ACLU: There’s a Battle Brewing at Google Over Employee Speech. The Outcome Affects Us All.

There’s a Battle Brewing at Google Over Employee Speech. The Outcome Affects Us All.
Retaliating against Big Tech employees who push their employers to do the right thing is a threat to us all.

The outcome of a battle heating up at Google over the limits of employee free speech will have huge consequences for all of us. Will Google shut down internal dissent and silence whistleblowers? Or will the company live up to its initial motto, “Don’t be evil?”

In 2017, researchers Meredith Whittaker and Kate Crawford founded the AI Now Institute at New York University, with the goal of “produc[ing] interdisciplinary research on the social implications of artificial intelligence [in] four key domains: rights and liberties, labor and automation, bias and inclusion, and safety and critical infrastructure.” Since then, the group has published key research on race and gender discrimination in AI, public agency accountability, litigation related to algorithms, and more. (Full disclosure: The ACLU is a proud partner of AI Now.)

Both Whittaker and Crawford have strong ties to the tech industry. The former is the founder of Google’s Open Research Group, and the latter is a principal researcher at Microsoft. Both women still work for these companies, even though their work at AI Now often critiques the tech industry’s shortcomings and offers a perspective rooted in human and civil rights, instead of profit maximization — an unorthodox perspective in the Valley, to put it mildly.

For years, I’ve been impressed that Whittaker and Crawford could simultaneously work for and offer public critiques of these big tech companies and took that as an indication that Google and Microsoft are mature, if problematic, institutions. A willingness to tolerate internal dissent is important in any organization. Fostering such an environment is especially critical for companies like Google and Microsoft in the United States, where lawmakers have largely refused to impose regulations, leaving a dangerous amount of power in the hands of an elite — and often obsessively secretive — few in Silicon Valley.

But recent events suggest that at least at Google, executive patience with democratic debate and a culture of openness is wearing thin. According to press reports, Google has in recent months retaliated against both Whittaker and a fellow activist at the company, Claire Stapleton, after their successful organizing led to policy change at the nearly trillion dollar company.

In October 2018, The New York Times reported that Google had provided handsome exit packages to executives credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. The former head of the Android group, Andy Rubin, was paid $90 million to leave the company after he was accused of sexual wrongdoing. Google subsequently invested millions of dollars in a company controlled by Mr. Rubin. Then, in March of this year, the Times published yet more evidence that Google sought to protect powerful men accused of sexual malfeasance. The latest report showed that in 2016, Google paid executive Amit Singhal $45 million when he left the firm after an employee accused him of groping her at a work event.

But while Google provided golden parachutes to executives accused of sexual harassment and assault, the company simultaneously forced the victims of those incidents to take their complaints against the company through arbitration, denying them their day in court.

Googlers, led by activists like Whittaker and Stapleton, rebelled. In November 2018, 20,000 Googlers worldwide walked off the job, demanding the forced arbitration policy be repealed. The protest, joined by one in five Google employees worldwide, attracted global press and was devastatingly effective. Within days, the company announced it would eliminate the forced arbitration policy for people who spoke out about sexual harassment in the workplace. In February, facing further demands from workers, Google scrapped its forced arbitration clause entirely.

Whittaker’s organizing at the company hasn’t been limited to fighting for changes to the internal policy governing employee rights. She has been unapologetic in her defense of democratic values and has challenged Google’s work with the U.S. military and Chinese government. More recently, she was part of a group of concerned Googlers who protested the appointment of a transphobic reactionary from the Heritage Foundation to an external advisory board tasked with examining questions related to AI and ethics. That board was subsequently dissolved.

Now, Whittaker says, she’s facing retaliation from the company for her efforts to make Google a more accountable, equitable, and democratic institution. According to a letter she sent to co-workers, executives recently told her she would be forced to choose between her work with AI Now and her employment at the company. Claire Stapleton, one of the organizers of the anti-arbitration walkout, says she too has faced retaliation for her organizing, which included a demotion — only reversed when she hired a lawyer.

Google denies it retaliated against either employee. But last Friday, Whittaker and Stapleton organized a group of hundreds of Googlers to engage in a company-wide meeting about retaliation workers have faced across the world. According to them, over 300 people submitted their own testimonies that Google leadership has retaliated against them for their organizing. And Google employees are holding a sit-in tomorrow to protest retaliation they say employee organizers have faced.

In AI Now’s 2018 annual report, Whittaker and her colleagues wrote about the important role whistleblowers play at institutions like Google:

Technology companies should provide protections for conscientious objectors, employee organizing, and ethical whistleblowers. Organizing and resistance by technology workers has emerged as a force for accountability and ethical decision making. Technology companies need to protect workers’ ability to organize, whistleblow, and make ethical choices about what projects they work on. This should include clear policies accommodating and protecting conscientious objectors, ensuring workers the right to know what they are working on, and the ability to abstain from such work without retaliation or retribution. Workers raising ethical concerns must also be protected, as should whistleblowing in the public interest.

As Whittaker and her activist colleagues have demonstrated over the past few years, the world is watching Google and other big tech companies. The decisions these companies make about product design, political lobbying, and which technologies they’ll build and sell to which types of governments impact all of us and future generations. That’s why retaliating against Big Tech employees who push their employers to do the right thing isn’t just a threat to the individual livelihoods of those workers — it’s a threat to us all.

Published May 1, 2019 at 02:30AM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2XXJcfA

ACLU: There’s a Battle Brewing at Google Over Employee Speech. The Outcome Affects Us All.

There’s a Battle Brewing at Google Over Employee Speech. The Outcome Affects Us All.
Retaliating against Big Tech employees who push their employers to do the right thing is a threat to us all.

The outcome of a battle heating up at Google over the limits of employee free speech will have huge consequences for all of us. Will Google shut down internal dissent and silence whistleblowers? Or will the company live up to its initial motto, “Don’t be evil?”

In 2017, researchers Meredith Whittaker and Kate Crawford founded the AI Now Institute at New York University, with the goal of “produc[ing] interdisciplinary research on the social implications of artificial intelligence [in] four key domains: rights and liberties, labor and automation, bias and inclusion, and safety and critical infrastructure.” Since then, the group has published key research on race and gender discrimination in AI, public agency accountability, litigation related to algorithms, and more. (Full disclosure: The ACLU is a proud partner of AI Now.)

