago, finding that it is safe, effective, and medically necessary. Since its approval, more than 5 million people in the U.S. have used this medication. Our brief argued that the two lower courts – a district court in Texas and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – relied on junk science and discredited witnesses to override the FDA’s expert decision to eliminate medically-unnecessary restrictions on an essential medication with a stronger safety record than Tylenol. We urged the Supreme Court to protect access to medication abortion and reverse the lower courts’ rulings./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/danco-laboratories-llc-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine-u-s-fda-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/danco-laboratories-llc-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine-u-s-fda-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine target=_blank Danco Laboratories, LLC, v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine; U.S. FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/danco-laboratories-llc-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine-u-s-fda-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletThe American Civil Liberties Union joined over 200 reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/danco-laboratories-llc-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine-u-s-fda-v-alliance-for-hippocratic-medicine target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters:/b Today, with abortion access already severely restricted, the ability to get medication-abortion care using mifepristone is more important than ever. If the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is allowed to stand, individuals would be blocked from filling mifepristone prescriptions through mail-order pharmacies, forcing many to travel, sometimes hundreds of miles, just to pick up a pill they can safely receive through the mail. Healthcare professionals with specialized training, like advanced practice clinicians, would also be prohibited from prescribing mifepristone, further limiting where patients can access this critical medication. The American Cancer Society and other leading patient advocacy groups are also sounding the alarm that overturning the FDA’s decision would upend drug innovation and research, with consequences well beyond reproductive health care./p pbThe Last Word: /b“As this case shows, overturningi Roe v. Wade /iwasn’t the end goal for extremists. In addition to targeting nationwide-access to mifepristone, politicians in some states have already moved on to attack birth control and IVF. We need to take these extremists seriously when they show us they’re coming for every aspect of our reproductive lives.” – emJennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project./em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardIdaho amp; Moyle et. al v. US/h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bIdaho politicians want the power to disregard the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) that requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in emergency situations, including abortion where that is the appropriate stabilizing treatment. If the state prevails, it would jail doctors for providing pregnant patients with the necessary emergency care required under this federal law./p pbOur Argument: /bThe ACLU and its legal partners filed a friend-of-the-court brief explaining that the law requires hospitals to provide whatever emergency care is required; there is no carve-out for patients who need an abortion to stabilize an emergency condition. All three branches of government have long recognized that hospitals are required under EMTALA to provide emergency abortion care to any patient who needs it./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/idaho-and-moyle-et-al-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/359637f7872568a863b03d635c156d9a-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/idaho-and-moyle-et-al-v-united-states target=_blank Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/idaho-and-moyle-et-al-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletIdaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Idaho politicians seeking to disregard a federal statute — the.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/idaho-and-moyle-et-al-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters:/b Because Idaho#8217;s current abortion ban prohibits providing the emergency care required under EMTALA, medical providers have found themselves having to decide between providing necessary emergency care to a pregnant patient or facing criminal prosecution from the state. Depending on how the court rules, medical providers and patients in several other states with extreme abortion bans could find themselves in a similar position./p pbThe Last Word: /b“If these politicians succeed, doctors will be forced to withhold critical care from their patients. We’re already seeing the devastating impact of this case play out in Idaho, and we fear a ripple effect across the country.” – emAlexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markFree speech: Government authority over online and political speech /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardNational Rifle Association v. Vullo /h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bIn 2018, Maria Vullo, New York’s former chief financial regulator, in coordination with then-Mayor Andrew Cuomo, threatened to use her regulatory power over banks and insurance companies to coerce them into denying basic financial services to the National Rifle Association (NRA) because she and Cuomo disagreed with its pro-gun rights advocacy. The NRA argued that Vullo’s alleged efforts to blacklist the NRA penalized it for its political advocacy, in violation of the First Amendment./p pbOur Argument: /bThe ACLU, representing the NRA at the Supreme Court, argued that any government attempt to blacklist an advocacy group and deny it financial services because of its viewpoint violates the right to free speech. Our brief urges the court to apply the precedent it set in 1963 in iBantam Books v. Sullivan/i, which established that even informal, indirect efforts to censor speech violate the First Amendment./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/national-rifle-association-v-vullo target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/29cdadc17d83f5ef0a78a0e3eca67374.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/29cdadc17d83f5ef0a78a0e3eca67374.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/29cdadc17d83f5ef0a78a0e3eca67374-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/29cdadc17d83f5ef0a78a0e3eca67374-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/national-rifle-association-v-vullo target=_blank National Rifle Association v. Vullo /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/national-rifle-association-v-vullo target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletOn January 9th, 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union filed its opening brief on behalf of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in National.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/national-rifle-association-v-vullo target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bWhile the ACLU stands in stark opposition to the NRA on many issues, this case is about securing basic First Amendment rights for all advocacy organizations. If New York State is allowed to blacklist the NRA, then Oklahoma could similarly penalize criminal justice reformers advocating for bail reform, and Texas could target climate change organizations advancing the view that all fossil fuel extraction must end. The ACLU itself could be targeted for its advocacy./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/why-is-the-aclu-representing-the-nra-before-the-us-supreme-court target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1200 height=628 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-768x402.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-400x209.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-600x314.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-800x419.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/7e5c30fc4a1d9a737ed614291b23e1ec-1000x523.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/why-is-the-aclu-representing-the-nra-before-the-us-supreme-court target=_blank Why is the ACLU Representing the NRA Before the US Supreme Court? /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/why-is-the-aclu-representing-the-nra-before-the-us-supreme-court target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletThe ACLU has always stood up for free speech – no matter the speaker./p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/why-is-the-aclu-representing-the-nra-before-the-us-supreme-court target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbThe Last Word: /b“The right to advocate views the government opposes safeguards our ability to organize for the country we want to see. It’s a principle the ACLU has defended for more than 100 years, and one we will continue to protect from government censorship of all kinds, whether we agree or disagree with the views of those being targeted.” – emDavid Cole, ACLU legal director/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardNetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice /h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bMotivated by a perception that social media platforms disproportionately silence conservative voices, Florida and Texas passed laws that give the government authority to regulate how large social media companies like Facebook and YouTube curate content posted on their sites./p pbOur Argument: /bIn a friend-of-the-court brief, the ACLU, the ACLU of Florida and the ACLU of Texas argued that the First Amendment right to speak includes the right to choose what to publish and how to prioritize what is published. The government’s desire to have private speakers, like social media companies, distribute more conservative viewpoints–or any specific viewpoints–is not a permissible basis for state control of what content appears on privately-owned platforms./p pbWhy it Matters:/b If these laws are allowed to stand, platforms may fear liability and decide to publish nothing at all, effectively eliminating the internet’s function as a modern public square. Or, in an attempt to comply with government regulations, social media companies may be forced to publish a lot more distracting and unwanted content. For example, under the Texas law, which requires “viewpoint neutrality,” a platform that publishes posts about suicide prevention would also have to publish posts directing readers to websites that encourage suicide. ./p pbThe Last Word: /b“Social media companies have a First Amendment right to choose what to host, display, and publish. The Supreme Court has recognized that right for everyone from booksellers to newspapers to cable companies, and this case should make clear that the same is true for social media platforms.” — emVera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, amp; Technology Project/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markVoting rights: Racial gerrymandering and the fight for fair maps /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardAlexander v. South Carolina NAACP/h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bIn 2022, South Carolina adopted a racially-gerrymandered congressional map. The state legislature singled out Black communities, “cracking” predominantly Black communities and neighborhoods across two districts to reduce their electoral influence in the state’s first congressional district./p pbOur Argument: /bThe ACLU and its legal partners sued on behalf of the South Carolina NAACP and an affected voter to challenge the constitutionality of the new congressional map. We argued that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the sorting of voters on the basis of their race, absent a compelling interest, which the state failed to provide./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/alexander-v-south-carolina-state-conference-of-the-naacp target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1000 height=667 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82-400x267.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82-600x400.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/adacb5fd2b08ce6397602bca3ce44e82-800x534.jpg 800w sizes=(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/alexander-v-south-carolina-state-conference-of-the-naacp target=_blank Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP (Congressional Map Challenge) /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/alexander-v-south-carolina-state-conference-of-the-naacp target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletSouth Carolina unlawfully assigned voters to congressional districts based on their race and intentionally discriminated against Black voters in.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/alexander-v-south-carolina-state-conference-of-the-naacp target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bThis racially-gerrymandered congressional map deprives Black South Carolinians the political representation they deserve in all but one of seven districts, limiting the power and influence of more than a quarter of the state’s population just before the 2024 election./p pbThe Last Word: /b“South Carolina’s failure to rectify its racially-gerrymandered congressional map blatantly disregards the voices and the rights of Black voters. The ACLU is determined to fight back until Black South Carolina voters have a lawful map that fairly represents them.” – emAdriel I. Cepeda Derieux, deputy director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markGender justice: Denying guns to persons subject to domestic violence restraining orders/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardUnited States v. Rahimi /h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bZackey Rahimi was convicted under a federal law that forbids individuals subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing a firearm. Mr. Rahimi challenged the law as a violation of his Second Amendment right to bear arms./p pbOur Argument: /bThe U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that individuals subject to domestic violence protective orders have a constitutional right to possess guns. It invalidated the federal gun law because it found no historical analogues in the 1700s or 1800s that prohibited those subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing a firearm. The ACLU argued that the Fifth Circuit’s analysis is a misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in iNew York State Rifle amp; Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen/i because it effectively required a “historical twin” law in order to uphold a law today. There were no identical laws at the time of the Framing because there were no domestic violence protective orders then, but that should not be a basis for invalidating the laws today. We also argued that imposing time-limited firearms restrictions based on civil restraining orders is a critical tool for protecting those who have experienced domestic violence and face a threat of further violence./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/united-states-v-rahimi target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/5d4549447588adb73b5aba378f7d7f59.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/5d4549447588adb73b5aba378f7d7f59.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/5d4549447588adb73b5aba378f7d7f59-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/5d4549447588adb73b5aba378f7d7f59-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/united-states-v-rahimi target=_blank United States v. Rahimi /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/united-states-v-rahimi target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletWhether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits the possession of firearms by persons subject to domestic-violence restraining orders, violates the.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/united-states-v-rahimi target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bIf the Fifth Circuit’s rationale is affirmed, then governments would lose the ability to prohibit gun possession by persons subject to restraining orders — and presumably even to run pre-acquisition background checks, which have stopped more than 77,000 purchases of weapons by individuals subject to domestic violence orders in the 25 years that the federal law has been in place. This “originalist” interpretation of the Second Amendment not only hinders our ability to protect individuals against newly recognized threats, but also tethers the authority to regulate gun possession to periods when governments disregarded many forms of violence directed against women, Black people, Indigenous people, and others./p pbThe Last Word:/b “It would be a radical mistake to allow historical wrongs to defeat efforts today to protect women and other survivors of domestic abuse. The Supreme Court should affirm that the government can enact laws aimed at preventing intimate partner violence, consistent with the Second Amendment.” –em Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markCriminal justice: Eighth-Amendment protections for unhoused persons accused of sleeping in public when they have nowhere else to go /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardCity of Grants Pass v. Johnson /h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bGrants Pass, Oregon, enacted ordinances that make it illegal for people, including unhoused persons with no access to shelter, to sleep outside in public using a blanket, pillow, or even a cardboard sheet to lie on. Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that punishing unhoused people for sleeping in public when they have no other choice violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment./p pbOur Argument: /bIn Oregon, and elsewhere in the United States, the population of unhoused persons often exceeds the number of shelter beds available, forcing many to sleep on the streets or in parks. The ACLU and 19 state affiliates submitted a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that it is cruel and unusual to punish unhoused people for the essential life-sustaining activity of sleeping outside when they lack access to any alternative shelter./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/city-of-grants-pass-v-johnson target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/city-of-grants-pass-v-johnson target=_blank City of Grants Pass v. Johnson /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/city-of-grants-pass-v-johnson target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/city-of-grants-pass-v-johnson target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bWhen applied to people with nowhere else to go, fines and arrests for sleeping outside serve no purpose and are plainly disproportionately punitive. Arresting and fining unhoused people for sleeping in public only exacerbates cycles of homelessness and mass incarceration./p pbThe Last Word: /b“There is no punishment that fits the ‘crime’ of being forced to sleep outside. Instead of saddling people with fines, jail time, and criminal records, cities should focus on proven solutions, like affordable housing, accessible and voluntary services, and eviction protections.” – emScout Katovich, staff attorney with the ACLU Trone Center for Justice and Equality/em/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markDemocracy: Presidential immunity from prosecution for criminal acts after leaving office /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardTrump v. United States/h3 /div pbThe Facts: /bFormer President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to rule that he cannot be held criminally liable for any official acts as president, even after leaving office, and even where the crimes concern efforts to resist the peaceful transition of power after an election. This claim runs contrary to fundamental principles of constitutional accountability, and decades of precedent./p pbOur Argument: /bOur friend-of-the-court brief argues that former President Trump is not immune from criminal prosecution, and that the Constitution and long-established Supreme Court precedent support the principle that in our democracy, nobody is above the law — even the president. Our brief warns that there are “few propositions more dangerous” in a democracy than the notion that an elected head of state has blanket immunity from criminal prosecution./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/trump-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/ba988bc008254460d80a4ea1aa03d252-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/trump-v-united-states target=_blank Trump v. United States /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/trump-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/trump-v-united-states target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pbWhy it Matters: /bNo other president has asserted that presidents can never be prosecuted for official acts that violate criminal law. The president’s accountability to the law is an integral part of the separation of powers and the rule of law. If the President is free, as Trump’s legal counsel argued, to order the assassination of his political opponents and escape all criminal accountability even after he leaves office, both of these fundamental principles of our system would have a fatal Achilles’ heel./p pbThe Last Word: /b“The United States does not have a king, and former presidents have no claim to being above the law. A functioning democracy depends on our ability to critically reckon with the troubling actions of government officials and hold them accountable.” – emDavid Cole, ACLU legal director /em/p

pArcane laws banning people from wearing masks in public are now being used to target people who wear face coverings while peacefully protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. That’s a big problem./p pIn the 1940s and 50s, many U.S. states passed anti-mask laws as a response to the Ku Klux Klan, whose members often hid their identities as they terrorized their victims. These laws were not enacted to protect those victims, but because political leaders wanted to defend segregation as part of a “modern South” and felt that the Klan’s violent racism was making them look bad./p pNow these laws are being used across the country to try and clamp down on disfavored groups and movements, raising questions about selective prosecution. Just this month, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost a href=https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-05-08/masked-student-protesters-could-face-felony-charges-under-anti-kkk-law-ohio-attorney-general-warnssent a letter/a to the state’s 14 public universities alerting them that protesters could be charged with a felony under the state’s little-used anti-mask law, which carries penalties of between six to 18 months in prison. An Ohio legal expert, Rob Barnhart, observed that he’d a href=https://www.wosu.org/politics-government/2024-05-07/protesters-could-face-felony-charge-if-arrested-while-wearing-a-mask-under-obscure-ohio-lawnever heard/a of the state’s law being applied previously, even to bank robbers wearing masks. While Yost framed his letter as “proactive guidance,” Barnhart countered that “I find it really hard to believe that this is some public service announcement to students to be aware of a 70-year-old law that nobody uses.”/p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/americas-mask-bans-in-the-age-of-face-recognition-surveillance target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1200 height=628 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5b813d014d9877b39c43e882a1782bed.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5b813d014d9877b39c43e882a1782bed.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5b813d014d9877b39c43e882a1782bed-768x402.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5b813d014d9877b39c43e882a1782bed-400x209.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5b813d014d9877b39c43e882a1782bed-600x314.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5b813d014d9877b39c43e882a1782bed-800x419.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5b813d014d9877b39c43e882a1782bed-1000x523.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/americas-mask-bans-in-the-age-of-face-recognition-surveillance target=_blank America's Mask Bans in the Age of Face Recognition Surveillance /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/americas-mask-bans-in-the-age-of-face-recognition-surveillance target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletAmerican laws should allow people the freedom to cover up their faces in protests or anywhere else./p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/americas-mask-bans-in-the-age-of-face-recognition-surveillance target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pOhio officials aren’t the only ones who seem to be selectively enforcing anti-mask laws against student protestors. Administrators at the University of North Carolina a href=https://chapelboro.com/news/unc/unc-asks-pro-palestine-protesters-to-stop-wearing-masks-citing-1953-anti-kkk-lawhave warned/a protesters that wearing masks violates the state’s anti-mask law and “runs counter to our campus norms and is a violation of UNC policy.” Students arrested during a protest at the University of Florida were a href=https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2024/04/29/police-make-first-arrests-in-florida-of-pro-palestinian-protesters-at-two-university-campuses/charged with/a, among other things, wearing masks in public. At the University of Texas at Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott and university officials called in state troopers to a href=https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/29/university-texas-pro-palestinian-protest-arrest/violently/a break up pro-Palestinian protests after the school a href=https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/ut-austin-police-protest-arrests-19422645.phprescinded permission/a for a rally on the grounds that protesters had a “declared intent to violate our policies and rules.” One of the rules the administrators cited was a university ban on wearing face masks “to obstruct law enforcement.”/p pAt a time when both public and private actors are increasingly turning to invasive surveillance technologies to identify protesters, mask-wearing is an important way for us to safeguard our right to speak out on issues of public concern. While the ACLU has raised concerns about how anti-mask laws have been wielded for decades, we are especially worried about the risk they pose to our constitutional freedoms in the digital age./p pIn particular, the emergence of face recognition technology has changed what it means to appear in public. Increasingly omnipresent cameras and corrosive technology products such as a href=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/18/magazine/facial-recognition-clearview-ai.htmlClearview AI/a allow police to easily identify people. So, too, can private parties. The push to normalize face recognition by security agencies threatens to turn our faces into the functional equivalent of license plates. Anti-mask laws are in effect a requirement to display those “plates” anytime one is in public. Humans are not cars./p pOf course, mask-wearing is not just about privacy — it can also be an expressive act, a religious practice, a political statement, or a public-health measure. The ACLU has chronicled the a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/americas-mask-bans-in-the-age-of-face-recognition-surveillancemask-wearing debate/a for years. As recently as 2019, anti-mask laws were used against a href=https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/nypd-arresting-wall-street-protesters-wearing-masks/337706/Occupy Wall Street/a protesters,a href=https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional/white-nationalist-richard-spencer-riles-auburn-campus-three-arrested/5HeaD0TCfvfNI7DuXDUciJ/ anti-racism/aa href=https://wtvr.com/2017/09/19/mask-in-public-court-hearing/ protesters/a, anda href=https://wbhm.org/feature/2019/experts-alabamas-mask-law-is-outdated/ police violence/a protesters. The coronavirus temporarily scrambled the mask-wearing debate and made a mask both a protective and a a href=https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-donald-trump-ap-top-news-politics-health-7dce310db6e85b31d735e81d0af6769cpolitical/a act./p pToday, one question that remains is whether and how the authorities distinguish between those who are wearing a mask to protect their identities and those who are wearing one to protect themselves against disease. That ambiguity opens up even more space for discretionary and selective enforcement. In North Carolina, the state Senate is currently considering an anti-protest bill that would remove the exception for wearing a mask for health purposes altogether, and would add a sentencing enhancement for committing a crime while wearing a mask./p pFor those speaking out in support of the Palestinian people, being recognized in a crowd can have extreme consequences for their personal and professional security. During the Gaza protests, pro-Israel activists and organizations have posted the faces and personal information of pro-Palestine activists to intimidate them, get them fired, or otherwise shame them for their views. These doxing attempts have intensified, with viral videos showing counterprotesters demanding that pro-Palestinian protesters remove their masks at rallies. Professionally, employers have a href=https://www.thecut.com/2023/10/israel-hamas-war-job-loss-social-media.htmlterminated workers/a for their comments about Israel and Palestine, and CEOs have a href=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-ackman-wants-harvard-name-104621975.htmldemanded/a universities give them the names of protesters in order to blacklist them from jobs./p pWhile wearing a mask can make it harder to identify a person, it#8217;s important for protesters to know that it’s not always effective. Masks haven’t stopped the a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/business/china-protests-surveillance.htmlChinese government/a or a href=https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/google-workers-fired-after-protesting-israeli-contract-file-complaint-labor-regulators/Google/a, for example, from identifying protesters and taking action against them. Technologies that can be used to identify masked protesters range froma href=https://www.notus.org/technology/war-zone-surveillance-border-us Bluetooth and WiFi signals/a, to historical cell phone location data, to constitutionally dubious devices calleda href=https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/police-citing-terrorism-buy-stingrays-used-only IMSI Catchers/a, which pretend to be a cell tower and ping nearby phones, prompting phones to reply with an identifying ping of their own. We may also see the development of a href=https://www.aclu.org/publications/dawn-robot-surveillancevideo analytics/a technologies that use gait recognition or body-proportion measurements. During Covid, face recognition also got a href=https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56517033much/aa href=https://www.zdnet.com/article/facial-recognition-now-algorithms-can-see-through-face-masks/ better/a at identifying people wearing partial face masks./p pProtecting people’s freedom to wear masks can have consequences. It can make it harder to identify people who commit crimes, whether they are bank robbers, muggers, or the members of the “a href=https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-07/a-ucla-timeline-from-peaceful-encampment-to-violent-attacks-aftermathviolent mob/a” that attacked a peaceful protest encampment at UCLA. Like all freedoms, the freedom to wear a mask can be abused. But that does not justify taking that freedom away from those protesting peacefully, especially in today’s surveillance environment./p pAnti-mask laws, undoubtedly, have a significant chilling effect on some protesters#8217; willingness to show up for causes they believe in. The bravery of those who do show up to support a highly-controversial cause in the current surveillance landscape is admirable, but Americans shouldn’t have to be brave to exercise their right to protest. Until privacy protections catch up with technology, officials and policymakers should do all they can to make it possible for less-brave people to show up and protest. That includes refusing to use anti-mask laws to target peaceful protestors./p