Both Whittaker and Crawford have strong ties to the tech industry. The former is the founder of Google’s Open Research Group, and the latter is a principal researcher at Microsoft. Both women still work for these companies, even though their work at AI Now often critiques the tech industry’s shortcomings and offers a perspective rooted in human and civil rights, instead of profit maximization — an unorthodox perspective in the Valley, to put it mildly.

For years, I’ve been impressed that Whittaker and Crawford could simultaneously work for and offer public critiques of these big tech companies and took that as an indication that Google and Microsoft are mature, if problematic, institutions. A willingness to tolerate internal dissent is important in any organization. Fostering such an environment is especially critical for companies like Google and Microsoft in the United States, where lawmakers have largely refused to impose regulations, leaving a dangerous amount of power in the hands of an elite — and often obsessively secretive — few in Silicon Valley.

But recent events suggest that at least at Google, executive patience with democratic debate and a culture of openness is wearing thin. According to press reports, Google has in recent months retaliated against both Whittaker and a fellow activist at the company, Claire Stapleton, after their successful organizing led to policy change at the nearly trillion dollar company.

In October 2018, The New York Times reported that Google had provided handsome exit packages to executives credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. The former head of the Android group, Andy Rubin, was paid $90 million to leave the company after he was accused of sexual wrongdoing. Google subsequently invested millions of dollars in a company controlled by Mr. Rubin. Then, in March of this year, the Times published yet more evidence that Google sought to protect powerful men accused of sexual malfeasance. The latest report showed that in 2016, Google paid executive Amit Singhal $45 million when he left the firm after an employee accused him of groping her at a work event.

But while Google provided golden parachutes to executives accused of sexual harassment and assault, the company simultaneously forced the victims of those incidents to take their complaints against the company through arbitration, denying them their day in court.

Googlers, led by activists like Whittaker and Stapleton, rebelled. In November 2018, 20,000 Googlers worldwide walked off the job, demanding the forced arbitration policy be repealed. The protest, joined by one in five Google employees worldwide, attracted global press and was devastatingly effective. Within days, the company announced it would eliminate the forced arbitration policy for people who spoke out about sexual harassment in the workplace. In February, facing further demands from workers, Google scrapped its forced arbitration clause entirely.

Whittaker’s organizing at the company hasn’t been limited to fighting for changes to the internal policy governing employee rights. She has been unapologetic in her defense of democratic values and has challenged Google’s work with the U.S. military and Chinese government. More recently, she was part of a group of concerned Googlers who protested the appointment of a transphobic reactionary from the Heritage Foundation to an external advisory board tasked with examining questions related to AI and ethics. That board was subsequently dissolved.

Now, Whittaker says, she’s facing retaliation from the company for her efforts to make Google a more accountable, equitable, and democratic institution. According to a letter she sent to co-workers, executives recently told her she would be forced to choose between her work with AI Now and her employment at the company. Claire Stapleton, one of the organizers of the anti-arbitration walkout, says she too has faced retaliation for her organizing, which included a demotion — only reversed when she hired a lawyer.

Google denies it retaliated against either employee. But last Friday, Whittaker and Stapleton organized a group of hundreds of Googlers to engage in a company-wide meeting about retaliation workers have faced across the world. According to them, over 300 people submitted their own testimonies that Google leadership has retaliated against them for their organizing. And Google employees are holding a sit-in tomorrow to protest retaliation they say employee organizers have faced.

In AI Now’s 2018 annual report, Whittaker and her colleagues wrote about the important role whistleblowers play at institutions like Google:

Technology companies should provide protections for conscientious objectors, employee organizing, and ethical whistleblowers. Organizing and resistance by technology workers has emerged as a force for accountability and ethical decision making. Technology companies need to protect workers’ ability to organize, whistleblow, and make ethical choices about what projects they work on. This should include clear policies accommodating and protecting conscientious objectors, ensuring workers the right to know what they are working on, and the ability to abstain from such work without retaliation or retribution. Workers raising ethical concerns must also be protected, as should whistleblowing in the public interest.

As Whittaker and her activist colleagues have demonstrated over the past few years, the world is watching Google and other big tech companies. The decisions these companies make about product design, political lobbying, and which technologies they’ll build and sell to which types of governments impact all of us and future generations. That’s why retaliating against Big Tech employees who push their employers to do the right thing isn’t just a threat to the individual livelihoods of those workers — it’s a threat to us all.

Published April 30, 2019 at 10:00PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2XXJcfA

ACLU: We Got U.S. Border Officials to Testify Under Oath. Here’s What We Found Out.

We Got U.S. Border Officials to Testify Under Oath. Here’s What We Found Out.
ICE and CBP allow unfettered, warrantless searches of travelers’ digital devices, and empower officers to dodge the Fourth Amendment

In September 2017, we, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued the federal government for its warrantless and suspicionless searches of phones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry.

The government immediately tried to dismiss our case, arguing that the First and Fourth Amendments do not protect against such searches. But the court ruled that our clients — 10 U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident whose phones and laptops were searched while returning to the United States — could move forward with their claims. 

Since then, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have had to turn over documents and evidence about why and how they conduct warrantless and suspicionless searches of electronic devices at the border. And their officials have had to sit down with us to explain — under oath — their policies and practices governing such warrantless searches.

What we learned is alarming, and we’re now back in court with this new evidence asking the judge to skip trial altogether and rule for our clients.

The information we uncovered through our lawsuit shows that CBP and ICE are asserting near-unfettered authority to search and seize travelers’ devices at the border, for purposes far afield from the enforcement of immigration and customs laws. The agencies’ policies allow officers to search devices for general law enforcement purposes, such as investigating and enforcing bankruptcy, environmental, and consumer protection laws. The agencies also say that they can search and seize devices for the purpose of compiling “risk assessments” or to advance pre-existing investigations. The policies even allow officers to consider requests from other government agencies to search specific travelers’ devices.

CBP and ICE also say they can search a traveler’s electronic devices to find information about someone else. That means they can search a U.S. citizen’s devices to probe whether that person’s family or friends may be undocumented; the devices of a journalist or scholar with foreign sources who may be of interest to the U.S. government; or the devices of a traveler who is the business partner or colleague of someone under investigation.

Both agencies allow officers to retain information from travelers’ electronic devices and share it with other government entities, including state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies.

Let’s get one thing clear: The government cannot use the pretext of the “border” to make an end run around the Constitution.

The border is not a lawless place. CBP and ICE are not exempt from the Constitution. And the information on our phones and laptops is no less deserving of constitutional protections than, say, international mail or our homes.

Warrantless and suspicionless searches of our electronic devices at the border violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures – including at the border. Border officers do have authority to search our belongings for contraband or illegal items, but mobile electronic devices are unlike any other item officers encounter at the border. For instance, they contain far more personal and revealing information than could be gleaned from a thorough search of a person’s home, which requires a warrant.

These searches also violate the First Amendment. People will self-censor and avoid expressing dissent if they know that returning to the United States means that border officers can read and retain what they say privately, or see what topics they searched online. Similarly, journalists will avoid reporting on issues that the U.S. government may have an interest in, or that may place them in contact with sensitive sources.

Our clients’ experiences demonstrate the intrusiveness of device searches at the border and the emotional toll they exact. For instance, Zainab Merchant and Nadia Alasaad both wear headscarves in public for religious reasons, and their smartphones contained photos of themselves without headscarves that they did not want border officers to see. Officers searched the phones nonetheless. On another occasion, a border officer searched Ms. Merchant’s phone even though she repeatedly told the officer that it contained attorney-client privileged communications. After repeated searches of his electronic devices, Isma’il Kushkush, a journalist, felt worried that he was being targeted because of his reporting, and he questioned whether to continue covering issues overseas.

Crossing the U.S. border shouldn’t mean facing the prospect of turning over years of emails, photos, location data, medical and financial information, browsing history, or other personal information on our mobile devices. That’s why we’re asking a federal court to rule that border agencies must do what any other law enforcement agency would have to do in order to search electronic devices: get a warrant.

Published April 30, 2019 at 11:15PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2GTEOID

ACLU: We Got U.S. Border Officials to Testify Under Oath. Here’s What We Found Out.

We Got U.S. Border Officials to Testify Under Oath. Here’s What We Found Out.
ICE and CBP allow unfettered, warrantless searches of travelers’ digital devices, and empower officers to dodge the Fourth Amendment

In September 2017, we, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued the federal government for its warrantless and suspicionless searches of phones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry.

The government immediately tried to dismiss our case, arguing that the First and Fourth Amendments do not protect against such searches. But the court ruled that our clients — 10 U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident whose phones and laptops were searched while returning to the United States — could move forward with their claims. 

Since then, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have had to turn over documents and evidence about why and how they conduct warrantless and suspicionless searches of electronic devices at the border. And their officials have had to sit down with us to explain — under oath — their policies and practices governing such warrantless searches.

What we learned is alarming, and we’re now back in court with this new evidence asking the judge to skip trial altogether and rule for our clients.

The information we uncovered through our lawsuit shows that CBP and ICE are asserting near-unfettered authority to search and seize travelers’ devices at the border, for purposes far afield from the enforcement of immigration and customs laws. The agencies’ policies allow officers to search devices for general law enforcement purposes, such as investigating and enforcing bankruptcy, environmental, and consumer protection laws. The agencies also say that they can search and seize devices for the purpose of compiling “risk assessments” or to advance pre-existing investigations. The policies even allow officers to consider requests from other government agencies to search specific travelers’ devices.

CBP and ICE also say they can search a traveler’s electronic devices to find information about someone else. That means they can search a U.S. citizen’s devices to probe whether that person’s family or friends may be undocumented; the devices of a journalist or scholar with foreign sources who may be of interest to the U.S. government; or the devices of a traveler who is the business partner or colleague of someone under investigation.

Both agencies allow officers to retain information from travelers’ electronic devices and share it with other government entities, including state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies.

Let’s get one thing clear: The government cannot use the pretext of the “border” to make an end run around the Constitution.

The border is not a lawless place. CBP and ICE are not exempt from the Constitution. And the information on our phones and laptops is no less deserving of constitutional protections than, say, international mail or our homes.

Warrantless and suspicionless searches of our electronic devices at the border violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures – including at the border. Border officers do have authority to search our belongings for contraband or illegal items, but mobile electronic devices are unlike any other item officers encounter at the border. For instance, they contain far more personal and revealing information than could be gleaned from a thorough search of a person’s home, which requires a warrant.

These searches also violate the First Amendment. People will self-censor and avoid expressing dissent if they know that returning to the United States means that border officers can read and retain what they say privately, or see what topics they searched online. Similarly, journalists will avoid reporting on issues that the U.S. government may have an interest in, or that may place them in contact with sensitive sources.

Our clients’ experiences demonstrate the intrusiveness of device searches at the border and the emotional toll they exact. For instance, Zainab Merchant and Nadia Alasaad both wear headscarves in public for religious reasons, and their smartphones contained photos of themselves without headscarves that they did not want border officers to see. Officers searched the phones nonetheless. On another occasion, a border officer searched Ms. Merchant’s phone even though she repeatedly told the officer that it contained attorney-client privileged communications. After repeated searches of his electronic devices, Isma’il Kushkush, a journalist, felt worried that he was being targeted because of his reporting, and he questioned whether to continue covering issues overseas.

Crossing the U.S. border shouldn’t mean facing the prospect of turning over years of emails, photos, location data, medical and financial information, browsing history, or other personal information on our mobile devices. That’s why we’re asking a federal court to rule that border agencies must do what any other law enforcement agency would have to do in order to search electronic devices: get a warrant.

Published April 30, 2019 at 06:45PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2GTEOID

ACLU: Finding Common Ground on Repealing the Death Penalty

Finding Common Ground on Repealing the Death Penalty
How ending capital punishment transcends the political divide.

What do Michael Bloomberg and Oliver North have in common? How about Michelle Malkin and Kim Kardashian West, or Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders? They may not share much turf when it comes to their political or social views, but they do all agree on one point that may surprise you.

They all oppose the death penalty.

Support for repealing the death penalty is diverse, it is growing, and it is bipartisan in nature. The brokenness of the death penalty system, long documented in local headlines and the cases they highlight, has hit a turning point with the public. This year alone, Republicans sponsored death penalty-repeal bills in ten states. That’s in keeping with trends that my organization, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, has been tracking since 2012.

I am a walking example of this trend.

Growing up as a conservative and as the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister, my views on the death penalty were for many years exactly what one might expect—absolutely pro. But I changed my stance after finally digging deeper, and learning just how frequently innocent people are caught up in the system. I learned about the outrageous costs of the death penalty’s operation. I learned that the death penalty does not deter crime. I learned of the extraordinary arbitrariness and racial bias in sentencing.