pNyynkpao Banyee remembers vividly the first time he saw the United States. He was six years old, flying high above New York City. “If I close my eyes right now, I go back to seeing, just being above New York and seeing those lights for the first time. It was nighttime. And there was snow. I remember seeing that for the first time, just a little bit, but it was beautiful,” he recalled recently./p pMr. Banyee, his mother and younger brother came to the U.S. in 2004 as refugees fleeing the civil war in Côte D’Ivoire. His father died in Côte D’Ivoire shortly after the family arrived in the States. They resettled first in rural Pennsylvania, then moved to Philadelphia and later became lawful permanent residents. When he was about 17, the family moved to North Dakota, where he has been living for nearly a decade and now lives with his mother and his two younger half-siblings. His mother’s two sisters live nearby, as does his brother./p pAn inquisitive and observant child, Mr. Banyee was fascinated by drawing and comic books. Today, at 26, he is a restaurant-worker who aims to use that creativity to turn his interest in music into a career. He has ambitious plans for building up his own business. He supports his family, although he says his family is really his support system, especially his mother. “Me and my siblings talk about this among ourselves: we’ve never seen a woman or a person as strong as our mother,” he said./p pA dark shadow hangs over Mr. Banyee’s bright future. He’s facing the possible loss of his liberty – deportation to a country he has never been back to since he fled as a child refugee and permanent separation from his family and the only home he’s ever known./p div class=alignfullwidth mb-8 wp-pullquote div class= wp-pullquote-inner p#8220;I Just Couldn’t Allow Myself to Be Defeated#8221;/p /div /div pIn 2017, when he was just 19, Mr. Banyee was arrested for robbery and later sentenced to four years in prison. He experienced a lot of fear upon being incarcerated but was inspired to turn over a new leaf. “A lot of different things kept me motivated, but I would say primarily, from the core, it was my family,” he said./p pWhile incarcerated, Mr. Banyee worked on himself and was motivated to learn as much as he could.He read an enormous selection of novels, finance books, magazines, and worked in the prison. His favorite job was working in the library. He voluntarily completed numerous programs in peer support, mental wellness, and practical skills like budgeting and CPR./p p“I just got into learning, learning, learning. I just couldn’t allow myself to be defeated [by the system].”/p pHe wrote letters to his family and sent them the poems he’d written. He wrote so much his family couldn’t keep up. Although his family wanted to visit him as much as possible, he wanted to spare them the burden of driving the long distance from their home to the prison, and the emotional toll of seeing him in prison. They still talked on the phone frequently./p pAfter spending years working on himself, Mr. Banyee’s release date was finally approaching: March 31, 2021. He was expecting to go home, but when March 31 came, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were waiting for him at the prison. They took him into custody, and he was transferred from North Dakota to a Minnesota jail./p p“I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Banyee said. “I’ve been [in the U.S.] my entire life. I had no idea – no clue – what ICE was and what this department was capable of, or what in the world was going on.” He called his mother from the jail to tell her he was in detention again – not for a criminal reason, but because of immigration./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardThe Unjust System of Mandatory Immigration Detention /h2 /div pWhy was Mr. Banyee taken into immigration detention the moment he was released from prison?/p pIt was because of a law that Congress passed in 1996 that requires the mandatory detention of noncitizens facing possible deportation for criminal conduct. Under this law, ICE can detain noncitizens slated for deportation for a range of criminal convictions, including convictions for nonviolent, minor, or old offenses, and even if the noncitizens have already served their time and are a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preaplong rehabilitated./a While their deportation cases are pending – a process that can take years – noncitizens could sit behind bars indefinitely, without the right to a bond hearing, even if they pose no danger or flight risk./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preap target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ccd40eb636771df4582a1631f217cb88.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ccd40eb636771df4582a1631f217cb88.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ccd40eb636771df4582a1631f217cb88-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ccd40eb636771df4582a1631f217cb88-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preap target=_blank Nielsen v. Preap /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preap target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletWhether the government can require that certain people are detained for the duration of their deportation proceedings — without a hearing —.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preap target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pSince the mandatory detention law was enacted in 1996, the ACLU has taken the lead in a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/jennings-v-rodriguezchallenging/a it in the courts. My Khanh Ngo, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project (IRP), said immigration detention is not supposed to be about punishment. The only legitimate government interests in immigration detention are if a person poses a flight risk or a danger to the public. But the mandatory detention statute allows the government to detain a person without showing why it’s necessary – violating a basic principle of due process. Ngo recently appeared as counsel for Mr. Banyee before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, where she a href=http://media-oa.ca8.uscourts.gov/OAaudio/2024/2/222252.MP3argued/a that the mandatory detention statute was unconstitutionally applied to him./p p“The problem with mandatory detention is that there is no individualized consideration,” Ngo said, “Our argument has always been the government needs to bear the burden of showing this person needs to be detained either by [showing they’re a] flight risk or danger.”/p pAfter nearly 13 months in detention, Mr. Banyee and his volunteer immigration counsel, the Advocates for Human Rights (AHR), won a habeas petition – a request to a court or judge to determine whether a person#8217;s detainment is legal or just – and was granted a bond hearing. An immigration judge released him on bond in April 2022. He had been incarcerated for over five years, four for the criminal conviction, and one for mandatory immigration detention./p pHis family and friends celebrated his release with a big feast. Every moment of freedom has been special. “I had five years taken away from a lot of our time together,” Mr. Banyee said of his family. “I’m trying to spend as much time with them.”/p pToday, the federal government is appealing Mr. Banyee’s habeas decision, arguing that it has a right to detain him with no limit, as long as his deportation case is proceeding. The ACLU has joined AHR to defend the habeas grant, supporting Mr. Banyee’s right to have a bond hearing and be free while he challenges his deportation case./p pMandatory detention significantly impacts a person’s ability to defend against deportation and win relief to which they might be entitled. Even though immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment, people are often detained in criminal detention settings and subject to the same rules and limitations as people who are incarcerated./p pNgo explains there is no right to government-appointed immigration counsel, so a person in immigration detention is much less likely to be represented because they can’t work and are less likely to be able to afford a lawyer. People in immigration detention also have limited phone or email access and limited language services, preventing them from engaging with the outside world, including legal services. Often, they are isolated and unable to gather evidence to defend themselves./p pThe United States’ immigration detention system is the largest in the world, Ngo notes. “The conditions of immigration detention are so horrific,” she said. “No other country holds this many immigrants to try to deport them.”/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardA Mistake Shouldn’t Mean Exile /h2 /div pLike many noncitizens, Mr. Banyee has deep roots in the U.S. and has already served his time for crimes he committed. Yet, he and many others are again deprived of their liberty through mandatory immigration detention, and face the possibility of deportation./p pSome, like Mr. Banyee, are arrested immediately after their term of incarceration ends. Others are arrested years after they complete any sentence for their convictions, even though they have reintegrated into their communities and have not had any legal troubles. For many, it feels like double punishment./p p“You shouldn’t be defined by one thing that took place in your history, and that shouldn’t consign you to a life of permanent banishment from the United States,” Ngo said./p pMr. Banyee has had significant success defending against deportation in his immigration court proceedings. An immigration judge and three members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) have determined that he deserves cancellation of removal, meaning that if he wins his case, he can keep his lawful permanent resident status and one day become a U.S. citizen. His immigration case is currently on appeal for the second time, before the BIA, where it can take years to resolve. At the same time, he is waiting for the Eight Circuit to decide if he can remain free on bond while he awaits a decision on the deportation case./p p“Everybody makes mistakes,” Mr. Banyee said. “In my case, [I] served time, [I] actually went through the process of giving back that adhered to the principles of the society.” He feels deportation would be an extreme consequence for people, like him, who arrived in the U.S. as children, whose lives are here, and who have already served their time for past mistakes./p pMr. Banyee wants to stay in the U.S., with his family, in the country he calls home. The U.S. is the country that has molded him, that has provided him security and allowed him to have ambitious dreams while supporting his family. “I’m willing to put in the work,” he said, “just to be allowed to live that dream.”/p

pMany of us will celebrate Mother’s Day over the weekend by remembering or being present with women who raised us, or with our families. But for the a href=https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024women.htmlmore than 190,000 women incarcerated in the United States this weekend/a, there will be no celebration./p pClose to a href=https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2023/05/Incarcerated-Women-and-Girls-1.pdf60 percent/a of these women serving prison sentences were the primary caregiver of their minor children before sentencing. All too often, a prison sentence tears them from their family connections and contact with their children, while severing their children from a vital source of emotional and financial support. State women’s prisons are often located in rural areas, with limited modes of transportation, and families struggle to visit./p pAs a result, families have very few in-person visits, and must rely on postal mail, or pay inflated prices for telephone calls and video contacts. Compounding the lack of connection, women in many state prisons cannot even hold in their hands and cherish a card or drawing sent by their children. Many prisons a href=https://slate.com/technology/2018/12/pennsylvania-prison-scanned-mail-smart-communications.htmlhave done away with real mail/a, and now use vendors to intercept, scan, and destroy all postal mail, delivering poor quality printouts of the original letter to the incarcerated recipients weeks later for a fee./p pIn addition to women sentenced to prison, more than a href=https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/cj0519st.pdf#page=462.4 million women/a spend at least one day in jail each year, and a href=https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/overlooked-women-and-jails-report-updated.pdf80 percent of them/a are mothers of children under the age of 18. And more than 60 percent of women in our nation’s jails are presumed innocent and awaiting trial, a href=https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-profit-shapes-bail-bond-systemjailed due to poverty and an inability to purchase their freedom/a by posting bail./p pChildren with mothers incarcerated in local jails often fare no better than those whose mothers are in state prisons: Some jails have a class=Hyperlink SCXW228476086 BCX0 href=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/us/jail-visits-ban-michigan-lawsuit.html target=_blank rel=noreferrer noopenercompletely banned in-person visitation/a to require all visits be done by paid video, not because of COVID, but to boost their bottom line. A a class=Hyperlink SCXW228476086 BCX0 href=https://www.prisonpolicy.org/visitation/report.html target=_blank rel=noreferrer noopener2015 study/a found that 74 percent of jails had banned in-person visits after putting video visits into place. Even when women are able to have in-person visits with their children, jail visits are often done through a plexiglass barrier. Women cannot hold, hug, touch, or kiss their children./p pAlthough many more men are incarcerated than women in the U.S., women’s rate of incarceration has grown a href=https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/women_overtime.htmltwice that of men in the past 40 years/a. Since 2009, while the overall number of people in prisons and jails has decreased, a href=https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/women_overtime.htmlwomen have fared worse than men in 35 states/a. Women and families of color are disproportionately affected by this increase. Black and Native American / Alaska Native women are a href=http://chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/p22st.pdfincarcerated at double their share of the population of women in the United States. /a/p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/issues/prisoners-rights/women-prison target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9be40077d72d6d19f05757087e5331e2.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9be40077d72d6d19f05757087e5331e2.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9be40077d72d6d19f05757087e5331e2-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9be40077d72d6d19f05757087e5331e2-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/issues/prisoners-rights/women-prison target=_blank Women in Prison /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/issues/prisoners-rights/women-prison target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletThe ACLU works in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/issues/prisoners-rights/women-prison target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pWomen often become entangled with the criminal legal system due to trying to cope with poverty, limited access to child care, underemployment or unemployment, unstable housing, and physical and mental health challenges. They get thrown into a legal system that criminalizes survival behaviors such as selling drugs or sex work, and policies that charge and arrest persons for being present when crimes are committed by others, “aiding and abetting” others, or fighting back against domestic violence. Aa href=https://survivedandpunished.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/SP_ResearchAcrossWalls_FINAL-compressedfordigital.pdf study in California found/a that 93 percent of women incarcerated in state prison for a homicide of a partner were abused by the person they killed, and in two-thirds of those cases, the homicide occurred while attempting to protect themselves or their children./p pIncarcerated women have high rates of histories of physical and sexual abuse, trauma, and mental health and substance use disorders. While incarcerated, a href=https://www.ktvu.com/news/u-s-senators-call-fci-dublin-transfer-of-women-appallingwomen are more likely than incarcerated men/a to face a href=https://thehill.com/opinion/4648109-feds-close-prison-dubbed-the-rape-club-but-accountability-is-needed/sexual abuse or harassment/a by correctional staff, and they experience serious psychological distress due to incarceration and the conditions in prisons. a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/jensen-v-thornellTreatment in prisons/a or jails for mental health conditions, substance use disorders, and trauma is often nonexistent. Health care for physical medical conditions or pregnancy often is limited at best: Last year, through our a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/jensen-v-thornelllawsuit/a, we learned the Arizona Department of Corrections was a href=https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2023/01/02/arizona-inducing-labor-of-pregnant-prisoners-against-their-will/69768038007/inducing the labor/a of pregnant incarcerated people against their will. This came after we a href=https://kjzz.org/content/951486/pregnant-women-arizona-prison-suffering-miscarriages-giving-birth-alonedocumented inadequate prenatal and postpartum care/a of women in Arizona prisons in 2019, including a woman with serious mental illness who gave birth alone, in the toilet of her cell, at a maximum custody unit./p pSo what can we do to honor incarcerated women and families? First, we can financially support the incredible work of community-based bail funds that help free mothers and bring them home to their children and families. Second, we can support criminal legal reform policies to stop mass incarceration./p pThe a href=https://www.nationalbailout.org/National Bail Out/a is a Black-led and Black-centered collective of organizers and advocates who are working to abolish pretrial detention and mass incarceration. They have coordinated with a variety of other groups, including a href=https://southernersonnewground.org/our-work/freefromfear/black-mamas-bail-out-action/Southerners on New Ground (SONG)/a, to create the tactical mass bail out of #FreeBlackMamas to acknowledge the reality that incarceration of women disproportionately affects Black women. They work with partner organizations to post bail for incarcerated women year-round, but especially before Mother’s Day. This year, instead of (or in addition to) sending flowers to your favorite mothers, you can donate to a href=https://www.nationalbailout.org/partnersNational Bail Out or the 18 Black-led organizations they are working with across the country/a to help #FreeBlackMamas./p pWe also need to address the root causes of the incarceration of women in this country, which is often due to poverty. While drug or property offenses account for about half of the charges for which women are incarcerated, policies must also focus on reducing a href=https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article272572946.htmlso-called “violent” offenses/a that women commit often in response to violence and abuse./p pWhen we incarcerate women, we are causing irreparable damage to them, their families, and all of our communities./p

pA lot of people are surprised to hear they may not get a lawyer at their first bail hearing: “Don’t I have a right to an attorney?”/p pYou should – that’s what the ACLU has argued in court in a href=https://www.aclutx.org/sites/default/files/pi_mem_and_recs.pdfGalveston/a, a href=https://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/en/cases/guill-v-allen-previously-allison-et-al-v-allenNorth Carolina/a, a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/white-et-al-v-hesse-et-alOklahoma/a, Oregon, a href=https://www.aclupa.org/en/press-releases/aclu-pa-files-federal-class-action-lawsuit-challenging-unconstitutional-bailPennsylvania/a, and Utah. But half of U.S. states do not guarantee counsel at first appearance. In these states, first appearance is typically a rushed proceeding where magistrates (limited-purpose judges) rubber-stamp detention orders without entertaining arguments to let people out of jail. This “hearing” often takes place inside the jail with no means of public access. Without defenders present to fight on behalf of arrestees, and without the check of public accountability, the gross unfairness resulting from the lack of counsel can be lost on even the most well-meaning public officials./p pOur most recent investigation in a href=https://www.aclutx.org/en/press-releases/aclu-texas-court-wTravis County, Texas/a, documents what we commonly observe when we scratch the surface of these lawyer-less bail hearings. The ACLU of Texas organized volunteer law students to observe hundreds of first appearances in the first quarter of 2024. The results, digested by the ACLU’s data and analytics team, support our most recent a href=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/travis-county-sued-over-denying-right-to-legal-counsellawsuit on counsel at first appearance/a and demonstrate why counsel at first appearance is so important. Here is what we found:/p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/travis-county-sued-over-denying-right-to-legal-counsel target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=526 height=400 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/bf6ba780faedf4eb0210c7ffb12cb208.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/bf6ba780faedf4eb0210c7ffb12cb208.jpg 526w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/bf6ba780faedf4eb0210c7ffb12cb208-400x304.jpg 400w sizes=(max-width: 526px) 100vw, 526px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/travis-county-sued-over-denying-right-to-legal-counsel target=_blank Travis County Sued Over Denying Right to Legal Counsel /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/travis-county-sued-over-denying-right-to-legal-counsel target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/travis-county-sued-over-denying-right-to-legal-counsel target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markJudges are punting on release./h2 /div pMagistrates order detention but tell arrestees that down the line, a lawyer might make a persuasive argument for release. This practice effectively punts the ireal/i release decision until after a lawyer is appointed and the case is assigned to the trial judge – jailing the arrestee in the meantime. The numbers bear this out: we observed magistrates require cash bail at significantly higher rates than Travis County claims over the total duration of criminal cases. Our observation confirms what magistrates are owning up to from the start: iafter/i lawyers are appointed, the lawyer’s advocacy secures release without cash bail and gets more people out. The days that people wait in jail for their lawyer matter. Beside the fact that any time jail is inherently harmful, people lose their jobs and can’t be home to take care of their families. And even a few days in jail without a lawyer increases the chances that people plead guilty and accept harsher sentences, because they’re fighting their cases on an uneven playing field./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/betschart-v-state-of-oregon-amicus-brief target=_blank tabindex=-1 /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/betschart-v-state-of-oregon-amicus-brief target=_blank Betschart v. State of Oregon Amicus Brief /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/betschart-v-state-of-oregon-amicus-brief target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/betschart-v-state-of-oregon-amicus-brief target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markPeople are at high risk of self-incrimination./h2 /div pIt’s natural for people to try to argue for their release: 29 percent of arrestees we observed made potentially harmful statements about their cases. People without legal training can’t realistically make a strategic choice about waiving the right to silence or deciding what to say. Even statements that are not outright confessions can limit strategies for the defense. It’s impossible to know from court observation alone how harmful these statements are in the scheme of each person’s criminal defense. But the harm of some statements, including those documented in our a href=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/travis-county-sued-over-denying-right-to-legal-counselsubsequent lawsuit/a, is painfully obvious:/p ul liIt happened a long time ago/li liI have no choice but to be in that area (site of alleged trespass)/li liOh . . . well, I guess it was a crime/li liIf I could do it all over again, I would/li /ul div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/dawn-h-medina-v-the-hon-ann-marie-mciff-allen-amicus-brief target=_blank tabindex=-1 /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/dawn-h-medina-v-the-hon-ann-marie-mciff-allen-amicus-brief target=_blank Dawn H. Medina v. The Hon. Ann Marie McIff Allen Amicus Brief /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/dawn-h-medina-v-the-hon-ann-marie-mciff-allen-amicus-brief target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/dawn-h-medina-v-the-hon-ann-marie-mciff-allen-amicus-brief target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markVideo appearances are inadequate and prone to abuse./h2 /div pIn the absence of counsel at first appearance, court and jail personnel begin to regard first appearance as an empty formality rather than a meaningful hearing on release. First appearances conducted by video reinforce this dynamic: magistrates see arrestees as images on a screen, rather than human beings whose freedom is on the line. In Travis County, we documented communication problems resulting from video feeds in 10 percent of first appearances. Respect for the purpose of first appearance had eroded so dramatically that magistrates conducted the hearing through a camera pointed at the meal tray slot on cell doors, forcing arrestees to communicate by bending over to talk through the narrow slot. When the magistrate and arrestee could not communicate, the magistrate relied on jail staff to relay what the arrestee was saying and whether it appeared they could hear. Follow-up reporting by the a href=https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2024-04-19/video-travis-county-violating-rights-by-barring-attorneys-from-bail-hearings-aclu-claims/Austin Chronicle/a documented additional instances of this practice, leading a retired federal judge to comment on the importance of counsel at first appearance./p pMany officials – even in progressive Austin, Texas – try to convince themselves that counsel at first appearance is a luxury rather than a necessity. These findings show the need for counsel at first appearance./p

pFace recognition technology in the hands of police is dangerous. Police departments across the country frequently use the technology to try to identify images of unknown suspects by comparing them to large photo databases, but it often fails to generate a correct match. And numerous a href=https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/19/federal-study-confirms-racial-bias-many-facial-recognition-systems-casts-doubt-their-expanding-use/studies/a have shown that face recognition technology misidentifies Black people and other people of color at higher rates than white people. To date, there have been at least seven wrongful arrests we know of in the United States due to police reliance on incorrect face recognition results — and those are just the known cases. In nearly every one of those instances, a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recognition-arrest.htmlthe/a a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/facial-recognition-false-arrests.htmlperson/a a href=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/does-a-i-lead-police-to-ignore-contradictory-evidence/wrongfully/a a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/business/facial-recognition-false-arrest.htmlarrested/a a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/facial-recognition-misidentify-jail.htmlwas/a a href=https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/07/10/facial-recognition-detroit-michael-oliver-robert-williams/5392166002/Black/a./p pSupporters of police using face recognition technology often portray these failures as unfortunate mistakes that are unlikely to recur. Yet, they keep coming. Last year, six Detroit police officers showed up at the doorstep of an a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/business/facial-recognition-false-arrest.htmleight-months pregnant woman/a and wrongfully arrested her in front of her children for a carjacking that she could not plausibly have committed. A month later, the prosecutor dismissed the case against her./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/i-did-nothing-wrong-i-was-arrested-anyway target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=2800 height=1400 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt=Robert Williams and his daughter, Rosie Williams decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed.jpg 2800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-768x384.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-1536x768.jpg 1536w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-2048x1024.jpg 2048w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-600x300.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-800x400.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-1000x500.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-1200x600.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-1400x700.jpg 1400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Robert-Williams-Full-Bleed-1600x800.jpg 1600w sizes=(max-width: 2800px) 100vw, 2800px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/i-did-nothing-wrong-i-was-arrested-anyway target=_blank I Did Nothing Wrong. I Was Arrested Anyway. /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/i-did-nothing-wrong-i-was-arrested-anyway target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletOver a year after a police face recognition tool matched me to a crime I did not commit, my family still feels the impact. We must stop this.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/i-did-nothing-wrong-i-was-arrested-anyway target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pPolice departments should be doing everything in their power to avoid wrongful arrests, which can turn people’s lives upside down and result in loss of work, inability to care for children, and other harmful consequences. So, what’s behind these repeated failures? As the ACLU explained in a a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-comment-facial-recognition-and-biometric-technologies-eo-14074-13erecent submission/a to the federal government, there are multiple ways in which police use of face recognition technology goes wrong. Perhaps most glaring is that the most widely adopted police policy designed to avoid false arrests in this context emsimply does not work/em. Records from the wrongful arrest cases demonstrate why./p pIt has become standard practice among police departments and companies making this technology to warn officers that a result from a face recognition search does not constitute a positive identification of a suspect, and that additional investigation is necessary to develop the probable cause needed to obtain an arrest warrant. For example, the International Association of Chiefs of Police a href=https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/IJIS_IACP%20WP_LEITTF_Facial%20Recognition%20UseCasesRpt_20190322.pdfcautions/a that a face recognition search result is “a strong clue, and nothing more, which must then be corroborated against other facts and investigative findings before a person can be determined to be the subject whose identity is being sought.” The Detroit Police Department’s face recognition technology a href=https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2020-10/307.5%20Facial%20Recognition.pdfpolicy/a adopted in September 2019 similarly states that a face recognition search result is only an “an investigative lead and IS NOT TO BE CONSIDERED A POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION OF ANY SUBJECT. Any possible connection or involvement of any subject to the investigation must be determined through further investigation and investigative resources.”/p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-comment-facial-recognition-and-biometric-technologies-eo-14074-13e target=_blank tabindex=-1 /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-comment-facial-recognition-and-biometric-technologies-eo-14074-13e target=_blank ACLU Comment re: Request for Comment on Law Enforcement Agencies' Use of Facial Recognition Technology, Other Technologies Using Biometric Information, and Predictive Algorithms (Exec. Order 14074, Section 13(e)) /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-comment-facial-recognition-and-biometric-technologies-eo-14074-13e target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-comment-facial-recognition-and-biometric-technologies-eo-14074-13e target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pPolice departments across the country, from a href=https://lacris.org/LACRIS Facial Recognition Policy v_2019.pdfLos Angeles County/a to the a href=https://www.in.gov/iifc/files/Indiana_Intelligence_Fusion_Center_Face_Recognition_Policy.pdfIndiana State Police/a, to the U.S. a href=https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-09/23_0913_mgmt_026-11-use-face-recognition-face-capture-technologies.pdfDepartment of Homeland Security/a, provide similar warnings. However ubiquitous, these warnings have failed to prevent harm./p pWe’ve seen police treat the face recognition result as a positive identification, ignoring or not understanding the warnings that face recognition technology is simply not reliable enough to provide a positive identification./p pIn Louisiana, for example, police relied solely on an incorrect face recognition search result from Clearview AI as purported probable cause for an arrest warrant. The officers did this even though the law enforcement agency signed a contract with the face recognition company acknowledging officers “must conduct further research in order to verify identities or other data generated by the [Clearview] system.” That overreliance led to a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/facial-recognition-false-arrests.htmlRandal Quran Reid/a, a Georgia resident who had never even been to Louisiana, being wrongfully arrested for a crime he couldn’t have committed and held for nearly a week in jail./p pIn an a href=https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/local/2023/10/19/evansville-police-using-clearview-ai-facial-recognition-to-make-arrests/70963350007/Indiana investigation/a, police similarly obtained an arrest warrant based only upon an assertion that the detective “viewed the footage and utilized the Clearview AI software to positively identify the female suspect.” No additional confirmatory investigation was conducted./p pBut even when police do conduct additional investigative steps, those steps often emexacerbate and compound/em the unreliability of face recognition searches. This is a particular problem when police move directly from a facial recognition result to a witness identification procedure, such as a photographic lineup./p pFace recognition technology is designed to generate a list of faces that are emsimilar/em to the suspect’s image, but often will not actually be a match. When police think they have a match, they frequently ask a witness who saw the suspect to view a photo lineup consisting of the image derived from the face recognition search, plus five “filler” photos of other people. Photo lineups have long been known to carry a high risk of misidentification. The addition of face recognition-generated images only makes it worse. Because the face recognition-generated image is likely to appear more similar to the suspect than the filler photos, there is a a href=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/does-a-i-lead-police-to-ignore-contradictory-evidence/heightened chance/a that a witness will a href=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4101826mistakenly choose/a that image out of the lineup, even though it is not a true match./p pThis problem has contributed to known cases of wrongful arrests, including the arrests of a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/business/facial-recognition-false-arrest.htmlPorcha Woodruff/a, a href=https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/07/10/facial-recognition-detroit-michael-oliver-robert-williams/5392166002/Michael Oliver/a, and a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recognition-arrest.htmlRobert Williams/a by Detroit police (the ACLU represents Mr. Williams in a a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/i-did-nothing-wrong-i-was-arrested-anywaywrongful arrest lawsuit/a). In these cases, police obtained an arrest warrant based solely on the combination of a false match from face recognition technology; and a false identification from a witness viewing a photo lineup that was constructed around the face recognition lead and five filler photos. Each of the witnesses chose the face recognition-derived false match, instead of deciding that the suspect did not, in fact, appear in the lineup./p pA lawsuit filed earlier this year in Texas alleges that a similar series of failures led to the wrongful arrest of a href=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/22/sunglass-hut-facial-recognition-wrongful-arrest-lawsuit?ref=upstract.comHarvey Eugene Murphy Jr./a by Houston police. And in New Jersey, police wrongfully arrested a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/facial-recognition-misidentify-jail.htmlNijeer Parks/a in 2019 after face recognition technology incorrectly flagged him as a likely match to a shoplifting suspect. An officer who had seen the suspect (before he fled) viewed the face recognition result, and said he thought it matched his memory of the suspect’s face./p pAfter the Detroit Police Department’s third wrongful arrest from face recognition technology became public last year, Detroit’s chief of police a href=https://www.facebook.com/CityofDetroit/videos/287218473992047acknowledged/a the problem of erroneous face recognition results tainting subsequent witness identifications. He explained that by moving straight from face recognition result to lineup, “it is possible to taint the photo lineup by presenting a person who looks most like the suspect” but is not in fact the suspect. The Department’s policy, merely telling police that they should conduct “further investigation,” had not stopped police from engaging in this bad practice./p pBecause police have repeatedly proved unable or unwilling to follow face recognition searches with adequate independent investigation, police access to the technology must be strictly curtailed — and the best way to do this is through strong a href=https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/02.16.2021_coalition_letter_requesting_federal_moratorium_on_facial_recognition.pdfbans/a. More than 20 jurisdictions across the country, from Boston, to Pittsburgh, to San Francisco, have done just that, barring police from using this dangerous technology./p pBoilerplate warnings have proven ineffective. Whether these warnings fail because of human a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/technology/facial-recognition-software.htmlcognitive bias/a toward trusting computer outputs, poor police training, incentives to quickly close cases, implicit racism, lack of consequences, the fallibility of witness identifications, or other factors, we don’t know. But if the experience of known wrongful arrests teaches us anything, it is that such warnings are woefully inadequate to protect against abuse./p

pThe Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in iIdaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States/i, which will determine whether politicians can put doctors in jail for treating pregnant patients experiencing medical emergencies. The ultimate decision in the case — which is expected by the summer — could have severe consequences on the health and lives of people across the country facing emergency pregnancy complications. Here’s what you need to know:/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardThis case is about politicians trying to block emergency care for pregnant patients./h2 /div pAnti-abortion politicians brought this case all the way up to the Supreme Court to deny pregnant people access to emergency abortion care that is necessary to prevent severe and potentially life-altering health consequences, and even death. A federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act or EMTALA, has long guaranteed that, in an emergency, patients can get the care they need — including abortion care — regardless of where they live. This is not a Democrat or Republican issue: Every administration from President Reagan to President Biden has recognized that EMTALA requires emergency abortion care. The Supreme Court#8217;s decision to overturn iRoe v. Wade/i did not diminish these longstanding federal protections, which override state laws that would prohibit such care, but now, extreme politicians are doing everything in their power to prevent someone experiencing emergency pregnancy complications from getting care in emergency rooms./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardThis case could have a severe impact on emergency care across the country, and these devastating effects are already playing out in Idaho. /h2 /div pWhile it considers the case, the Supreme Court has already allowed Idaho politicians to block emergency care for pregnant people using the state’s abortion ban which has no exception for health, and the impact is already reverberating across the state. For example, St. Luke’s Health System, the largest health system in Idaho, which sees hundreds of thousands of emergency department visits each year, reports that they are now transferring pregnant patients with medical emergencies out of state to get the care they need, but even that delay can also increase the unacceptable risks patients face. Not surprisingly, doctors do not want to practice in a state where they are criminalized for providing the emergency care their patients need: Since Idaho’s extreme abortion ban took effect, more than 20 percent of obstetricians in Idaho have left the state, according to a a href=https://www.idahocsh.org/idaho-physician-wellbeing-action-collaborativereport/a published by the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare./p pIf the Supreme Court sides with Idaho in this case, these devastating effects on patients and doctors alike could spread to other states with extreme abortion bans, such as Arizona, and would give anti-abortion politicians around the country the green light to try to prohibit this essential, even life-saving, emergency care./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardThis case is about doctors and hospitals that want to provide care, but politicians want to stop them from treating patients. /h2 /div pThe issues in this case are about hospitals and physicians who want to fulfill their oath and provide care to patients experiencing medical emergencies, but politicians want to enforce Idaho’s abortion ban up until the moment that a pregnant person’s life is at imminent risk. “Can I continue to replace her blood loss fast enough? How many organ systems must be failing? Can a patient be hours away from death before I intervene, or does it have to be minutes?”/p div class=wp-audio mb-8 div class=wp-audio__content span class=wp-audio__episode-title is-hidden-tablet is-hidden-desktop is-size-5 is-size-6-mobile In Alabama, Embryos Are People and It Won't Stop There /span div class=wp-audio__metadata columns div class=column span class=wp-audio__episode-title is-hidden-mobile is-size-5 is-size-6-mobileIn Alabama, Embryos Are People and It Won't Stop There/span p class=wp-audio__episode-description line-clamp-3 is-size-6 is-hidden-mobile On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children under state law, meaning the embryo has rights consistent with a person living in the United States. While this marks the first time a frozen embryo has been granted ... /p p class=wp-audio__episode-description line-clamp-5 is-size-7 is-hidden-tablet is-hidden-desktop On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children under state law, meaning the embryo has rights consistent with a person living in the United States. While this marks the first time a frozen embryo has been granted ... /p /div div class=wp-audio__thumbnail-wrapper column img class=wp-audio__thumbnail src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/themes/aclu-wp/img/at-liberty_500x500.jpg alt=Cover artwork for / /div /div /div div class=wp-audio__links is-flex is-align-items-center pl-none pl-4-tablet div class=wp-audio__links-episode is-size-7 has-text-grey has-text-weight-bold p-4 a href=https://www.aclu.org/podcast/in-alabama-embryos-are-people-and-it-wont-stop-there class=visit-link p-none mb-none no-underline column span class=visit-link__textVisit this episode/spanspan class=icon caret is-dark right / /a /div /div /div pThese are some of the questions our client Dr. Caitlin Gustafson shared that some Idaho providers are now forced to consider when a patient comes in with an emergency pregnancy complication in a recent a href=https://time.com/6968774/idaho-abortion-doctors-essay/op-ed/a on the case. Politics shouldn’t matter when you’re trying to treat a patient whose condition is rapidly deteriorating before your very eyes, but that’s the exact dystopia politicians are trying to force on all of us./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardThe extremists behind this case won’t stop with abortion. /h2 /div pOverturning iRoe v. Wade/i was just the beginning. Anti-abortion politicians are using every tool at their disposal in their campaign to ban abortion nationwide, and they won’t stop there. They are also pushing a legal strategy to give rights to embryos and fetuses that would override the rights of the pregnant person. We saw what happened in Alabama when the state supreme court granted rights to embryos, which forced IVF clinics across the state to temporarily shut down services. To be clear: There isn’t a serious argument to use EMTALA to grant legal rights to embryos, but that may not stop justices from considering whether to follow the lead of the anti-abortion movement and issue another devastating blow to people’s power to make personal medical decisions during pregnancy./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardWe have the power to fight back, and we will win!/h2 /div pAnti-abortion politicians and the groups supporting them are trying to use the courts to further their agenda because the policies they’re pushing are deeply unpopular. Every time abortion is on the ballot, voters send a clear message that they want reproductive freedom to be protected. That’s why the anti-abortion movement has turned to the courts to carry out their agenda, and the scary thing is they might just be successful./p pWhile there is already federal law to protect access to emergency care, the way anti-abortion politicians are trying to manipulate their state’s ban to deny people emergency care shows why we need to put an end to state bans once and for all. We need Congress to pass federal protections for abortion rights that will end extreme bans in states and protect access to care nationwide./p