These are the reasons that many on the political right, like myself, are joining the opposition to capital punishment and fighting for repeal.

At the end of the day, the death penalty is another failed big government program marked by the same inefficiency and misallocation of resources found throughout almost all bureaucracies. The tenets of conservatism are straightforward: a belief in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the protection of the sanctity of human life. The death penalty does not meet any of those metrics, so it makes sense that conservatives are abandoning it in droves.

It’s been a rough few years politically in our country. The divisiveness and the disagreements have left many Americans feeling as though we’ll never come together again. I would argue that our ability to band together despite differences in ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, and culture is what has made American civil society so strong for so many years. On this point, the encouraging thing that I see in my work and in the movement against the death penalty at large is it is providing those of us eager to find new common ground with an opportunity to work across the aisle, on an issue we can all agree is unjust.

As state legislatures across this country debated repeal bills, I’ve sat shoulder to shoulder in hearings with people from all walks of life: Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians; murder victims’ family members and death row exonerees; Baptist, Jewish, Catholic, and Unitarian religious leaders; retired law enforcement, state attorneys general, judges, and lawyers. The list goes on and on. We have come together despite perceived and actual differences in stations, beliefs, and backgrounds to eliminate this broken system. There is power in that.

In addition to the growing number of repeal bills across the nation, there are some other signs of success that point to Americans’ growing disapproval. New death sentences are actually down 60 percent since 2000, and last year was the fourth year in a row that the country carried out fewer than 30 executions. All 25 of those executions stemmed from just eight states, and Texas alone was responsible for over half of them.

In short, not only is usage of the death penalty down, it is concentrated and isolated.

I often say that support for the death penalty runs a mile wide and an inch deep. The minute someone takes time to examine the facts around the death penalty support quickly wanes. My elevator pitch response to “what do you do?” is almost always real-time evidence of this fact. There are simply too many problems with the system for us to allow it to continue.

Given all the progress we have made in repealing the death penalty in recent years, and the diversity of support that made it happen, I think it makes perfect sense for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty and the ACLU to work together as the U.S. marches closer to ridding the nation of this broken system forever.

When those opportunities arise and we find issues that unite us, I believe we must choose to come together. And when we come together as Americans, we know big things happen and we can fulfill the promise of justice in our justice system, one defined by equity, conscience, and our shared values as a society.

Published May 6, 2019 at 10:15PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2UPJsev

ACLU: Finding Common Ground on Repealing the Death Penalty

Finding Common Ground on Repealing the Death Penalty
How ending capital punishment transcends the political divide.

What do Michael Bloomberg and Oliver North have in common? How about Michelle Malkin and Kim Kardashian West, or Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders? They may not share much turf when it comes to their political or social views, but they do all agree on one point that may surprise you.

They all oppose the death penalty.

Support for repealing the death penalty is diverse, it is growing, and it is bipartisan in nature. The brokenness of the death penalty system, long documented in local headlines and the cases they highlight, has hit a turning point with the public. This year alone, Republicans sponsored death penalty-repeal bills in ten states. That’s in keeping with trends that my organization, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, has been tracking since 2012.

I am a walking example of this trend.

Growing up as a conservative and as the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister, my views on the death penalty were for many years exactly what one might expect—absolutely pro. But I changed my stance after finally digging deeper, and learning just how frequently innocent people are caught up in the system. I learned about the outrageous costs of the death penalty’s operation. I learned that the death penalty does not deter crime. I learned of the extraordinary arbitrariness and racial bias in sentencing.

These are the reasons that many on the political right, like myself, are joining the opposition to capital punishment and fighting for repeal.

At the end of the day, the death penalty is another failed big government program marked by the same inefficiency and misallocation of resources found throughout almost all bureaucracies. The tenets of conservatism are straightforward: a belief in limited government, fiscal responsibility, and the protection of the sanctity of human life. The death penalty does not meet any of those metrics, so it makes sense that conservatives are abandoning it in droves.

It’s been a rough few years politically in our country. The divisiveness and the disagreements have left many Americans feeling as though we’ll never come together again. I would argue that our ability to band together despite differences in ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, and culture is what has made American civil society so strong for so many years. On this point, the encouraging thing that I see in my work and in the movement against the death penalty at large is it is providing those of us eager to find new common ground with an opportunity to work across the aisle, on an issue we can all agree is unjust.

As state legislatures across this country debated repeal bills, I’ve sat shoulder to shoulder in hearings with people from all walks of life: Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians; murder victims’ family members and death row exonerees; Baptist, Jewish, Catholic, and Unitarian religious leaders; retired law enforcement, state attorneys general, judges, and lawyers. The list goes on and on. We have come together despite perceived and actual differences in stations, beliefs, and backgrounds to eliminate this broken system. There is power in that.

In addition to the growing number of repeal bills across the nation, there are some other signs of success that point to Americans’ growing disapproval. New death sentences are actually down 60 percent since 2000, and last year was the fourth year in a row that the country carried out fewer than 30 executions. All 25 of those executions stemmed from just eight states, and Texas alone was responsible for over half of them.

In short, not only is usage of the death penalty down, it is concentrated and isolated.

I often say that support for the death penalty runs a mile wide and an inch deep. The minute someone takes time to examine the facts around the death penalty support quickly wanes. My elevator pitch response to “what do you do?” is almost always real-time evidence of this fact. There are simply too many problems with the system for us to allow it to continue.

Given all the progress we have made in repealing the death penalty in recent years, and the diversity of support that made it happen, I think it makes perfect sense for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty and the ACLU to work together as the U.S. marches closer to ridding the nation of this broken system forever.

When those opportunities arise and we find issues that unite us, I believe we must choose to come together. And when we come together as Americans, we know big things happen and we can fulfill the promise of justice in our justice system, one defined by equity, conscience, and our shared values as a society.

Published May 6, 2019 at 05:45PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2UPJsev

ACLU: Social Media Blackouts Are an Authoritarian Power Move

Social Media Blackouts Are an Authoritarian Power Move
When Americans see governments shutting down Internet communications, they should see nothing but counterproductive, authoritarian exercises of power

In the wake of the terrible Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, that government shut down access to Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and other social media services. The shutdown garnered praise from some within the United States and other democratic countries, but as tragic as the circumstances may be, Americans must never come to see social media or other Internet shutdowns as anything other than an authoritarian power move and/or a mistake.