pRight now, efforts to censor college protestors, to ban diverse materials in schools and to silence students and staff threaten our right to free speech in schools. People are having their voices silenced, their right to learn challenged, and their access to information restricted. But how can we navigate these complex issues with the next generation?/p pWe at the ACLU created a series of comic stories with illustrative journalist Eda Uzunlar to empower students and educators, spark vital conversations about their rights, and ensure all voices are heard and clear, both in the classroom and beyond. Our first installment illustrates the story of Anthony Crawford who is a public school teacher and part of a a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/bert-v-oconnorlawsuit challenging HB 1775/a, Oklahoma’s classroom censorship law./p pIn this Qamp;A, we sat down with Eda to discuss why comics are the perfect medium to tackle these issues and connect with young people in a way that resonates far more effectively than traditional media can./p pbLet’s start with your journey as an illustrative journalist, comic creator, and audio enthusiast. What inspired you to use this kind of medium for your work?/b/p pI#8217;ve been making comics since childhood. Like most kids, I doodled, and eventually, my doodles turned into my first comic. It was about a character called Spaceman – creative, I know – an astronaut stranded on the moon. He was this sardonic, really sarcastic, figure. It was a simple concept. He became this kind of vessel for expressing myself as a young person, particularly growing up in South Dakota with my family being both Muslim and immigrants from Turkey. Expressing these issues in a way that people who were very different from me would understand was crucial to me./p div class=wp-single-image sizing--full-bleed mb-8 figure class=wp-image mb-8 img width=2800 height=1400 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A preview of Eda Uzunlar#039;s comic featuring teacher and activist Anothy Crawford. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three.jpg 2800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-768x384.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-1536x768.jpg 1536w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-2048x1024.jpg 2048w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-600x300.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-800x400.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-1000x500.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-1200x600.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-1400x700.jpg 1400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-three-1600x800.jpg 1600w sizes=(max-width: 2800px) 100vw, 2800px / /figure /div pI realized that comics are a way to discuss complex stories without oversimplifying them. But I never imagined it would become a career. Similarly, my entry into journalism was unexpected. Someone introduced me to FM radio in my teens. Within a year, community radio became this amazing space for me where I hosted a show discussing anything, from civil disobedience to whether or not respect is implied or earned – things I thought people from any background could weigh in on. And I don’t know why they gave a 16-year-old the ability to take live calls, but I got to talk to so many people in my community that way. It felt like a continuation of my comics — anonymous conversations driven by passion rather than preconceived notions based on appearances./p pSo I took those experiences and turned them into what I do now. I try to help people tell their stories – no matter how complex – in an accessible way, so others can gain understanding of perspectives they might not have known about before./p pbIt#8217;s so great how you#8217;ve integrated your childhood passion for comics with your later pursuits in journalism and radio. You mentioned that comics offer a unique way to discuss complex issues without oversimplifying them. How do you navigate that balance between accessibility and depth when creating your comic content?/b/p pIt#8217;s all about breaking down big ideas into something digestible and engaging. When stories like these are presented in a visual format, it helps the audience both process and retain what they’re taking in. This especially applies to younger people. They#8217;re the ones making use of social media and watching YouTube to learn about the world around them. Traditional newspapers? Not so much for them. And when we#8217;re talking about accessibility, it#8217;s a big deal. There#8217;s a direct correlation between marginalized groups and limited access to media literacy. Traditional long-form journalism often fails to reach these communities./p div class=wp-single-image sizing--full-bleed mb-8 figure class=wp-image mb-8 img width=2800 height=1400 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A preview of Eda Uzunlar#039;s comic featuring teacher and activist Anothy Crawford. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b.jpg 2800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-768x384.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-1536x768.jpg 1536w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-2048x1024.jpg 2048w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-600x300.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-800x400.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-1000x500.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-1200x600.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-1400x700.jpg 1400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/crt-3-b-1600x800.jpg 1600w sizes=(max-width: 2800px) 100vw, 2800px / /figure /div pTake, for instance, the whole debate around critical race theory (CRT) in Oklahoma. A long-winded article might not reach the people who need to hear about it most. But with comics, we#8217;re able to package up those complex ideas into something that will catch your eye and is easy to grasp. It#8217;s like delivering a message directly to their social media feed. By making these reported stories visually engaging and using everyday language, we#8217;re making sure that everyone gets a chance to join the conversation, especially those who might feel left out by traditional media channels, especially the ones with a paywall./p pbLet’s talk about this first comic you worked on about Anthony Crawford, an Oklahoma teacher who is part of a lawsuit challenging a classroom censorship bill. How did your approach to brainstorming and initial sketches contribute to capturing his story, particularly in conveying the depth of Black history and the importance of including both student and teacher perspectives?/b/p pThere#8217;s a process where you try very hard not to limit yourself at the beginning. That#8217;s where you do quick sketches of one panel ten times, trying anything that might be cool to represent the idea. For example, for the panel about Black history being filled with wisdom, not just difficulty, there are a thousand ways to approach it. That could be represented literally with historical figures, or the opposite, which is what I did – a tree. A really big, grand tree. On its own, it could mean anything. But with the context and few words in the panel, it suggests a huge heritage and lineage. Trees are generational, lasting hundreds or even thousands of years. I had about five ideas, and then I saw how the tree looked. The detail and grandeur of this single image helped convey the depth to which Anthony described the importance of Black history in America, aligning with the voice he gave it throughout the piece. That#8217;s another thing – I went back and said, #8220;Listen, there#8217;s just a tree in this panel, but it’s based on how you talked about what Black history feels like to you.#8221; Like history existed before we were here and after we#8217;re gone, just like a tree. And he was like, #8220;That#8217;s perfect.#8221;/p video controls source src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/TREENAME_TIMELAPSE.mp4 type=video/mp4 / Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. /video div class=wp-audio div class=wp-audio__content div class=wp-audio__metadata h3 class=wp-audio__episode-titleEda on Adding Figures in Black History to An Illustration/h3 /div audio controls controlslist= source src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/treenames.mp3 type=audio/mpeg Your browser does not support the audio element. /audio /div div class=wp-audio__links a class=wp-audio__download-link href=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/treenames.mp3 target=_blankDownload audio/a /div /div pWith critical race theory and book bans, everyone loses. The teacher, the student, the whole community is affected when our right to learn and right to free speech are stifled. So we really wanted to get both the student and teacher perspectives. Anthony opened his own story as a teenage version of himself in the early 2000s, enraged because he wasn’t being taught his own community’s history, discussing his experience as a student, which served as an ideal starting point for the piece. Eventually, he transitions into the current day, where he’s facing the same problem – only now, he’s the teacher. And there’s this vague law in Oklahoma that makes it hard for him to teach that same history, and the history of other oppressed communities in America. This shift illustrates the cyclical nature of issues like CRT and book bans in Oklahoma, highlighting how such restrictions on free speech persist over time. The initial depiction of Anthony as an unhappy student parallels the final panel where he faces his own students, who are motivated to learn because they can actually see themselves in their histories./p pbFrom Anthony’s perspective as a teacher, the issue of critical race theory getting banned is represented as one that educators like him are worried about. How did you make sure that struggle spoke to the younger audience as well? /b/p pWhen students face dilemmas like seeing banned books in their libraries and the removal of celebrated authors of color from their curriculum, it can shake their confidence in their education and understanding of history. That’s the first part of the comic, and allows young people to make connections with the younger version of Anthony. Then, the narrative zeroes in on the educator perspective. Anthony champions diverse perspectives in his classroom. Through his actions, the comic reveals Anthony’s motivations for teaching, emphasizing his dedication to his students and his younger self. That’s where I wanted students to connect to the teacher side of the comic – so they know that if their right to an inclusive education is stifled, even if none of their own teachers have taken steps to continue teaching about America’s diverse history, there are educators out there who care and are making a difference. My hope is that by seeing someone who was once in their shoes assert his First Amendment rights, current students feel empowered to do the same for themselves./p video controls source src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/AC_TIMELAPSE.mp4 type=video/mp4 / Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. /video div class=wp-audio div class=wp-audio__content div class=wp-audio__metadata h3 class=wp-audio__episode-titleEda on Drawing Anthony /h3 /div audio controls controlslist= source src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/anthonydrawing.wav type=audio/mpeg Your browser does not support the audio element. /audio /div div class=wp-audio__links a class=wp-audio__download-link href=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/anthonydrawing.wav target=_blankDownload audio/a /div /div pIn fact, I have seen my comics be used as a connection between students and teachers. I put out a comic about juvenile justice, and about a year later, a teacher from Wyoming reached out to me on Facebook and shared that one of their students shared my comic with them. Next thing you know, they#8217;re teaching it in their classes, sparking discussions on juvenile justice, and showing students how to navigate tough situations. It#8217;s pretty amazing, right? Shows how comics can really make a difference in the real world by influencing education and promoting meaningful dialogue./p

pDear College and University Presidents:/p pWe write in response to the recent protests that have spread across our nation’s university and college campuses, and the disturbing arrests that have followed. We understand that as leaders of your campus communities, it can be extraordinarily difficult to navigate the pressures you face from politicians, donors, and faculty and students alike. You also have legal obligations to combat discrimination and a responsibility to maintain order. But as you fashion responses to the activism of your students (and faculty and staff), it is essential that you not sacrifice principles of academic freedom and free speech that are core to the educational mission of your respected institution./p pThe ACLU a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/the-streets-belong-to-the-people-always-have-always-willhelped/a establish the right to protest as a central pillar of the First Amendment. We have defended those principles for more than a century. The a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/united-states-bill-rights-first-10-amendments-constitutionFirst Amendment/a compels public universities and colleges to respect free speech rights. And while the Constitution does not apply directly to private institutions, academic freedom and free inquiry require that similar principles guide private universities. We approach this moment with appreciation for the challenges you confront. In the spirit of offering constructive solutions for a way forward, we offer five basic guardrails to ensure freedom of speech and academic freedom while protecting against discriminatory harassment and disruptive conduct./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardSchools must not single out particular viewpoints for censorship, discipline, or disproportionate punishment/h2 /div piFirst/i, university administrators must not single out particular viewpoints — however offensive they may be to some members of the community — for censorship, discipline, or disproportionate punishment. Viewpoint neutrality is essential. Harassment directed at individuals because of their race, ethnicity, or religion is not, of course, permissible. But general calls for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” or defenses of Israel’s assault on Gaza, even if many listeners find these messages deeply offensive, cannot be prohibited or punished by a university that respects free speech principles./p pThese protections extend to both students and faculty, and to speech that supports either side of the conflict. Outside the classroom, including on social media, students and professors must be free to express even the most controversial political opinions without fear of discipline or censure. Inside the classroom, speech can be and always has been subject to more restrictive rules to ensure civil dialogue and a robust learning environment. But such rules have no place in a public forum like a campus green. Preserving physical safety on campuses is paramount; but “safety” from ideas or views that one finds offensive is anathema to the very enterprise of the university./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardSchools must protect students from discriminatory harassment and violence/h2 /div piSecond/i, both public and private universities are bound by civil rights laws that guarantee all students equal access to education, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. This means that schools can, and indeed must, protect students from discriminatory harassment on the basis of race or national origin, which has been a href=https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/sharedancestry.htmlinterpreted/a to include discrimination on the basis of “shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics,” or “citizenship or residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity.”/p pSo, while offensive and even racist speech is constitutionally protected, shouting an epithet at a particular student or pinning an offensive sign to their dorm room door can constitute impermissible harassment, not free speech. Antisemitic or anti-Palestinian speech targeted at individuals because of their ethnicity or national origin constitutes invidious discrimination, and cannot be tolerated. Physically intimidating students by blocking their movements or pursuing them aggressively is unprotected iconduct/i, not protected ispeech/i. It should go without saying that violence is never an acceptable protest tactic./p pSpeech that is inot/i targeted at an individual or individuals because of their ethnicity or national origin but merely expresses impassioned views about Israel or Palestine is not discrimination and should be protected. The only exception for such untargeted speech is where it is so severe or pervasive that it denies students equal access to an education — an extremely demanding standard that has almost never been met by pure speech. One can criticize Israel’s actions, even in vituperative terms, without being antisemitic. And by the same token, one can support Israel’s actions in Gaza and condemn Hamas without being anti-Muslim. Administrators must resist the tendency to equate criticism with discrimination. Speech condoning violence can be condemned, to be sure. But it cannot be the basis for punishment, without more./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardSchools can announce and enforce reasonable content-neutral protest policies but they must leave ample room for students to express themselves/h2 /div piThird/i, universities can announce and enforce reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions on protest activity to ensure that essential college functions can continue. Such restrictions must be content neutral, meaning that they do not depend on the substance of what is being communicated, but rather where, when, or how it is being communicated. Protests can be limited to certain areas of campus and certain times of the day, for example. These policies must, however, leave ample room for students to speak to and to be heard by other members of the community. And the rules must not only be content neutral on their face; they must also be applied in a content-neutral manner. If a university has routinely tolerated violations of its rules, and suddenly enforces them harshly in a specific context, singling out particular views for punishment, the fact that the policy is formally neutral on its face does not make viewpoint-based enforcement permissible./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardSchools must recognize that armed police on campus can endanger students and are a measure of last resort/h2 /div piFourth/i, when enforcement of content-neutral rules may be warranted, college administrators should involve police only as a last resort, after all other efforts have been exhausted. Inviting armed police into a campus protest environment, even a volatile one, can create unacceptable risks for all students and staff. University officials must also be cognizant of the history of law enforcement using inappropriate and excessive force on communities of color, including Black, Brown, and immigrant students. Moreover, arresting peaceful protestors is also likely to escalate, not calm, the tensions on campus — as events of the past week have made abundantly clear./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardSchools must resist the pressures placed on them by politicians seeking to exploit campus tensions/h2 /div piFinally/i, campus leaders must resist the pressures placed on them by politicians seeking to exploit campus tensions to advance their own notoriety or partisan agendas. Recent congressional hearings have featured disgraceful attacks by members of Congress on academic freedom and freedom of speech. Universities must stand up to such intimidation, and defend the principles of academic freedom so essential to their integrity and mission./p pThe Supreme Court has forcefully a href=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/408/169/rejected/a the premise that, “because of the acknowledged need for order, First Amendment protections should apply with less force on college campuses than in the community at large.”/p p“Quite to the contrary,” the court stated, “the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.” In keeping with these values, we urge you to resist the temptation to silence students or faculty members because powerful voices deem their views offensive. Instead, we urge you to defend the university’s core mission of encouraging debate, fostering dissent, and preparing the future leaders of our pluralistic society to tolerate even profound differences of opinion./p