Some commentators seemed to have viewed Sri Lanka’s shutdown through the lens of their own fatigue with social media platforms and the nastiness that can take place there. Without doubt, social media connectivity has intensified not only the positive but also the darker sides of humanity. But it’s important that we all keep the bigger picture firmly in mind.

First, Internet shutdowns, which have become increasingly common throughout the world, have a close and odious association with very dark abuses of power. As Stanford expert Jan Rydzak has written, “large shutdowns sometimes accompany aggressive military or paramilitary operations, rendering them virtually impossible to document in real time by reporters and citizen journalists.” Numerous shutdowns have been observed in the Syrian Civil War, for example, “immediately prior to and during military offensives carried out by the Syrian Army.” Rydzak concludes, “Network disruptions and shutdowns provide an invisibility cloak for violence as well as gross violations of human rights.”

Many imagine that such shut-downs can be beneficial by helping squelch brewing sectarian or ethnic violence. But the evidence shows that’s false. A study of shutdowns in India, which has by far the most shutdowns in the world, found that they “are followed by a clear increase in violent protest.” Partly that’s because violent outbreaks are “less reliant on effective communication and coordination” than nonviolent protests. Most outbreaks of genocide have been planned or whipped up by those with centralized, top-down control of communications media (the Nazis in Germany, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Serbian authoritarian Slobodan Milošević in Yugoslavia, the Hutu elite in Rwanda). Internet shutdowns are a tool that increases and serves centralized power rather than curbing it.

As the Sri Lankan writer Yudhanjaya Wijeratne pointed out, “Right now, in a country with tight government controls on trad[itional] media, social media is a boon for us.” He continued, “violence in [Sri Lanka] began before social media, Internet, telephony. To a large extent much of race hatred is still fueled by print media in this country.”

Not only are shutdowns a bad way to dampen violence, but they have many negative collateral effects. Of course, they interfere with people’s rights to freedom of expression and freedom to peacefully assemble by making it much harder to publish and to organize. They deprive people of accurate information when they need it most, without any clear effectiveness in countering misinformation. They interfere with efforts to reach out, support, and express solidarity with communities targeted by egregious attacks. And they create a sense of isolation when communities can least afford it. As one Sri Lankan activist told the Irish Times,

The social media ban makes it difficult for activists to mobilise [and] make sure communities provide and are given accurate and timely information…. [It] does not counter malicious rumours and fear. It deepens a sense of isolation, and the sense that we are not getting clear information on the latest threats, which leads to panic.

Other negative effects reported by experts and those affected by shutdowns include:

• Disruptions to health care and emergency services, which rely on good communications
• Damage to the economy due to the difficulties imposed on businesses
• Interference with the ability of people separated in an emergency to find and help each other, and to verify each other’s safety

Many who approved of the Sri Lankan blockages would never have supported such a move in this country. As Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation puts it, such views smack of paternalism — the view that “ ordinary Sri Lankans aren’t sophisticated enough to deal with these problems, we know better than they do, and we must trust their political leaders.”

Shutdowns in the U.S.?

When Americans look overseas and see governments shutting down or otherwise disrupting Internet communications, they should see nothing but counterproductive and authoritarian exercises of power.

We have seen hints of such abuses in the United States. Police in Baltimore asked Facebook to shut down a woman’s live video stream and then shot her to death. In 2011, authorities reacted to planned protests by shutting down cell service in the San Francisco subway system BART.

It’s also worth remembering that we currently have a president with marked authoritarian inclinations who displays no respect for the rule of law. That lack of respect has included a willingness to abuse his emergency authorities. And according to an analysis by the Brennan Center, those authorities include a provision of the Communications Act of 1934 that allows the president to shut down or take control of “any facility or station for wire communication” upon his proclamation “that there exists a state or threat of war involving the United States.”

We can hope that President Trump or any succeeding president, no matter how erratic, would never exercise such a power — but lauding these draconian practices in other nations can open the door to acceptance of similar abuses here in the United States.

Published April 27, 2019 at 01:30AM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2UKr9Hu

ACLU: Social Media Blackouts Are an Authoritarian Power Move

Social Media Blackouts Are an Authoritarian Power Move
When Americans see governments shutting down Internet communications, they should see nothing but counterproductive, authoritarian exercises of power

In the wake of the terrible Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, that government shut down access to Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and other social media services. The shutdown garnered praise from some within the United States and other democratic countries, but as tragic as the circumstances may be, Americans must never come to see social media or other Internet shutdowns as anything other than an authoritarian power move and/or a mistake.

Some commentators seemed to have viewed Sri Lanka’s shutdown through the lens of their own fatigue with social media platforms and the nastiness that can take place there. Without doubt, social media connectivity has intensified not only the positive but also the darker sides of humanity. But it’s important that we all keep the bigger picture firmly in mind.

First, Internet shutdowns, which have become increasingly common throughout the world, have a close and odious association with very dark abuses of power. As Stanford expert Jan Rydzak has written, “large shutdowns sometimes accompany aggressive military or paramilitary operations, rendering them virtually impossible to document in real time by reporters and citizen journalists.” Numerous shutdowns have been observed in the Syrian Civil War, for example, “immediately prior to and during military offensives carried out by the Syrian Army.” Rydzak concludes, “Network disruptions and shutdowns provide an invisibility cloak for violence as well as gross violations of human rights.”

Many imagine that such shut-downs can be beneficial by helping squelch brewing sectarian or ethnic violence. But the evidence shows that’s false. A study of shutdowns in India, which has by far the most shutdowns in the world, found that they “are followed by a clear increase in violent protest.” Partly that’s because violent outbreaks are “less reliant on effective communication and coordination” than nonviolent protests. Most outbreaks of genocide have been planned or whipped up by those with centralized, top-down control of communications media (the Nazis in Germany, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Serbian authoritarian Slobodan Milošević in Yugoslavia, the Hutu elite in Rwanda). Internet shutdowns are a tool that increases and serves centralized power rather than curbing it.

As the Sri Lankan writer Yudhanjaya Wijeratne pointed out, “Right now, in a country with tight government controls on trad[itional] media, social media is a boon for us.” He continued, “violence in [Sri Lanka] began before social media, Internet, telephony. To a large extent much of race hatred is still fueled by print media in this country.”

Not only are shutdowns a bad way to dampen violence, but they have many negative collateral effects. Of course, they interfere with people’s rights to freedom of expression and freedom to peacefully assemble by making it much harder to publish and to organize. They deprive people of accurate information when they need it most, without any clear effectiveness in countering misinformation. They interfere with efforts to reach out, support, and express solidarity with communities targeted by egregious attacks. And they create a sense of isolation when communities can least afford it. As one Sri Lankan activist told the Irish Times,

The social media ban makes it difficult for activists to mobilise [and] make sure communities provide and are given accurate and timely information…. [It] does not counter malicious rumours and fear. It deepens a sense of isolation, and the sense that we are not getting clear information on the latest threats, which leads to panic.

Other negative effects reported by experts and those affected by shutdowns include:

• Disruptions to health care and emergency services, which rely on good communications
• Damage to the economy due to the difficulties imposed on businesses
• Interference with the ability of people separated in an emergency to find and help each other, and to verify each other’s safety

Many who approved of the Sri Lankan blockages would never have supported such a move in this country. As Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation puts it, such views smack of paternalism — the view that “ ordinary Sri Lankans aren’t sophisticated enough to deal with these problems, we know better than they do, and we must trust their political leaders.”

Shutdowns in the U.S.?

When Americans look overseas and see governments shutting down or otherwise disrupting Internet communications, they should see nothing but counterproductive and authoritarian exercises of power.

We have seen hints of such abuses in the United States. Police in Baltimore asked Facebook to shut down a woman’s live video stream and then shot her to death. In 2011, authorities reacted to planned protests by shutting down cell service in the San Francisco subway system BART.

It’s also worth remembering that we currently have a president with marked authoritarian inclinations who displays no respect for the rule of law. That lack of respect has included a willingness to abuse his emergency authorities. And according to an analysis by the Brennan Center, those authorities include a provision of the Communications Act of 1934 that allows the president to shut down or take control of “any facility or station for wire communication” upon his proclamation “that there exists a state or threat of war involving the United States.”

We can hope that President Trump or any succeeding president, no matter how erratic, would never exercise such a power — but lauding these draconian practices in other nations can open the door to acceptance of similar abuses here in the United States.

Published April 26, 2019 at 09:00PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2UKr9Hu

ACLU: An Indictment in All But Name

An Indictment in All But Name
The report dispassionately lays out the facts, which are an indictment in all but name.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report, released to the public in a redacted version on April 18, lays out in meticulous detail both a blatantly illegal effort by Russia to throw the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump and repeated efforts by President Trump to end, limit, or impede Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference. Trump’s efforts included firing or attempting to fire those overseeing the investigation, directing subordinates to lie on his behalf, cajoling witnesses not to cooperate, and doctoring a public statement about a Trump Tower meeting between his son and closest advisers and a Russian lawyer offering compromising information on Hillary Clinton.

Attorney General William Barr, who has shown himself to be exactly the kind of presidential protector Trump wanted Jeff Sessions to be, did his best to whitewash the report. Almost four weeks before it was released to the public, Barr wrote a four-page letter to Congress purporting to summarize its findings. But as The New York Times’s Charlie Savage has shown, in the letter Barr took Mueller’s words out of context and omitted all mention of the damning evidence that courses through the report.^* Just before releasing the report to the public, Barr also held a press conference in which he again distorted its conclusions, stating that it found no collusion with the Russians and no obstruction of justice by the president. Both statements are profoundly misleading.

The Mueller report did not address “collusion,” a term that has no legal definition, but the narrower question of criminal conspiracy. It found no evidence that Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russians’ disinformation campaigns or hacking of computers belonging to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. But it describes extensive contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians, many of which Trump campaign officials lied about. And it finds substantial evidence both “that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” Russian intelligence agency hackers targeted Hillary Clinton’s home office within five hours of Trump’s public request in July 2016 that the Russians find her deleted e-mails. And WikiLeaks, which was in close touch with Trump advisers, began releasing its trove of e-mails stolen by the Russians from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta one hour after the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged about assaulting women was made public in October 2016.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the investigation as a “witch hunt.” But Mueller found “sweeping and systematic” intrusions by Russia in the presidential campaign, all aimed at supporting Trump’s election. He and his team indicted twenty-five Russians and secured the convictions or guilty pleas of several Trump campaign officials for lying in connection with the investigation, including campaign chairman Paul Manafort, top deputy Rick Gates, campaign advisers Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos, and Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone faces multiple criminal charges arising out of his attempts to conceal his contacts with WikiLeaks. If this was a witch hunt, it found a lot of witches...

Read the full piece in The New York Review of Books here.

Published April 24, 2019 at 08:15PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2Pr4NK8

ACLU: An Indictment in All But Name

An Indictment in All But Name
The report dispassionately lays out the facts, which are an indictment in all but name.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report, released to the public in a redacted version on April 18, lays out in meticulous detail both a blatantly illegal effort by Russia to throw the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump and repeated efforts by President Trump to end, limit, or impede Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference. Trump’s efforts included firing or attempting to fire those overseeing the investigation, directing subordinates to lie on his behalf, cajoling witnesses not to cooperate, and doctoring a public statement about a Trump Tower meeting between his son and closest advisers and a Russian lawyer offering compromising information on Hillary Clinton.

Attorney General William Barr, who has shown himself to be exactly the kind of presidential protector Trump wanted Jeff Sessions to be, did his best to whitewash the report. Almost four weeks before it was released to the public, Barr wrote a four-page letter to Congress purporting to summarize its findings. But as The New York Times’s Charlie Savage has shown, in the letter Barr took Mueller’s words out of context and omitted all mention of the damning evidence that courses through the report.^* Just before releasing the report to the public, Barr also held a press conference in which he again distorted its conclusions, stating that it found no collusion with the Russians and no obstruction of justice by the president. Both statements are profoundly misleading.

The Mueller report did not address “collusion,” a term that has no legal definition, but the narrower question of criminal conspiracy. It found no evidence that Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russians’ disinformation campaigns or hacking of computers belonging to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. But it describes extensive contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians, many of which Trump campaign officials lied about. And it finds substantial evidence both “that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” Russian intelligence agency hackers targeted Hillary Clinton’s home office within five hours of Trump’s public request in July 2016 that the Russians find her deleted e-mails. And WikiLeaks, which was in close touch with Trump advisers, began releasing its trove of e-mails stolen by the Russians from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta one hour after the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged about assaulting women was made public in October 2016.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the investigation as a “witch hunt.” But Mueller found “sweeping and systematic” intrusions by Russia in the presidential campaign, all aimed at supporting Trump’s election. He and his team indicted twenty-five Russians and secured the convictions or guilty pleas of several Trump campaign officials for lying in connection with the investigation, including campaign chairman Paul Manafort, top deputy Rick Gates, campaign advisers Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos, and Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone faces multiple criminal charges arising out of his attempts to conceal his contacts with WikiLeaks. If this was a witch hunt, it found a lot of witches...