pIn 2023, Kansas enacted a law attempting to define “transgender” out of existence by restricting the definition of a “woman” to the biological function of producing ova. Not only does this definition negate the experiences of trans women and girls, but it also excludes entire categories of women who are not transgender, such as post-menopausal women, women experiencing reproductive challenges, and intersex women./p pDespite being passed under the dubious title “Women’s Bill of Rights,” this law has not been used to create any new protections for women, nor improve support for women’s initiatives or resources. Instead, the law has been used to incite fear among transgender Kansans and limit their ability to live freely in our state./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/kansas-v-harper target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/lgbtq-issue-image.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt=LGBTQ issue image decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/lgbtq-issue-image.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/lgbtq-issue-image-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/lgbtq-issue-image-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/kansas-v-harper target=_blank Kansas v. Harper /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/kansas-v-harper target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletFive transgender Kansans are challenging an effort by Kansas Attorney General Kobach to require the state to issue driver’s licenses with a.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/kansas-v-harper target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pKansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has claimed the new law restricts trans Kansans from updating the gender marker on their state IDs. For years, Kansas had allowed transgender residents and those born here to change the gender marker on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates. Despite having these affirming policies without any identified administrative, public safety, or other concerns, the attorney general took to the courts to pressure state agencies into removing these policies./p pIn response, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced a policy change banning trans Kansans from updating the gender marker on their birth certificates. The Kansas Department of Revenue, which issues driver’s licenses, declined to change its policy — prompting Kobach to sue KDOR to force a policy change in ia href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/kansas-v-harperKansas v. Harper/a./i/p pThe a href=https://www.aclukansas.org/enACLU of Kansas/a, along with ACLU’s LGBTQ amp; HIV Project and local partners, intervened in that lawsuit on behalf of five transgender Kansans to assert their right to a driver’s license that does not forcibly out them. Unfortunately, three days after the suit was filed and prior to our intervention, the judge issued a temporary order blocking trans Kansans from changing their license’s gender marker. The order, which remains in force, also requires a previously changed gender marker to revert back to the inaccurate marker when the license expires or is amended in the future./p pThis means trans people are not currently able to access accurate and affirming state identity documents in Kansas. Having an ID that reflects a trans person’s lived identity is crucial to their safety, privacy, and bodily autonomy. The research shows that lack of access to an affirming ID harms trans people, making them vulnerable to forced outing and increasing their chances of experiencing discrimination, harassment, and violence./p pThe ACLU of Kansas is going to keep fighting in iKansas v. Harper /ias long as necessary. But we also understand that trans people cannot wait months (or years) for a ruling from the courts affirming their basic constitutional rights. They must use their IDs in daily life for countless reasons, from picking up mail to purchasing items at the store. That’s why we began to partner with local LGBTQ advocates to uplift an alternative option for trans Kansans — gender-affirming ifederal/i IDs, like passport cards and passport booklets./p pTrans people can self-attest their gender when applying for a federal ID, meaning they do not need a state ID that verifies their selected gender. For trans Kansans, this means they can still obtain a federal ID that reflects the gender they live as. The ACLU of Kansas and our community partners are thrilled that despite legislative and political attacks on trans Kansans, we are still able to support our community and reduce the harm flowing from anti-trans policies in our state./p pThe ACLU of Kansas has hosted numerous Know Your Rights events and Federal ID Clinics to provide resources and reassurance to trans Kansans. People who come to these events have been relieved and overwhelmed by the community support they experience. In the face of discriminatory laws trying to erase their existence, trans Kansans are coming together to share information and support each other. The power of community persists./p pIn the wake of nationwide anti-trans legislation and rhetoric over the past few years, events where trans Kansans can come together are even more important. In a rural state like Kansas where people can feel isolated, these events are not only an opportunity for people to access the assistance they need, but they also allow folks to connect and share in their pain and in their joy. One mother I met at a virtual event was ecstatic to know she could get her child a gender-affirming federal ID before they started college. She feared that her child would not be able to enroll for college with the correct name and gender marker because of the new anti-trans law./p pDespite efforts by anti-trans extremists to try to deny our humanity, to isolate us, trans Kansans are not going anywhere. Thousands of trans people call Kansas home, and we will remain. We will continue to define our own lives, support each other, and build power. These laws may have produced a wide unknown but the power of our community is deeply rooted./p

pAI is nearly impossible for us to escape these days. a href=https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalinabryant/2024/03/14/how-ai-is-reshaping-social-media-platforms-and-5-tips-for-success/Social media/a companies, a href=https://www.wired.com/story/student-papers-generative-ai-turnitin/schools/a, a href=https://www.npr.org/2022/05/12/1098601458/artificial-intelligence-job-discrimination-disabilitiesworkplaces/a, and even a href=https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/dating-apps-are-starting-crack/678022/dating apps/a are all trying to harness AI to remake their services and platforms, and AI can impact our lives in ways large and small. While many of these efforts are just getting underway — and often raise significant civil rights issues — you might be surprised to learn that America’s most prolific spy agency has for years been one of AI’s biggest adopters./p pThe National Security Agency (NSA) is the self-described a href=https://www.nsa.gov/leader/a among U.S. intelligence agencies racing to develop and deploy AI. It’s also the agency that sweeps up vast quantities of our phone calls, text messages, and internet communications as it conducts a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/five-things-to-know-about-nsa-mass-surveillance-and-the-coming-fight-in-congressmass surveillance/a around the world. In recent years, AI has transformed many of the NSA’s daily operations: the agency uses AI tools to help a href=https://perma.cc/97GE-4ULZgather/a information on foreign governments, a href=https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2022/10/intelligence-community-developing-new-uses-ai-perfconaugment/a human language processing, a href=https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-helps-u-s-intelligence-track-hackers-targeting-critical-infrastructure-944553facomb/a through networks for cybersecurity threats, and even monitor its own analysts as they do their jobs./p pUnfortunately, that’s about all we know. As the NSA a href=https://perma.cc/97GE-4ULZintegrates/a AI into some of its most profound decisions, it’s left us in the dark about how it uses AI and what safeguards, if any, are in place to protect everyday Americans and others around the globe whose privacy hangs in the balance./p pThat’s why we’re suing to find out what the NSA is hiding. Today, the ACLU filed a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/nsa-ai-foia-complainta lawsuit/a under the Freedom of Information Act to compel the release of recently completed studies, roadmaps, and reports that explain how the NSA is using AI and what impact it is having on people’s civil rights and civil liberties. Indeed, although much of the NSA’s surveillance is aimed at people overseas, those activities increasingly ensnare the sensitive communications and data of people in the United States as well./p pBehind closed doors, the NSA has been studying the effects of AI on its operations for several years. A year-and-a-half ago, the Inspectors General at the Department of Defense and the NSA issued a a href=https://perma.cc/A4L3-EC4Kjoint report/a examining how the NSA has integrated AI into its operations. NSA officials have also publicly lauded the completion of a href=https://perma.cc/F4ZT-PNTBstudies/a, a href=https://perma.cc/EQB4-XDVCroadmaps/a, and a href=https://perma.cc/SXP8-4APAcongressionally-mandated plans/a on the agency’s use of novel technologies like generative AI in its surveillance activities. But despite transparency pledges, none of those documents have been released to the public, not even in redacted form./p pThe government’s secrecy flies in the face of its own public commitments to transparency when it comes to AI. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA and more than a dozen other intelligence agencies, has touted transparency as a core principle in its a href=https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/AI_Ethics_Framework_for_the_Intelligence_Community_10.pdfArtificial Intelligence Ethics Framework for the Intelligence Community/a. And a href=https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-promoting-use-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence-federal-government/#:~:text=Certain%20agencies%20have%20already%20adopted,National%20Intelligence's%20Principles%20of%20Artificialadministrations/a a href=https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/10/30/executive-order-on-the-safe-secure-and-trustworthy-development-and-use-of-artificial-intelligence/from both parties/a have reiterated that AI must be used in a manner that builds public confidence while also advancing principles of equity and justice. By failing to disclose the kinds of critical information sought in our lawsuit, the government is failing its own ethical standards: it is rapidly deploying powerful AI systems without public accountability or oversight./p pThe government’s lack of transparency is especially concerning given the dangers that AI systems pose for people’s civil rights and civil liberties. As we’ve already seen in areas like a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/how-face-recognition-fuels-racist-systems-of-policing-and-immigration-and-why-congress-must-act-nowlaw enforcement/a and a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/how-artificial-intelligence-might-prevent-you-from-getting-hiredemployment/a, using algorithmic systems to gather and analyze intelligence can compound privacy intrusions and perpetuate discrimination. AI systems may amplify biases already embedded in training data or rely on flawed algorithms, and they may have higher error rates when applied to people of color and marginalized communities. For example, built-in bias or flawed intelligence algorithms may lead to additional surveillance and investigation of individuals, exposing their lives to wide-ranging government scrutiny. In the most extreme cases, bad tips could be passed along to agencies like Department of Homeland Security or the FBI, leading to immigration consequences or even wrongful arrests./p pAI tools have the potential to expand the NSA’s surveillance dragnet more than ever before, expose private facts about our lives through vast data-mining activities, and automate decisions that once relied on human expertise and judgment. These are dangerous, powerful tools, as the NSA’s own ethical principles recognize. The public deserves to know how the government is using them./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/the-government-is-racing-to-deploy-ai-but-at-what-cost-to-our-freedom target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1200 height=628 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/0c811044641e2e113a33ba4134743c76.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/0c811044641e2e113a33ba4134743c76.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/0c811044641e2e113a33ba4134743c76-768x402.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/0c811044641e2e113a33ba4134743c76-400x209.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/0c811044641e2e113a33ba4134743c76-600x314.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/0c811044641e2e113a33ba4134743c76-800x419.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/0c811044641e2e113a33ba4134743c76-1000x523.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/the-government-is-racing-to-deploy-ai-but-at-what-cost-to-our-freedom target=_blank The Government is Racing to Deploy AI, But at What Cost to Our Freedom? /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/the-government-is-racing-to-deploy-ai-but-at-what-cost-to-our-freedom target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletOur FOIA request seeks to uncover information about what types of AI tools intelligence agencies are deploying, what rules constrain their use, and.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/the-government-is-racing-to-deploy-ai-but-at-what-cost-to-our-freedom target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div

pThe Supreme Court recently declined to hear a case, a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/doe-v-mckessoniMckesson v. Doe/i/a, that could have affirmed that the First Amendment protects protest organizers from being held liable for illegal actions committed by others present that organizers did not direct or intend. The high court’s decision to not hear the case at this time left in place an opinion by the Fifth Circuit, which covers Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, that said a protest organizer could be liable for the independent, violent actions of others based on nothing more than a showing of negligence./p pAcross the country, many people have expressed concern about how the Supreme Court’s decision not to review, or hear, the case at this stage could impact the right to protest. The ACLU, which asked the court to take up the case, breaks down what the court’s denial of review means./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardWhat Happened in Mckesson v. Doe?/h2 /div pThe case, a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/doe-v-mckesson#press-releasesiMckesson v. Doe/i/a, was brought by a police officer against a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/deray-mckesson-on-the-threat-to-protesters-rightsDeRay Mckesson/a, a prominent civil rights activist. The officer claims that Mckesson should be liable for personal injuries he suffered after an unknown individual — not Mckesson — threw a “rock-like” object at the officer during a 2016 protest of the killing of Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge, Louisiana police./p pThe officer does not claim that Mckesson encouraged or even knew about the rock-throwing. Rather than sue the rock-thrower, however, the officer is suing Mckesson on the theory that he allegedly organized the protest and in turn had a duty to protect every person there. In doing so, the argument goes, he “should have known” an assault could occur./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/doe-v-mckesson#press-releases target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1600 height=1066 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358.jpg 1600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358-400x267.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358-600x400.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358-800x533.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358-1000x666.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/97fe74bcd4689ea5205a3761b37ff358-1400x933.jpg 1400w sizes=(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/doe-v-mckesson#press-releases target=_blank Mckesson v. Doe /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/doe-v-mckesson#press-releases target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletCan a protest leader be held legally responsible for injuries inflicted by an unidentified person’s violent act at the protest?/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/doe-v-mckesson#press-releases target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pThe idea is that a protest organizer can be held responsible for what a stranger present at the protest does to someone else, not because the organizer asked or meant for them to do it, but merely because it was foreseeable that they might. If this theory of “negligent protest” were accepted, it would become far more risky to organize a protest. The ACLU has argued that this standard of liability violates the First Amendment in part because it would pose an unconstitutional burden on our right to protest./p pDespite this, and after several years of procedural back-and-forth between courts, the Fifth Circuit ruled in 2023 that the negligence claim against McKesson did not violate the First Amendment. Instead, the Fifth Circuit held that a protest organizer could be liable for the independent, violent actions of others based on nothing more than a showing of negligence./p pRecognizing how this decision squarely violates First Amendment fundamentals, the ACLU and co-counsel filed a a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/doe-v-mckesson?document=plaintiff-applicant-brief-certified-question#press-releasespetition for certiorari/a, asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Fifth Circuit’s obviously wrong ruling. Unfortunately, the court a href=https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-373_8njq.pdfdenied our petition/a./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardWhat Does the Supreme Court’s Denial of Review Mean for Our Right to Protest?/h2 /div pWhile the Supreme Court does not generally explain why it declines to hear a case — and it can do so for any number of reasons — Justice Sonia Sotomayor a href=https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-373_8njq.pdfwrote a statement/a accompanying the denial that might explain the reason in this case: the Supreme Court has already settled this question, so the law is not in need of further clarification./p pIn her statement, Justice Sotomayor explains that, in 2023, shortly after the Fifth Circuit’s decision, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/counterman-v-coloradoiCounterman v. Colorado/i/ai, /iwhere it confirmed that negligence is never a sufficient basis for imposing liability on political expression and association. In fact, in iCounterman/i, the court made it explicitly clear that, when it comes to drawing the line between unprotected incitement and the kinds of “strong protests against the government and prevailing social order” that lie at the heart of the First Amendment, a showing of intent is required. That’s a much higher standard than negligence, which asks only whether someone who didn’t know what impact their speech would have ishould /ihave known the possible effect. Intent, in contrast, requires that the speaker knew about, wanted, and aimed for the resulting harm./p pJustice Sotomayor concluded her statement by emphasizing that while the Fifth Circuit did not have the benefit of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in iCounterman /iwhen it issued its opinion, the lower courts in this case (and in general) now do, and are expected to fairly apply that decision in future proceedings./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardHas Our Right to Protest Changed? /h2 /div pSome people have suggested that the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear this case means that our right to protest has been effectively abolished in three U.S. states. That’s not accurate./p pWhile it is true that the Fifth Circuit’s erroneous decision has not been vacated, and technically could be invoked against protest organizers in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, it is important to understand two things./p pFirst, separate from the First Amendment problem, there’s the question of whether a “negligent protest” claim even exists under a state’s civil law. In iMckesson/i, the Louisiana Supreme Court said yes, but the high courts in Texas and Mississippi haven’t said the same. That means, the theory of “negligent protest” in iMckesson /iis specific to Louisiana state law./p pSecond, when it comes to the First Amendment, the Supreme Court has made it explicitly clear in many other cases that negligence is too low a threshold for imposing liability on one person for another person’s violence or other illegal acts at a protest./p pTo take just one example, in 1982, the court held that while the Constitution does not protect violence, it does limit the government’s ability to place responsibility for that violence onto peaceful protest leaders who did not direct or intend it. That seminal civil rights case, iNAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co./i, has been cited repeatedly to ensure robust speech protections, including to a href=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-kentucky-lawsuit/trump-wins-dismissal-of-inciting-to-riot-lawsuit-over-2016-rally-idUSKCN1LR22Bdismiss a lawsuit/a against then-candidate Donald Trump for violent acts committed by others at a campaign rally and to a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/south-dakota-governor-caves-on-attempted-efforts-to-silence-pipeline-protesters/challenge/a efforts to stifle Keystone XL pipeline protests. As Justice Sotomayor’s statement highlighted, the court recently reaffirmed these rules in iCounterman/i./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/south-dakota-governor-caves-on-attempted-efforts-to-silence-pipeline-protesters target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1200 height=628 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/7218730dbc6777f6d6b6043a99ade53a.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/7218730dbc6777f6d6b6043a99ade53a.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/7218730dbc6777f6d6b6043a99ade53a-768x402.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/7218730dbc6777f6d6b6043a99ade53a-400x209.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/7218730dbc6777f6d6b6043a99ade53a-600x314.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/7218730dbc6777f6d6b6043a99ade53a-800x419.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/7218730dbc6777f6d6b6043a99ade53a-1000x523.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/south-dakota-governor-caves-on-attempted-efforts-to-silence-pipeline-protesters target=_blank South Dakota Governor Caves on Attempted Efforts to Silence Pipeline Protesters /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/south-dakota-governor-caves-on-attempted-efforts-to-silence-pipeline-protesters target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletThe state's quick retreat should serve as a lesson for other legislatures: if you criminalize protest, we will sue./p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/south-dakota-governor-caves-on-attempted-efforts-to-silence-pipeline-protesters target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pHowever, since the Supreme Court did not officially reverse the Fifth Circuit’s decision, it is possible that a court in Louisiana may decide to apply the Fifth Circuit’s logic. Say, for example, that a small crowd of people act violently at a protest in Louisiana and the protest organizer — who had no connection to the violence — is subsequently sued for negligence. The lower court should heed Justice Sotomayor#8217;s statement, correctly apply iCounterman/i, and dismiss this claim for violating the First Amendment. But it is possible that a lower court would still apply the Fifth Circuit’s decision, issued prior to iCounterman. /iIf that were to happen, the ACLU is interested in fighting alongside the organizer to ensure that the correct rule ultimately applies, and that the Fifth Circuit’s clearly erroneous decision does not govern anywhere./p pSince our founding, efforts to silence dissent have emerged in moments of mass protest, like what we find ourselves in today. However, the Supreme Court has consistently upheld our right to protest and our right to be responsible only for our own actions. Today, the ACLU urges the lower courts to continue protecting our rights, and to deny the Fifth Circuit’s deeply misguided theory from gaining any traction. No one should be afraid to express dissent, to advocate for change, or to support causes they believe in./p pa href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCR7yfxnwWAPlay the video/a/p img width=1334 height=708 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-22-at-5.08.05-PM.png class=attachment-16x9_1400 size-16x9_1400 alt=A photo of activist DeRay Mckesson. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-22-at-5.08.05-PM.png 1334w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-22-at-5.08.05-PM-768x408.png 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-22-at-5.08.05-PM-400x212.png 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-22-at-5.08.05-PM-600x318.png 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-22-at-5.08.05-PM-800x425.png 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-22-at-5.08.05-PM-1000x531.png 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-22-at-5.08.05-PM-1200x637.png 1200w sizes=(max-width: 1334px) 100vw, 1334px /

pToday, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released its a href=https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2024-07527/implementation-of-the-pregnant-workers-fairness-actfinal regulations/a implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The landmark statute mandating “reasonable accommodation” of workers’ pregnancy-related needs went into effect last summer, but the regulations explain the PWFA’s protections in more detail, providing additional guidance to workers, employers, and the courts so that the full force of the law is given effect./p pThat’s great news for workers like:/p ul lia href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/kimberlie-michelle-durham-v-ruralmetro-corporationMichelle Durham/a, an Alabama Emergency Medical Technician forced onto unpaid leave during pregnancy because her employer refused to honor her doctor’s directive that she not lift heavy stretchers and patients;/li lia href=https://www.aclu.org/news/womens-rights/att-mobility-fired-me-being-pregnant#:~:text=AT%26T%20Mobility's%20so%2Dcalled%20%E2%80%9Cno,Disabilities%20Act%2C%20and%20the%20FMLA.Katia Hills/a, a retail worker from Indiana fired for absenteeism due to severe “morning sickness” and doctor’s visits; and/li lia href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/panattoni-v-village-frankfortJennifer Panattoni/a, a police officer from Illinois forced to take leave without pay when she was denied temporary reassignment to a desk job./li /ul pMichelle, Katia, and Jennifer aren’t alone; millions of people, especially Black and Brown women at greatest risk of maternal morbidity and mortality, labor in strenuous jobs that could be dangerous during pregnancy – like health care, retail, and law enforcement – yet are routinely denied the temporary modifications they need to stay healthy. One study estimated that 250,000 people annually don’t get the accommodations they need, putting them at risk for miscarriage and other poor health outcomes on the one hand, and job loss on the other./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardSo what did Congress intend the PWFA to accomplish?/h2 /div pAs the first federal statute enacted in 45 years to protect on-the-job rights of pregnant workers, Congress passed the PWFA to fill a significant gap in existing law when it comes to accommodations – those temporary on-the-job modifications that a person may need to maintain their health or the health of their pregnancy. These changes can be minor – such as a slightly later start time to account for “morning sickness” or more frequent breaks for workers who spend long shifts on their feet – or more significant, such as suspension of risky duties, like repeated heavy lifting or exposure to toxins./p pAlthough workers with disabilities have been entitled to such changes for more than 30 years under the Americans with Disabilities Act, pregnant workers have lacked similarly explicit protections. The PWFA eliminates the Hobson’s Choice faced by pregnant workers – i.e., continue working under unsafe conditions or leave the job altogether – by requiring employers to accommodate workers with limitations caused by “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” unless doing so would impose an “undue hardship” on the employer’s business. Given the statute’s obvious benefits to workers and their families alike, it’s no wonder that the PWFA was enacted with exceptionally broad bipartisan cooperation that is virtually unheard of in today’s Congress, and with supporters as diverse as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the American Civil Liberties Union, my employer./p pWhen the EEOC issued a draft version of its PWFA regulations last August, a small but noisy group raised the alarm that the agency had gone rogue. Why? The EEOC specifically stated that “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” includes abortion, so that time off for abortion care – like time off for other doctor’s visits and medical procedures – is a “reasonable accommodation” required by the new statute. Critics contended that such a requirement improperly forces employers to somehow participate in their employees’ abortion decisions, which they claimed is unfair to employers that object to abortion on religious grounds./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/womens-rights/the-historic-new-law-protecting-fairness-for-pregnant-workers target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=1200 height=628 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/5ddb12929c46917407ae0ce9e9c04f02.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/5ddb12929c46917407ae0ce9e9c04f02.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/5ddb12929c46917407ae0ce9e9c04f02-768x402.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/5ddb12929c46917407ae0ce9e9c04f02-400x209.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/5ddb12929c46917407ae0ce9e9c04f02-600x314.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/5ddb12929c46917407ae0ce9e9c04f02-800x419.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/5ddb12929c46917407ae0ce9e9c04f02-1000x523.jpg 1000w sizes=(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/womens-rights/the-historic-new-law-protecting-fairness-for-pregnant-workers target=_blank The Historic New Law Protecting Fairness for Pregnant Workers /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/womens-rights/the-historic-new-law-protecting-fairness-for-pregnant-workers target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletAfter a decade of advocacy, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is going into effect. /p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/womens-rights/the-historic-new-law-protecting-fairness-for-pregnant-workers target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pSuch objections are likely to reemerge now that the EEOC’s final regulations are out, because abortion remains among the list of reasons entitling workers to reasonable accommodation. But while the EEOC’s noisy critics paint the agency as radical, it is they who push a fringe view – one that disregards nearly half a century of legal history. In 1978, Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, a law protecting workers from discrimination based on “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.” At the time, Congress made clear that it considered abortion to fall within that definition – meaning that firing or refusing to hire someone because they have had an abortion is unlawful discrimination. In 1979, the EEOC issued guidelines consistent with that interpretation and reaffirmed those directives in 2015, while in the four and a half decades since the PDA’s passage, numerous courts have reached the same conclusion: discrimination based on abortion is discrimination based on “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.” The phrase also has been interpreted by judges to cover a wide range of pre- and post-partum reproductive needs, including the use of contraceptives, infertility treatment, and lactation. At the same time, the PDA makes clear that employers are not required to cover abortion in their health plans, and subsequent court cases have not disturbed that provision. When Congress copied and pasted “pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions” from the PDA into the PWFA, all of that interpretive precedent came with it. The EEOC’s new regulations simply implement the law Congress actually passed./p pWhen it comes to the rights of religious employers, abortion opponents also get an “F” in history. While such entities long have enjoyed certain narrow exemptions from our discrimination laws – and the PWFA does nothing to disturb such precedent – courts repeatedly have refused to grant religious employers wholesale immunity from these statutes. Indeed, Congress irejected /ian amendment that would have exempted religious employers from the PWFA’s reach altogether. The EEOC regulations rightly also refuse to rubber-stamp discrimination in the name of religion, instead providing careful, case-by-case consideration to instances where a religious employer objects to an employee’s need for accommodation under the PWFA, if any happen to arise./p pSadly, since 2022’s ruling in a href=https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/a-year-without-roeiDobbs/i iv. Jackson Women’s Health Organization/i/a overturning iRoe v. Wade/i, the time off of work that is necessary to get an abortion has increased exponentially. At last count, more than 20 states have either banned or severely restricted abortion. As a result, a sizable share of the U.S. population – millions of people – are now faced with the prospect of traveling hundreds of miles to even access this critically important healthcare. To name just one example, in Texas, where a near-total ban is in place, the average one-way trip for abortion has ballooned a href=https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2798215by more than eight hours/a – an increase of a full./p pThe PWFA is historic, but not because it applies to abortion. Employers already are prohibited from taking adverse action against workers who have abortions. The PWFA simply bars them from punishing people for taking time away from the job to obtain abortion care – or any other reproductive health care. No one should have to risk their paycheck to get the medical care they need – and thanks to the PWFA, they don’t./p pemThis a class=Hyperlink SCXW187589113 BCX0 href=https://msmagazine.com/2024/04/15/pregnant-workers-fairness-act-women-abortion/ target=_blank rel=noreferrer noopenerpiece /awas first published in a class=Hyperlink SCXW187589113 BCX0 href=https://msmagazine.com/ target=_blank rel=noreferrer noopenerMs. Magazine/a on 4/15/24/em/p

pEvery year, thousands of asylum seekers from diverse corners of the world seek refuge in the United States. Many — like Indigenous people from Latin America and Africa — are fleeing persecution based on the languages they speak and their cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Their ability to access the asylum system has life-or-death consequences. Yet our government cuts off access to asylum and other fundamental rights based on language barriers alone./p pThe federal government has a responsibility to ensure people with limited English proficiency (LEP) can reasonably access its services. Failure to do so discriminates by excluding LEP people from federal programs. This infringes on LEP individuals’ constitutional due process and equal protection rights, as well as well-established language rights enshrined in federal law. Nevertheless, the government routinely denies asylum seekers critical language access throughout the asylum process./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviews target=_blank tabindex=-1 /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviews target=_blank Petition for Rulemaking: Interpreters for Affirmative Asylum Interviews /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviews target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviews target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markLanguage Barriers Cut Off Access to Asylum, Cause Prolonged Detention, and Lead to Wrongful Deportations/h2 /div pStarting even outside the United States, anyone seeking asylum at the border generally must use the CBPOne app to obtain an elusive appointment. Beyond well-documented problems with accessibility, appointment shortages, racist facial recognition bugs, and other technical issues, the app is only available in English, Spanish, or Haitian Creole, with limited Russian and Portuguese features. Thousands of asylum seekers who speak other languages are a href=https://castro.house.gov/imo/media/doc/03212024lettertodhsenglish.pdfleft out/a, with dangerous a href=https://humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Asylum-Ban-Harms-Factsheet-formatted.pdfconsequences/a for those stranded in waiting./p pLanguage access problems continue once LEP individuals finally enter the United States for asylum screening. The government a href=https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/Language-Access-in-Credible-Fear-Screenings.pdfadmits/a that it struggles to provide interpreters for certain languages, especially rare or Indigenous languages, during screening interviews. As a result, asylum seekers often feel pressured to undergo interviews — which determine whether they can even pursue an asylum claim — in a more common language, even if they don’t speak it proficiently enough to communicate sensitive details of their claim./p pThose who finally get an opportunity to apply for asylum must complete their application — a complicated legal document — entirely in English. For LEP asylum seekers in government detention facilities without translation or interpretation services, that’s a href=https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BS-N6hRly4e4am4iGwoeUYw0CpJgJHrd/view?usp=sharingimpossible/a. Appallingly, immigration judges have a href=https://thegrio.com/2024/03/20/congress-asks-biden-harris-admin-to-address-discrimination-against-black-mauritanians-at-border/#:~:text=Politics-,Congress%20asks%20Biden%2DHarris%20admin%20to%20address%20discrimination%20against%20Black,practices%20that%ordered/a LEP asylum seekers to be returned to the countries they fled, simply because they could not fill out their asylum application in English, even when no language services were available. Moreover, immigration courts can’t find adequate interpreters for a href=https://clarke.house.gov/clarke-leads-letter-to-dhs-and-ice-urging-release-of-detained-mauritanian-asylum-seekers-and-justice-for-rare-language-speakers/certain languages/a, leading to unnecessary and prolonged detention. Often, people are faced with an impossible choice: proceed in languages they don’t fully understand (and risk being denied protection) or give up. Effectively, the government blocks LEP people from presenting their asylum claims merely because of the language they speak — not because they lack a meritorious claim./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markThe Government Already Has Interpreters Available. Yet It Still Requires Affirmative Asylum Seekers to Find Their Own./h2 /div pAffirmative asylum interviews are another glaring example of the government’s discrimination against LEP asylum seekers. Affirmative asylum interviews are a critical step in the asylum process — they are the only opportunity for someone to sit down with an asylum officer and explain their fear of persecution outside of the removal process. But for decades, the government has required LEP applicants to provide their own interpreters during these interviews. This puts a substantial logistical and financial burden on LEP asylum seekers, many of whom have limited financial means, and imposes an even greater burden on those who speak rare languages with only a handful of interpreters available across the country. LEP applicants who can’t find interpreters face delays or, worse, referral to removal proceedings./p pFinancial constraints force many applicants to use friends or family members to interpret. Serious ethical and practical concerns follow. Applicants may hesitate to share the full scope of their trauma or asylum claim with loved ones; untrained interpreters may lack an understanding of professional norms of confidentiality and conduct for interpretation or may struggle to accurately translate technical legal terminology. Inaccurate interpretation prevents applicants from fully presenting their claims, and can cause erroneous credibility findings./p pThe interpreter requirement is also inefficient and illogical. The government already contracts professional interpreters who monitor the quality of applicant-provided interpreters during interviews. That’s right: the government already pays for interpreters to participate in these interviews. It has a href=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/23/2020-21073/asylum-interview-interpreter-requirement-modification-due-to-covid-19stated/a on a href=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/03/16/2022-05636/asylum-interview-interpreter-requirement-modification-due-to-covid-19multiple/a a href=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/17/2023-05572/asylum-interview-interpreter-requirement-modification-due-to-covid-19occasions/a that these contract monitors can provide more efficient interpretation at no additional cost. But asylum officers regularly reschedule interviews when applicants fail to bring an interpreter, even though the government’s interpreter is already present./p pDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, the government temporarily permitted applicants to use contract monitors as interpreters during asylum interviews. But the government recently and abruptly a href=https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/affirmative-asylum-applicants-must-provide-interpreters-starting-sept-13ended/a this policy without explanation, once again requiring applicants to bring their own interpreters. Now, more than ever, the government faces an unprecedented backlog of affirmative asylum cases with an outdated, inefficient, and discriminatory interpreter rule./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markThe Government Should Abandon Its Outdated and Discriminatory Rule/h2 /div pThe ACLU is fighting back. Along with 52 organizations from across the country, a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviewswe are petitioning/a the government to abandon its illogical and discriminatory rule requiring applicants to bring their own interpreters. Our ask is simple and common sense: change the regulation and permit asylum applicants to use the government-funded interpreters already present during asylum interviews at the applicant’s discretion. This will ensure that LEP asylum seekers have a meaningful opportunity to present their asylum claims and make one small but significant step toward bridging the gaps in language access in our asylum system./p

pFor decades, the ACLU has fought against the war on drugs. The criminalization of cannabis has led to far too many unjust incarcerations, which waste critical resources and billions of dollars. a href=https://www.aclu.org/publications/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reformAccording to numbers from our 2020 report/a, it also disproportionately affects Black Americans, who continue to be almost four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person, despite equal reported use rates./p figure class=wp-image mb-8 a href=https://www.aclu.org/publications/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform img width=1364 height=958 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-15-at-2.35.23-PM.png class=attachment-original size-original alt=A map showing racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-15-at-2.35.23-PM.png 1364w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-15-at-2.35.23-PM-768x539.png 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-15-at-2.35.23-PM-400x281.png 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-15-at-2.35.23-PM-600x421.png 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-15-at-2.35.23-PM-800x562.png 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-15-at-2.35.23-PM-1000x702.png 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screen-Shot-2024-04-15-at-2.35.23-PM-1200x843.png 1200w sizes=(max-width: 1364px) 100vw, 1364px / /a figcaption class=wp-image__caption is-caption mt-3pa href=https://graphics.aclu.org/marijuana-arrest-report/Explore more in our interactive data visualizer/a/p /figcaption /figure pWe’re fighting for not only the legalization of marijuana, but also for the repair of decades of past damage. Even as marijuana becomes legal or decriminalized in more states, rampant racial disparities still remain and thousands of people are still behind bars for innocuous cannabis charges. A more just system isn’t possible until all people incarcerated for marijuana are released and criminal records for these offenses are expunged./p pThis is why we celebrate 4/20 every year: to bring renewed attention to the fight for cannabis justice. With our new dope tees, trays, blankets and posters, we invite people to join in a href=https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/drug-law-reform/marijuana-law-reformour fight to legalize marijuana/a and repair the harms of the war on drugs. This year’s products take on a retro aesthetic to honor everything 4/20. They feature groovy waves, earth tones, interesting facts and — everyone’s favorite mascot Torchy./p pCheck out the list of merch below, and be sure to a href=https://shop.aclu.org/return to our shop/a regularly during April, and tune in on our social media channels–we’ll be celebrating 4/20 all month long with exclusive deals!/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markA Super Soft, Conversation-Starting Tee/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardPrice: $30/h3 /div div class=wp-sizing-container sizing--standard figure class=wp-image mb-8 a href=https://shop.aclu.org/legalize-repair-tee/ img width=1280 height=1280 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A picture of the Legalize and Repair Tee from the ACLU store. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611.jpg 1280w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611-768x768.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611-400x400.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611-600x600.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611-800x800.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611-1000x1000.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Tee__23611-300x300.jpg 300w sizes=(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px / /a /figure /div pFrom the gym to the farmer’s market, you’ll want to wear this ultra soft, 100% cotton tee everywhere. The perfect conversation starter, we even included an important message on the bottom./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markDope Decorative Art for Your Space/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardPrice: $12/h3 /div div class=wp-sizing-container sizing--standard figure class=wp-image mb-8 a href=https://shop.aclu.org/legalize-and-repair-poster-11x14/ img width=1280 height=1280 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A picture of the Legalize and Repair Poster from the ACLU store. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648.jpg 1280w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648-768x768.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648-400x400.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648-600x600.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648-800x800.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648-1000x1000.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Poster__48648-300x300.jpg 300w sizes=(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px / /a /figure /div pThinking about a Spring decor refresh? Look no further! Our 11”x14” Legalize and Repair Poster is the perfect size and perfect conversation starter./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markA Handy Tray Calling for Cannabis Justice/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardPrice: $20/h3 /div div class=wp-sizing-container sizing--standard figure class=wp-image mb-8 a href=https://shop.aclu.org/legalize-repair-tray/ img width=1280 height=1280 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A picture of the Legalize and Repair Tray from the ACLU store. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468.jpg 1280w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468-768x768.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468-400x400.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468-600x600.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468-800x800.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468-1000x1000.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Tray__16468-300x300.jpg 300w sizes=(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px / /a /figure /div pThe travel friendly Legalize and Repair tray has endless uses: from a jewelry catchall to a flat work surface for your hobbies./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markA Grinder Perfect for Your Own Personal Blend/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-markPrice: $25/h3 /div div class=wp-sizing-container sizing--standard figure class=wp-image mb-8 a href=https://shop.aclu.org/legalize-repair-grinder/ img width=1280 height=1280 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A picture of the Legalize and Repair Grinder from the ACLU store. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065.jpg 1280w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065-768x768.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065-400x400.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065-600x600.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065-800x800.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065-1000x1000.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Grinder__47065-300x300.jpg 300w sizes=(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px / /a /figure /div pOur aluminum grinder is sturdy enough to grind even the dankest of herbs and spices. Cinnamon and nutmeg have met their match in our 4-piece grinder./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markSnuggle Up With Your Favorite ACLU Mascot/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardPrice: $115/h3 /div div class=wp-sizing-container sizing--standard figure class=wp-image mb-8 a href=https://shop.aclu.org/torchy-woven-blanket/ img width=1280 height=1280 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A picture of the Torchy Woven Blanket from the ACLU store. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092.jpg 1280w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092-768x768.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092-400x400.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092-600x600.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092-800x800.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092-1000x1000.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Torchy_Blanket__18092-300x300.jpg 300w sizes=(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px / /a /figure /div pPicnics will never be the same once the Torchy Woven Blanket is in your life. This blanket can also double as a tapestry for your home. Made of a thick, woven fabric, each blanket is custom made just for you./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markA Cozy Crewneck Featuring Torchy in Action /h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardPrice: $66/h3 /div div class=wp-sizing-container sizing--standard figure class=wp-image mb-8 a href=https://shop.aclu.org/legalize-repair-crewneck/ img width=1280 height=1280 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A picture of the Legalize And Repair Crewneck from the ACLU store. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977.jpg 1280w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977-768x768.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977-400x400.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977-600x600.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977-800x800.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977-1000x1000.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACLU_420_Crewneck__36977-300x300.jpg 300w sizes=(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px / /a /figure /div pWith a unisex fit and an unbelievably comfy feel, the Legalize and Repair Crewneck is the perfect wardrobe addition. Pro tip: dress it up with a layered turtleneck./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markA Retro Lunchbox for the Munchies/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardPrice: $28/h3 /div div class=wp-sizing-container sizing--standard figure class=wp-image mb-8 a href=https://shop.aclu.org/legalize-repair-lunchbox/ img width=1280 height=1280 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A picture of the Legalize And Repair Lunchbox from the ACLU store. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231.jpg 1280w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231-768x768.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231-400x400.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231-600x600.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231-800x800.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231-1000x1000.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lunchbox__06231-300x300.jpg 300w sizes=(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px / /a /figure /div pKeep your munchies close in our retro-style lunchbox featuring Torchy like you’ve never seen Torchy before. Feeling adventurous? Attach a bag strap to the handles and wear it as a crossbody bag (it’s called fashion)./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markA Small Matchbox With a Blazing Message/h2 /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 h3 id= class=wp-heading-h3 with-standardPrice: $4.20/h3 /div div class=wp-sizing-container sizing--standard figure class=wp-image mb-8 a href=https://shop.aclu.org/legalize-and-repair-matchbox/ img width=1280 height=1280 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810.jpg class=attachment-original size-original alt=A picture of the Legalize And Repair Matchbox from the ACLU store. decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810.jpg 1280w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810-768x768.jpg 768w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810-400x400.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810-600x600.jpg 600w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810-800x800.jpg 800w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810-1000x1000.jpg 1000w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810-1200x1200.jpg 1200w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Legalize_and_Repair_Matches__04810-300x300.jpg 300w sizes=(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px / /a /figure /div pSpark up a conversation with our limited edition Torchy matches. Perfect for the candle connoisseur in your life (be sure to shop bright and early on 4/20–these matches will be free for the first 420 orders!)/p pnbsp;/p

My job is to sue prisons, and I love my work. My colleagues and I work to ensure the basic human dignity to people our society has locked up. But it is, more often than not, extraordinarily frustrating. Our clients, the human beings locked away in our criminal justice system, live in dire conditions. They are warehoused. Their medical and mental health needs are ignored. They are subjected to extreme physical violence. Just seeing and hearing about it is painful. And change comes all too slowly.