Read the full piece in The New York Review of Books here.

Published April 24, 2019 at 03:45PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2Pr4NK8

ACLU: The Government Shouldn’t Keep the Public in the Dark Just Because Private Companies Ask It to

The Government Shouldn’t Keep the Public in the Dark Just Because Private Companies Ask It to
While it may be a private entity’s prerogative to keep certain information secret, it can’t be the government’s.

The government often relies on private entities to carry out its work. It has them running private prisons, designing location tracking technologies, and developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems that automate government decisions, such as determining our Medicaid benefits, bail, and even which children are purportedly at risk of abuse or neglect. Today the Supreme Court heard a case, FMI v. Argus Media, about whether working with private companies changes the government’s transparency and accountability obligations to the public. As we and several other organizations argued in a friend-of-the-court brief, it should not.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the law at the center of the case, requires the government to disclose information to the public upon request unless such information falls within one of nine narrow exemptions. The exemption on the table, Exemption 4, allows the government to withhold “trade secrets” and “commercial or financial information” that is “privileged or confidential” and was not generated by the government.

Under existing law, to successfully invoke Exemption 4, the government must show that public disclosure of that information would likely cause substantial competitive harm to a private entity. A business association, the Food Marketing Institute, is arguing that the court need only rely on a private party’s word that something is “confidential” in order to keep the requested information secret.

That is the opposite of how FOIA is supposed to work.

The case began when a reporter with Argus Leader Media, a South Dakota newspaper, submitted a FOIA request to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeking, among other things, the total amount of federal funds distributed to grocery stores participating in the government program that subsidizes purchases of groceries for low-income families. In other words, a newspaper was seeking information about a public program. The USDA invoked Exemption 4 and refused to disclose this information. After a bench trial, the trial judge determined that disclosure of such information would not cause substantial competitive harm to the grocery stores, and the USDA agreed to disclose the information.

A private business association — not the government — appealed and is now arguing that regardless of whether requested information causes competitive harm, any information deemed “confidential” by a private entity falls within the exemption and outside the public eye. For all contexts in which the government works with the private sector, this would effectively replace FOIA’s longstanding presumption of disclosure with one of secrecy.

FOIA exists to keep the public informed; it enables the public to provide ongoing checks and balances on government action, a core element of a functioning democracy. And knowing what the government is doing and how it’s doing it is a necessary first step to ensuring that the government isn’t violating our rights — and to taking action when it is. Indeed, we at the ACLU often deploy FOIA to get information about a variety of government operations.

While the government often invokes exemptions such as those for law enforcement “techniques and procedures” to withhold information, an expansion of Exemption 4 could exclude information by solely deferring to a company’s private interests. Indeed, Exemption 4 is already invoked in such ways. For example, Harris Corporation asked the police to withhold details about government contracts for cell site simulator equipment — more commonly known as Stingrays — under Exemption 4. And the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement invoked this exemption to prevent disclosure of certain information about government contracts with private detention facility contractors.

To date, such attempts have often been unsuccessful. But today’s case could change that.

While it is usually a private entity’s prerogative to keep certain information secret, it can’t be the government’s. As the intricacies of government work — from surveillance equipment to algorithms to information systems — are increasingly shaped by the private sector, FOIA must remain a tool for the public to keep an eye on the government’s actions.

Published April 23, 2019 at 02:00AM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2ZuYSIu

ACLU: The Government Shouldn’t Keep the Public in the Dark Just Because Private Companies Ask It to

The Government Shouldn’t Keep the Public in the Dark Just Because Private Companies Ask It to
While it may be a private entity’s prerogative to keep certain information secret, it can’t be the government’s.

The government often relies on private entities to carry out its work. It has them running private prisons, designing location tracking technologies, and developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems that automate government decisions, such as determining our Medicaid benefits, bail, and even which children are purportedly at risk of abuse or neglect. Today the Supreme Court heard a case, FMI v. Argus Media, about whether working with private companies changes the government’s transparency and accountability obligations to the public. As we and several other organizations argued in a friend-of-the-court brief, it should not.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the law at the center of the case, requires the government to disclose information to the public upon request unless such information falls within one of nine narrow exemptions. The exemption on the table, Exemption 4, allows the government to withhold “trade secrets” and “commercial or financial information” that is “privileged or confidential” and was not generated by the government.

Under existing law, to successfully invoke Exemption 4, the government must show that public disclosure of that information would likely cause substantial competitive harm to a private entity. A business association, the Food Marketing Institute, is arguing that the court need only rely on a private party’s word that something is “confidential” in order to keep the requested information secret.

That is the opposite of how FOIA is supposed to work.

The case began when a reporter with Argus Leader Media, a South Dakota newspaper, submitted a FOIA request to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeking, among other things, the total amount of federal funds distributed to grocery stores participating in the government program that subsidizes purchases of groceries for low-income families. In other words, a newspaper was seeking information about a public program. The USDA invoked Exemption 4 and refused to disclose this information. After a bench trial, the trial judge determined that disclosure of such information would not cause substantial competitive harm to the grocery stores, and the USDA agreed to disclose the information.

A private business association — not the government — appealed and is now arguing that regardless of whether requested information causes competitive harm, any information deemed “confidential” by a private entity falls within the exemption and outside the public eye. For all contexts in which the government works with the private sector, this would effectively replace FOIA’s longstanding presumption of disclosure with one of secrecy.

FOIA exists to keep the public informed; it enables the public to provide ongoing checks and balances on government action, a core element of a functioning democracy. And knowing what the government is doing and how it’s doing it is a necessary first step to ensuring that the government isn’t violating our rights — and to taking action when it is. Indeed, we at the ACLU often deploy FOIA to get information about a variety of government operations.