At the ACLU, we take heart from the little victories. Just before we go to a prison to see our clients, the bathrooms in their housing units are finally cleaned, the people in the prisons are finally given coats for when they go outside, and they are finally sent out for the medical visit that was ordered months or years ago. Unfortunately, the systemic changes to ensure people’s most basic needs are met take much longer, and are often met with resistance from prison personnel and administrations that do not believe their job is to meet those basic needs.

This year has been different. Back in June 2022, following a decade of litigation, U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver found in Jensen v. Thornell that conditions in solitary confinement in the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) violated the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. One year ago this week, she issued a sweeping injunction ordering ADCRR to bring the conditions of solitary confinement into compliance with the U.S. Constitution and basic standards of human decency.

Over the past year, ADCRR has made a great deal of progress, including preventing many vulnerable people from being subjected to the devastating effects that accompany solitary confinement. The department has also dramatically lowered the number of people in extremely long-term isolation, and has – to our knowledge – complied with the court’s order prohibiting any child under 18 from being placed in solitary confinement for any length of time.

Additionally, at the time of the order, there were 1,071 people housed in “maximum custody,” ADCRR’s euphemism for long-term solitary confinement. According to ADCRR, at least 200 people had been in maximum custody for a year or more, and six people had been in for over a decade. Today, there are just over 200 people in maximum custody – a reduction of more than 80 percent. Half the people who had been held in maximum custody for over a decade are no longer in solitary confinement.

The reduction in the solitary confinement population was so great that one facility, Arizona’s original “supermax” facility, was closed entirely in November 2023. This supermax facility had a reported capacity of 2,440 people, most of whom were held in solitary confinement.

There have also been significant improvements in conditions. People held in solitary confinement now receive three meals a day most days, whereas previously they received only two. In solitary confinement units where an electronic system has been installed to track movements, incarcerated people report that there is no longer a problem of being left in the shower for hours on end, as used to happen with some regularity. People are offered cleaning supplies and the housing units are treated by exterminators.

While the improvements – particularly the removal of people from long-term solitary confinement – are laudable, much remains to be done. The court ordered that one vulnerable group – people with serious mental illness – be kept out of solitary confinement altogether. There are housing units for people with serious mental illness, which ADCRR claims are not solitary confinement units. But the people inside report that they are locked in their cells more hours per day than people in the housing units ADCRR considers solitary confinement. Similarly, there is a prison in which people with dementia are held and are rarely let out of their cells, let alone allowed to go outside. There are still three people who have been in solitary confinement for over a decade. And many people remain in solitary confinement because either they themselves or ADCRR have decided that ADCRR cannot keep them safe in general population.

The proverbial low-hanging fruit has been harvested. The hard work of further reducing – and ultimately eliminating – solitary confinement in Arizona remains. It appears the ADCRR administration has the will to take on this difficult labor in pursuit of human dignity. This spring, one year into implementation of the Jensen injunction, I have hope.

The CIA is so known for its unabashed secrecy that, when it joined Twitter in 2014, its first tweet was: “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.” This non-response response is known as a “Glomar,” and while the intelligence community likes to poke fun at how often they invoke it, this inane phrase has allowed the CIA to skirt meaningful transparency and accountability for decades.

In 1966, over the Johnson administration’s opposition, Congress enacted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), giving all of us the right to ask the government for documents and have the government respond, as it believed such access was a prerequisite to a functioning democracy. Soon after FOIA was passed, a Soviet nuclear submarine went missing somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, and the CIA took an early opportunity to undermine this new law.

The Soviet Union and the United States raced to locate the missing sub and extract the intelligence likely inside. But first, the U.S. needed to build a ship that could actually extract the sub once it was found — and the government wanted no one to know about it. The CIA contracted this mission out to Howard Hughes, a billionaire with little concern for government transparency, who told the media that the purpose of the ship (named the Hughes Glomar Explorer) was to extract manganese nodules from the ocean floor. Six years later, in 1974, the extraction began. Unfortunately for the U.S., the extracted sub broke into pieces and what the government most wanted was lost: the ship’s code machine and two nuclear missiles. Details of this secret, bungled extraction started to leak, inaccuracies and half-truths swirled, and people rushed to file FOIA requests hoping to answer the many outstanding questions.

Worried about the geopolitical consequences, and obsessed with controlling information about its activities, the CIA came up with a novel way to keep the mission secret without telling an all-out lie. The agency decided it would refuse to confirm or deny whether records about the Glomar Explorer’s mission existed, despite the mounting public evidence that they did. And so the “Glomar response” was born. And, in the case of the Glomar Explorer, it worked: Historians claim many documents remain hidden to this day.

Unfortunately, in the decades since the submarine debacle, and especially in the post-9/11 era, we’ve repeatedly seen the CIA use the Glomar response to evade responsibility. They have used it to claim they could not say whether they had information about the government’s use of drones to carry out lethal strikes overseas, and when asked about legal justifications for the verified extrajudicial killing of three U.S. citizens. They’ve even used it to side-step questions about whether they’ve spied on Congress.

We’re even seeing state agencies attempt to use the CIA’s non-response to circumvent local public records requests. For example, in 2017, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a public records request seeking documents regarding the NYPD’s monitoring of protesters’ social media activity and cell phones. The NYPD initially responded with a blanket statement that it could “neither confirm nor deny” whether such records existed, saying that even revealing the existence of records could harm national security. A New York court rejected this argument and ordered the NYPD to respond to the request in full.

And the CIA’s penchant for secrecy continues to expand, with the agency using Glomar to obstruct attempts to obtain records that would publicly shine a light on the agency’s failures and abuse, even when that abuse is well documented by the CIA itself and other sources.

Take, for instance, the CIA’s torture program. After the 9/11 attacks, the agency abducted dozens of Muslim men and boys, held them incommunicado, brutally tortured them, and denied the due process in sites around the globe. Once the program was exposed, 14 of the government’s “high-value detainees” were taken to the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, and detained at a notorious facility known as “Camp VII.” Attorney James G. Connell III, who represents Ammar al Baluchi, one of the men subjected to the CIA torture program and sent to Camp VII, filed a FOIA request with the CIA seeking information about the agency’s “operational control” over the facility. That “operational control” is hardly a secret: it was highlighted in the Senate Torture Report and in CIA and military commissions documents. But instead of processing Mr. Connell’s request, the agency issued what it called a “partial” Glomar response, producing three records, withholding a fourth in its entirety, and refusing to confirm or deny whether any other responsive records exist.

Given the extensive public record about the CIA’s connection to Camp VII, its refusal to acknowledge that it has responsive records both violates the law and defies common sense. That’s why we’re representing Mr. Connell in his appeal in federal court. To uphold its response, the CIA must demonstrate that it is logical or plausible that it has no responsive records in light of the entire record. That’s simply not possible here. We know this because there is an overwhelming amount of public evidence about Camp VII — from the Senate Torture Report, to court documents from the Guantánamo proceedings, to other documents the CIA itself released — that has left no doubt of CIA involvement. And yet, the CIA continues to avoid its legal obligations under FOIA through gaslighting and Glomar.

Connell v. CIA offers a real chance to not only break the CIA’s bad habit of using Glomar to evade transparency and accountability, but also issue a warning to other government agencies that hope to follow in the CIA’s footsteps by leaning into excessive secrecy.

Cities all across the United States have been increasingly passing laws that punish people who are forced to sleep outside each night due a lack of available shelter and extreme housing shortages. The Supreme Court will soon decide if doing so violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, in a case that arose out of southern Oregon and is arguably the most significant case on homelessness in decades. The ACLU’s Scout Katovich explains how the case made its way to the highest court in the U.S. and breaks down the stakes – both for the hundreds of thousands of people who are unhoused on any given night and for critical constitutional protections.

Katie Hoeppner: Can you tell us how this lawsuit came about and how it got to the Supreme Court?

Scout Katovich: Sure. The case comes out of Grants Pass, Oregon, which, like many cities in America, is facing a shortage of affordable housing that has led to increased homelessness. In 2019, there were at least 600 unhoused people in the city. The city’s response was to pass a set of laws making it illegal to sleep in public anywhere, at any time. The city called some of these laws “camping bans,” but they weren’t really about banning tents or what we usually think of as camping. Instead, they prohibited sleeping outside while using anything that could be considered “bedding,” even just a thin blanket to keep from freezing at night, or a rolled up t-shirt used as a pillow.

The punishment for this “crime” was hundreds of dollars in fines, which could quickly escalate to a sentence of 30-days in jail. Grants Pass started fining and arresting unhoused people under these laws, even though the city had zero accessible shelters for adults. So, every night, hundreds of people had no choice but to sleep outside and break these laws. In essence, they were being punished for the unavoidable human need to sleep.

A group of unhoused residents of Grants Pass challenged the enforcement of these laws and a federal court ruled in their favor, holding that the city’s enforcement of these “anti-sleeping” and “anti-camping” laws against unhoused residents with no access to shelter violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the lower court. Now that decision is being reviewed by the Supreme Court, and the justices will hear oral arguments in the case on April 22.

KH: A lot of cities across the country have similar bans. Can you tell us how the Supreme Court’s ruling could affect the large number of people all over the country who don’t have any choice but to sleep outside at night?

SK: That’s exactly right – we’ve seen a troubling uptick in these kinds of unconstitutional sleeping and camping bans all across the U.S. One study found that over half of the 187 cities it surveyed have laws restricting sleeping in public and almost three-fourths have laws restricting camping. The Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass will determine whether cities can use laws like this to punish unhoused people with no access to shelter, just for sleeping outside with rudimentary protections from the elements. This ruling could affect a huge number of people. With over 600,000 unhoused people and a shortfall of at least 200,000 shelter beds nationwide, hundreds of thousands of people have no choice but to sleep in public every night.

If the Supreme Court rules for Grants Pass, cities could be empowered to treat all of those people as “criminals.”

KH: The stakes are clearly enormous. What is the ACLU’s involvement in this case?

SK: Absolutely, this is a really important case, both for unhoused people and for the constitutional principles at issue. We felt strongly that the ACLU should weigh in at the Supreme Court, in part because it’s part of our mission to protect constitutional rights, including the Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishments. But we’re also deeply invested in protecting the rights of unhoused people and, in fact, the ACLU and its affiliates have brought lawsuits similar to the one before the Supreme Court, challenging enforcement of sleeping and camping bans in cities across the country, including Albuquerque, Honolulu, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Boulder. In this Supreme Court case, the ACLU and 19 of its affiliates submitted a “friend of the court” brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that punishing unhoused people without access to shelter for sleeping in public violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments.

KH: Can you explain why the Eighth Amendment is such an important focus of the brief and lawsuit?

SK: Yes, our brief explains that the Eighth Amendment’s original meaning and more than a century of Supreme Court cases make clear that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause bars governments from punishing people in ways that are disproportionate to the crime. It may sound a little wonky, but it boils down to the idea that the Constitution places some checks on how the government can punish crime. Punishment must be appropriate to the seriousness of the crime and should only be as severe as is necessary to promote legitimate goals of our criminal legal system, like rehabilitation and deterrence. Applying these well-established principles to the Grants Pass case, any punishment for the “crime” of sleeping in public when you have no other choice is unconstitutionally excessive.

KH: Can you say how the Grants Pass case fits within the ACLU’s other work, for those who may not immediately think of homelessness as an ACLU issue?

SK: Well, first and foremost, the ACLU is committed to protecting the civil rights and liberties of all, and especially the most marginalized members of our society, which certainly includes unhoused people. And our society’s approach to homelessness has made it a criminal justice issue and an equality issue. When cities like Grants Pass choose to respond to homelessness with police and jails, it fuels mass incarceration, keeping people in an endless cycle of poverty, incarceration, and institutionalization. Rather than confront the decades of policy failures that have led to a dearth of safe and affordable housing, and access to healthcare, and other services, politicians and government officials blame individuals for our society’s failings and use criminal punishment to try to push people out of sight.

And that’s where the ACLU comes in. We can’t stand by and let governments choose ineffective “solutions” that trample on the rights and dignity of our neighbors. This is also an ACLU issue because homelessness intersects with many marginalized identities, compounding discrimination and the disproportionate harms that our criminal legal system inflicts on marginalized communities.

KH: That’s a really important point about compounding discrimination…

SK: Yes, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and people of color, especially Black and indigenous people, are far more likely to experience homelessness because of systemic inequality and discrimination. Their overrepresentation in both the criminal legal system and among the unhoused creates a vicious feedback loop – unhoused people have an increased risk of arrest and incarceration and, in turn, a jail or prison stay often leaves people without housing and employment, keeping them in homelessness. The ACLU has long been invested in ending mass incarceration and addressing inequities in the criminal legal system, and it’s clear that our society’s approach to homelessness is exacerbating both.

KH: You mentioned that elected officials “choose” the punitive approach. And I think that’s important to underline, because they often act as though their hands are tied. Can you say more about what elected leaders could actually do to meaningfully address homelessness?

SK: There’s so much they could be doing. But first, I just want to emphasize that the punitive approaches they are taking only make the situation worse. Criminal legal system involvement and homelessness are part of a vicious cycle. Arrests, citations, and jail or prison time don’t solve homelessness, they exacerbate it. These carceral approaches also cost taxpayers a lot of money. In 2015, Los Angeles spent $50 million policing anti-homeless laws and, in Seattle, enforcing just one of its “quality of life” laws cost the city $2.3 million over just five years. So we really need to call on elected officials to stop passing these laws and adopting policies that take this misguided approach. Instead, cities and states need to focus on policies that actually address the root causes of homelessness.

KH: I wish more elected leaders would show this courage. What specifically would address those root causes?

SK: First and foremost, they need to focus on investing in safe, affordable housing. The link between homelessness and unaffordable housing could not be clearer: the areas with the most unsheltered homelessness are also the most expensive housing markets. Addressing this is a long-term commitment, but it will pay off. There’s a lot of research demonstrating that providing permanent, affordable housing, coupled with accessible services, successfully ends chronic homelessness and also reduces arrests and incarceration. We also need to increase access to wrap-around supportive services, and voluntary mental health and substance use treatment, and adopt non-law enforcement responses to situations stemming from mental health issues and poverty. There’s strong evidence that these non-carceral approaches are cost-effective, reduce contact with the criminal legal system, and increase chances of obtaining housing and employment.

KH: Is there anything else you think people should know?

SK: Yes, I think it’s really important to underscore that homelessness is not a nuisance, it’s a symptom of our collective failure to invest in our communities. It’s uncomfortable for sheltered people to have to confront this failure, but the answer to that discomfort is not to temporarily push people out of sight through criminal punishments. Addressing homelessness in humane and effective ways helps everyone. So many of us are just one bad circumstance away from losing our homes.

Housing costs have skyrocketed while wages have not kept pace. We are also facing extreme housing shortages. As a result, there’s nowhere in the country where a person working a full-time minimum-wage job can afford even a modest two-bedroom apartment. So protecting unhoused people’s rights and adopting effective approaches to reducing and preventing homelessness is something we should all be invested in.

State legislation can have an immense impact on your civil rights, for better or for worse. And even though state lawmakers are tasked with determining which bills get turned into laws, you hold a lot of power to make these decisions because you elect candidates into office. Take this quiz to learn about lawmaking at the state level, and how you can play a part in this process at the ballot box.

Click to see Quiz

Across the country, our affiliates are challenging discriminatory policies and practices that disproportionately affect women, and particularly women of color. From housing discrimination in Illinois, to inhumane treatment of incarcerated pregnant individuals in North Carolina, and discriminatory dress codes in Texas schools, the ACLU and its affiliates are at the forefront of legal and advocacy efforts that promote gender equality and justice for all.

Here are three ways our affiliates are stepping up:

The ACLU of Illinois recently joined with national and local advocates, including the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, to challenge the “No-Evictions” policies of two large landlords — Hunter Properties and Oak Park Apartments — in Cook County, Illinois. These policies automatically reject rental housing applicants who have had any prior connection to an eviction case. The effect is to shut out families from housing opportunities, even when the eviction case was dismissed or filed years ago. Such policies have a discriminatory effect on Black renters, and especially Black women. Analysis of data from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office found that Black women accounted for approximately 33 percent of those served with an eviction case or evicted, despite making up just 22 percent of all renters in Cook County. Black renters in general faced nearly triple the likelihood of experiencing an eviction case than non-Black renters.

The lawsuit filed against Hunter Properties, and the civil rights complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development against Oak Park Apartments, argue their respective “No-Evictions” policies have a disparate impact on Black renters, especially Black women renters, that violate the 1968 Fair Housing Act. The complaint against Oak Park Apartments also asserts that its policy perpetuates and reinforces residential segregation in violation of the Fair Housing Act. The two filings are among the first in the nation to challenge landlords’ eviction screening policies as discriminatory.

In 2021, the North Carolina General Assembly finally passed a statewide law banning correctional officers, sheriffs, and other prison staff from shackling incarcerated people during critical periods of their pregnancy and postpartum journey. The law, HB 608, also known as Dignity for Women Who are Incarcerated, came after years of advocacy by the ACLU of North Carolina and several other partner organizations, including Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and SisterSong.

A pivotal factor in the bill’s passage was an OB-GYN’s moving account of delivering a baby to a shackled woman in custody. Labor and childbirth are already intense and vulnerable experiences, and the use of restraints can exacerbate the physical and emotional pain of the mother. This story deeply resonated, even with resistant sheriffs, ultimately propelling the legislation forward.

Despite the passage of this legislation, challenges persist. Recent revelations suggest some North Carolina prisons and jails have not been in compliance with the law. Undeterred, the ACLU of North Carolina is initiating a comprehensive awareness and compliance campaign, and will be filing public record requests with the jails in all 100 counties in North Carolina, coordinating legal education seminars for the criminal defense bar and developing content on the importance of reproductive justice and the need to uphold the rights of incarcerated individuals. With these efforts, the ACLU-NC aims to ensure adherence to the law and foster a deeper appreciation for upholding the dignity of pregnant people in prison and jails.

More than half of Texas public K-12 school districts still have discriminatory dress codes and grooming policies. The ACLU of Texas has uncovered alarming disparities in school dress codes, revealing a trend of discrimination against students based on gender, race and ethnicity, LGBTQ identity, religion, disability, and socioeconomic background. The ACLU of Texas recently published a new report that reviews policies from 97 percent of Texas school districts and highlights pervasive inequalities within them.

Some of the survey’s major findings include:

• More than 80 percent of districts enforce vague and subjective hair standards, which could lead to disproportionately penalizing Black students.
• 53 percent of districts uphold dress codes rooted in outdated gender norms, such as boys-only hair length policies and girls-only sleeve length policies.
• More than 80 percent of districts prohibit head coverings without explicitly noting or explaining the religious exemptions mandated by law, harming students of diverse faith backgrounds.
• Nearly 80 percent of districts penalize students for wearing worn or improperly sized clothing, disproportionately impacting economically disadvantaged students.

In light of these disparities, the ACLU of Texas is taking action to challenge discriminatory dress codes and foster inclusive classroom environments. They’re sending the report to every district in the state to equip students, families, educators, and policymakers with knowledge that can help identify the harms of — and solutions to — discriminatory dress code policies. The report provides advocacy tools for community members and a roadmap for school districts, outlining recommendations like removing discriminatory dress code language, establishing fair enforcement practices, and providing clear and specific dress code guidelines. The ACLU of Texas is actively working in the courts and communities to push for more inclusive dress codes.

If you’ve faced or witnessed dress code discrimination, you can share your experience to continue this advocacy.

No student should ever be punished for being who they are. Instead of discriminating against young people, we should be preparing them for their futures.

State legislation is crucially connected to our civil liberties, and can either expand our rights or chip away at them. These bills touch nearly every aspect of our lives. From Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs case that overturned the right to an abortion, to Loving v. Virginia, which struck down laws banning interracial marriage, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized marriage equality across the country — many Supreme Court cases that address all of our civil rights come from laws that were passed in state legislatures.

With an increasingly conservative Supreme Court and federal court system, as well as a Congress whose members are constantly in gridlock, state legislatures offer a more accessible way to enact meaningful change. State lawmakers are easier to contact regarding policies that should be passed, and also frequently go on to run for federal office, or become governors. What’s more, state actions can lead to national impact if many similar policies are passed around the country, signaling national trends.

With many state legislative sessions currently underway, learn more about this important political process, how it affects your rights, and how to get involved.

Each state has its own legislative body in which lawmakers work together to pass policies — just like Congress does at the federal level. Every state except for Nebraska has a legislature composed of two chambers, or a ​​bicameral legislature — which must work together to get a majority of favorable votes and pass bills in both chambers. While the exact names and powers of these entities depend on the specific states, once a bill is passed, it will be sent to the governor to be signed into law or may face a veto.

Most state legislatures are made up of lawmakers who meet to pass laws during legislative sessions each year. If circumstances arise that require lawmakers to address legislation outside of these regular sessions, a special session can be called. There are also several states with full-time legislatures whose lawmakers meet year-round. Lawmakers often engage in this work part time, and are often not adequately paid.

The length and timing of state legislative sessions differ from state to state. Some legislatures are in session for many months, while others only take a few. The sessions that aren’t full time usually take place in the first half of the year, traditionally beginning in January.

The laws that are passed during state legislative sessions run the gamut and can affect a number of constituents’ rights, including reproductive freedom, voting protections, access to gender-affirming care, and others. But this influence goes both ways. Presumably, the prospective laws should reflect the majority opinions of individuals in the state, with lawmakers acting as advocates for these interests. Many bills and policies that make it to state legislatures are promoted by advocacy organizations or interest groups who work with lawmakers to get them passed. The ACLU is among these entities, and is the only organization focusing on civil rights and civil liberties that has an office with staff in every state, working with local policymakers.

There are many decisions happening in states around the country that put our rights in the balance. Without the federal protections from Roe v. Wade, many lawmakers are attacking abortion rights at the state level. There has also been a surge of state laws introduced that block trans youth from receiving gender-affirming care, censor student free speech, and suppress people’s voting powers.

But the ACLU will never stop fighting for your rights. We have taken on countless state-level legal battles to protect people’s liberties — and have seen many victories along the way.

The ACLU always encourages our community to play a hands-on role in the fight for our freedoms. Across the country, we implement strategies that empower voters around the country to stay informed about local races and elect candidates whose interests align with theirs. We’re also mapping state-level attacks on LGBTQ rights so you can keep track of your own area’s legislation — and fight back accordingly.

Supporters can get in touch with the ACLU affiliate offices in their state to learn about local issues they are taking action on. Many affiliate websites offer primers on state legislatures. Our grassroots effort People Power also allows volunteers to engage with state-level actions in their area.

To learn about your state’s legislature, identify the lawmakers who represent you and what their stances are on the issues you care about most. State lawmakers and governors will usually highlight the issues they care about, and the legislative work they’ve done, wherever they are able. With most state legislative sessions underway right now, you can also keep track of policies that are being voted on. This will let you know your legislature’s priorities and if your lawmakers are fulfilling their campaign promises to constituents. Remember, the key players involved in the legislative process are voted into office by you. You have the power in numbers to elect or replace representatives based on whether they are advocating for your interests.

For more than 100 years the American Civil Liberties Union has defended the right to free speech – no matter the speaker, and regardless of whether we agree with their views.

The defense and protection of free speech and expression span many forms and issues at the ACLU. In the last year alone, it has included efforts to actively oppose book bans; represent educators fighting classroom censorship aimed at suppressing important race perspectives; defend protesters responding to police shootings or overseas wars; protect the ability of Indigenous students to wear tribal regalia at their graduation ceremonies; and fight against retaliatory arrests for protected speech.

While the faces of the free speech movement continue to change, the significance of defending free speech remains unchanged. This work lies at the heart of the ACLU’s core principles and values.

On March 18, the ACLU appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court to argue another free speech case of great significance. In this case, the ACLU represented the National Rifle Association (NRA) against government overreach and censorship. Some may have wondered why the ACLU was representing the NRA, since the ACLU clearly opposes the NRA on gun control and the role of firearms in society. In fact, we abhor many of the group’s goals, strategies, and tactics. So, the reality that we have joined forces, notwithstanding those disagreements, reflects the importance of the First Amendment principles at stake in this case.

The ACLU made the decision to represent the NRA in this case because we are deeply concerned that if regulators can threaten the NRA for their political views in New York state, they can come after the ACLU and allied organizations in places where our agendas are unpopular.

If reelected, President Trump has already promised to use the power of the government to go after his political adversaries. In a second Trump administration, opposition from the ACLU and its allied organizations will be top of mind for political leaders who may seek to go after their rivals the way New York targeted the NRA. The principal issue at stake in this case is one in which the ACLU deeply believes: preventing government blacklists of advocacy groups. Indeed, the timing couldn’t be better for drawing a bright line that would help bind a future Trump administration and other government officials who misuse their power.

In this case, the ACLU argues that Maria Vullo, New York’s former chief financial regulator, threatened to use her regulatory power over banks and insurance companies to coerce them into denying basic financial services to the NRA and, in Vullo’s own words, “other gun promotion” groups. The ACLU argues that coercing private parties to blacklist the NRA because of its advocacy violates the First Amendment, just as punishing the group directly for its “gun promotion” views would. And if New York can do this to the NRA, Texas or Florida could use the same tactics against groups advocating immigrants’ rights or the right to abortion.

The NRA has a right, like all other advocacy organizations, to pursue their mission free from reprisals by government officials who disagree with its political viewpoint. The government should not be able to evade the Constitution by doing indirectly what it plainly cannot do directly. History has, consistently, underscored the importance of this protection.

Nevertheless, we’ve faced criticism of our representation of the NRA on the theory that even if the NRA wins in this Supreme Court case, officials will still try to stifle the speech of people on the left, and courts will side with them. These critics are correct in one sense — those in power have an unfortunate tendency to try to stifle the speech of those with whom they disagree, and we will certainly continue to bring new cases to stop them. But the critics are wrong about the impact of the precedents we win, especially at the Supreme Court. People of every ideological stripe benefit with every decision vindicating the right to freedom of speech.

When we defend clients with positions with which we disagree, or even abhor, it’s because we are defending values crucial to the work of civil rights advocates in the past and present. These values include doctrines that protect our rights — at the local, state, and federal level — to join economic boycotts, hold protests, and publicly dissent. In fact, a significant amount of the ACLU’s modern day First Amendment advocacy work is predicated on principles stemming from landmark civil rights legal victories of the 1960s and 70s.

Take one of our most controversial cases, which is also one of the most important cases in the entire First Amendment canon — our defense of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1969, Klan member Clarence Brandenburg addressed a rally held in Ohio where he called for “revenge” against the government and Black individuals. He was convicted of violating the state’s Criminal Syndicalism law, which prohibited speech that “advocate[d] … the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform.”

The ACLU represented Brandenburg at the Supreme Court, which reversed his conviction. The court ruled that Brandenburg’s speech was protected by the First Amendment, and that the government can make it a crime to advocate illegal conduct only “where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”

Brandenburg’s speech was reprehensible. But in preserving his First Amendment rights, the ACLU helped establish critical protection for all dissidents’ and activists’ speech. Before Brandenburg, governments had regularly charged their critics with advocating illegal activity. The Brandenburg precedent has been used to defend all kinds of political speech; indeed, today the ACLU is applying the decision in a Supreme Court case defending civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson, who took part in a Black Lives Matter protest in Louisiana.

Simply put, the right to speak freely applies to everyone. Otherwise, any elected official would be able to decide whose speech is acceptable, “safe,” or politically palatable. That is why we defend speech we hate. It’s why in 1978 the ACLU represented a neo-Nazi group that sought to demonstrate in Skokie, a Chicago suburb with a substantial Jewish population, including many survivors of the Holocaust. Notwithstanding the odious views of the protesters, we believed that once government officials are empowered to block demonstrations because they disagree with their message, the right to protest would be illusory. The Supreme Court agreed, and that decision ensures that city, state, and federal officials cannot suppress protests because they disapprove of their message.

The power to censor the neo-Nazis would have opened the door to censoring any protester, including civil rights activists or anti-war protesters. The ACLU’s position in this case was famously controversial and Aryeh Neier, the ACLU’s executive director in the 70s and a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, withstood withering criticism. But it was the right thing to do.

The ACLU knew in the past, as we recognize now, that if the First Amendment protected only popular ideas, it would serve little purpose. If we do not take a principled stand on behalf of those with whom we disagree, we weaken our case the next time we defend those fighting for the values we share. At our core, the ACLU believes that rights and liberties are universal and “indivisible” – meaning they attach to all people, not just our friends.

Our mandate to advance all rights and liberties for all people was forged more than 100 years ago when we combatted political repression against dissidents, immigrants, workers, and other so-called radicals. Over the years the ACLU has defended the free speech rights of countless individuals and groups with which we disagree. We defended their speech rights — despite our disagreements — because we believe in free speech, and because we realize that once you chip away at one person’s rights, everyone’s rights are at risk.

Defending speech we hate is admittedly a controversial part of our mandate. Some of our allies and supporters don’t always agree with this stance. In fact, there are even some ACLU staff, leaders, and volunteers who believe that defending speech we hate does more harm than good. Some believe we shouldn’t use our limited resources defending individuals and causes with whom we disagree. Reasonable people can — and always will — disagree on the ACLU’s stance, including our own staff. Yet this is what we have done for over a century and, as the ACLU’s executive director, I respectfully believe it’s the right thing to do — for free speech and for the ACLU.

Ours is an organization that increasingly reflects all of America. We celebrate our growing diversity, just as we embrace the dissent and debate that attend it. Our commitment to free speech extends to dissent within our ranks. Dissent and debate are healthy for society — and for a civil liberties organization. This principle has long been the lifeblood of the ACLU. And it is that commitment that underlies our defense of the NRA’s free speech rights at the Supreme Court.

As a child in New Jersey, I grew up hearing stories of my mother’s flight attendant days in South Korea. A few stuck out to me even at a young age – such as hearing she needed to maintain a certain weight to get into the flight attendant program and that she had to quit her job once she got married. I couldn’t understand why my mother had to quit her dream job, the job that allowed her to travel to Hawaii and Paris, the two places she had always wanted to go since she was little, just because she got married. My mother also told me how women either lied about being married to keep their jobs or were pressured to quit by their superiors if they were public about their marital status or were pregnant. Although airlines across the world have since rolled back official policies restricting marital status and pregnancy for flight attendants in response to federal civil rights laws, many still perpetuate gender discrimination through dress code restrictions and limitations on lactating.

Unfortunately, what my mother faced as a female flight attendant was common across the globe. The role of women in the airline industry has long been limited to societal constructs of what it means to be “feminine.” Women flight attendants have been hypersexualized through revealing uniforms and advertisements, such as an infamous ad campaign run by a now discontinued airline in which a flight attendant states, “I’m Cheryl; Fly me.” To maintain this public perception of flight attendants as sexually and romantically available, airlines imposed informal and formal restrictions on the height, weight, and age of flight attendants as public imaging and marketing tools. In the 1950s, airlines began to institute mandatory retirement ages for flight attendants, 35 and older, to further reinforce their image of a desirable woman. Flight attendants were fired for getting married or becoming pregnant until the 1970’s.

Nowadays, we see this sexualization in current “female” flight attendant uniform policies – skirt, high heels, tight clothing, low-cut blouses – which are indicative of the longstanding stereotypes of what it means to be a “woman” in the airline industry. Restrictive uniform and grooming policies that reinforce stereotypical categories of “male” or “female” harm people of all genders, particularly women and nonbinary people. This was the case in Wetherell v. Alaska Airlines, in which a nonbinary flight attendant was required to adhere to an inflexible uniform policy that forced them to conform to rigid gender stereotypes. In May 2023, the ACLU, the ACLU of Washington, and the Washington State Attorney General’s Office secured a consent decree against Alaska Airlines, requiring the removal of all gendered restrictions from its uniform policy for flight attendants and additional training on gender identity and gender expression.

Dress code restrictions aren’t the only gender discrimination issue that airlines need to work on. New parents in the airline industry need to be able to pump breast milk aboard aircraft during noncritical flight phases. Lactation accommodations are now the norm in many places thanks to landmark legislation including the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act of 2022. The PUMP Act guarantees the right to pump at work and provides federal labor protection for new parents in most industries who want to pump milk during their workday without fear of being fired by their employer. But the PUMP Act excluded flight crews, and as a result, airlines have dragged their feet at implementing basic accommodations, forcing their employees to delay pumping due to their flight schedules, resulting in pain, discomfort, and infections, or to stop breastfeeding earlier than they intended.

We have fought to ensure pregnant flight attendants have the right to pump at work. In partnership with the ACLU of Colorado and other organizations, we secured two settlements agreements on behalf of Frontier flight attendants and pilots who had previously been denied pregnancy and breastfeeding accommodations by Frontier. As a result of the settlement, Frontier made important policy changes addressing pregnancy and lactation accommodations on the ground and during flights, including a policy change allowing flight crew to pump breast milk while in the air.

Now that Frontier is leading the way, other airlines should follow suit. That’s why we sent a letter to 28 airlines urging them to adopt policies expressly permitting flight crews to pump breast milk aboard an aircraft.

For those airlines that don’t follow in Frontier’s footsteps, we need the AIR PUMP Act to expand PUMP’s critical protection to flight crews, making clear that all airlines must provide employees who are lactating with the basic accommodations they need, such as pumping during non-critical phases of the flight. But in the meanwhile, we’re very glad to know that there’s currently a bipartisan effort, in both the House and Senate, to require the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority to give written guidance to air carriers so that flight crew members will be able to pump without being penalized.

No working mother should be forced to choose between their job or nursing their child. We applaud Congress for passing the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, and now it’s time to finish the job and stand by working parents in the airline industry.

Donate today