While the government often invokes exemptions such as those for law enforcement “techniques and procedures” to withhold information, an expansion of Exemption 4 could exclude information by solely deferring to a company’s private interests. Indeed, Exemption 4 is already invoked in such ways. For example, Harris Corporation asked the police to withhold details about government contracts for cell site simulator equipment — more commonly known as Stingrays — under Exemption 4. And the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement invoked this exemption to prevent disclosure of certain information about government contracts with private detention facility contractors.

To date, such attempts have often been unsuccessful. But today’s case could change that.

While it is usually a private entity’s prerogative to keep certain information secret, it can’t be the government’s. As the intricacies of government work — from surveillance equipment to algorithms to information systems — are increasingly shaped by the private sector, FOIA must remain a tool for the public to keep an eye on the government’s actions.

Published April 22, 2019 at 09:30PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2ZuYSIu

ACLU: Supreme Court Takes Cases of People Fired for Being LGBTQ

Supreme Court Takes Cases of People Fired for Being LGBTQ
The court will consider whether to take anti-discrimination protections away from LGBTQ people.

Can a business fire someone because they’re LGBTQ? The Supreme Court will soon tell us.

After a funeral home outside Detroit fired Aimee Stephens because she is transgender, Aimee won a federal appeals court ruling that the firing violated the federal law barring sex discrimination in the workplace. After Don Zarda was fired from his job as a skydiving instructor because he’s gay, another federal appeals court ruled that his firing, too, was sex discrimination.

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would take up Aimee and Don’s cases (plus a third) to decide whether to take those civil rights protections away from Aimee, Don, and all LGBTQ people in America. Not surprisingly, President Trump’s Department of Justice will argue that it should.

In Aimee’s case, she worked for six years in a job she loved as funeral director, getting great reviews. Her boss and co-workers knew her as a man, but she always knew she was female. In 2013, Aimee gathered the strength to come out to her supervisor as the woman she is. She was hoping to find acceptance and to be judged on her good performance alone. Instead, her boss fired her, making no bones about the fact that it was because she was transgender.

Aimee Stephens

In Don’s case, he worked at a skydiving company on Long Island, New York. Don’s teaching often involved tandem skydives, in which he was strapped hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder with customers learning how to jump. In the summer of 2010, as Don was strapping himself to a female customer for one of those tandem dives, he told her that he was gay to assuage any concern she had about being strapped to a man she didn’t really know. He never thought the comment would cause the end of his career at Altitude Express. But after the dive, Don’s boss fired him because a client learned he was gay.

In both Aimee and Don’s cases, the appeals courts ruled that they were discriminated against because of their sex. If Aimee was a valued employee when her boss thought she was a man, but unacceptable when he learned she was a woman, it’s frankly hard to see what it could be other than sex discrimination. In addition, the court in Aimee’s case — following court decisions over many years — held that discrimination based on transgender status is a form of sex discrimination because it’s impossible to describe what it means to be transgender without talking about a person’s sex.

Similarly, the court in Don’s case held that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination because you can’t describe what it means to be gay without talking about a person’s sex.

In addition, the courts held that both Aimee and Don were penalized for failing to conform to their employer’s sex stereotypes — in Don’s case that men should be attracted to women and in Aimee’s case that people who are assigned the male sex at birth are not supposed to look and behave as women.

The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission agrees that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And for several years it has been enforcing that statute on behalf of LGBTQ people from every corner of the country who face workplace discrimination.

Unfortunately, President Trump’s Justice Department has taken the opposite position — arguing in both of these cases that it’s perfectly legal under federal law to fire Aimee because she’s trans and Don because he’s gay.

The Supreme Court ruling that Trump seeks — that firing LGBTQ people is legal — would shock most of America. A core American value is that people should be judged in the workplace based on their performance, not their identity. It’s a travesty that our government is advocating for discrimination to be legal.

The stakes here are huge. If federal law says it’s fine to fire someone because she’s lesbian or transgender, other federal civil rights laws may well not protect LGBTQ people, either. The federal education anti-discrimination law may not stop schools from harassing transgender students. The Federal Housing Act may not stop landlords from evicting same-sex couples. And the Affordable Care Act may not prevent health care providers from turning away transgender people. In fact, such a ruling could lead to the very “erasing” of transgender people from civil rights laws that the Trump Administration is reported to have been considering last fall.

Tragically, Don died in a skydiving accident in 2014. Don’s surviving partner, Bill Moore, and his sister, Melissa Zarda, have continued the lawsuit on behalf of Don’s estate. Bill and Melissa will be at the Supreme Court this spring along with Aimee, and all three will fight to ensure that the court doesn’t strip millions of LGBTQ people in America of the federal non-discrimination protections that current law provides.

Here’s hoping the court lives up to the nation’s values and rejects the Trump administration’s effort to relegate LGBTQ people to second-class status.

Published April 22, 2019 at 04:30PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2vplMDH

ACLU: Supreme Court Takes Cases of People Fired for Being LGBTQ

Supreme Court Takes Cases of People Fired for Being LGBTQ
The court will consider whether to take anti-discrimination protections away from LGBTQ people.

Can a business fire someone because they’re LGBTQ? The Supreme Court will soon tell us.

After a funeral home outside Detroit fired Aimee Stephens because she is transgender, Aimee won a federal appeals court ruling that the firing violated the federal law barring sex discrimination in the workplace. After Don Zarda was fired from his job as a skydiving instructor because he’s gay, another federal appeals court ruled that his firing, too, was sex discrimination.

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would take up Aimee and Don’s cases (plus a third) to decide whether to take those civil rights protections away from Aimee, Don, and all LGBTQ people in America. Not surprisingly, President Trump’s Department of Justice will argue that it should.

In Aimee’s case, she worked for six years in a job she loved as funeral director, getting great reviews. Her boss and co-workers knew her as a man, but she always knew she was female. In 2013, Aimee gathered the strength to come out to her supervisor as the woman she is. She was hoping to find acceptance and to be judged on her good performance alone. Instead, her boss fired her, making no bones about the fact that it was because she was transgender.

Aimee Stephens

In Don’s case, he worked at a skydiving company on Long Island, New York. Don’s teaching often involved tandem skydives, in which he was strapped hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder with customers learning how to jump. In the summer of 2010, as Don was strapping himself to a female customer for one of those tandem dives, he told her that he was gay to assuage any concern she had about being strapped to a man she didn’t really know. He never thought the comment would cause the end of his career at Altitude Express. But after the dive, Don’s boss fired him because a client learned he was gay.

In both Aimee and Don’s cases, the appeals courts ruled that they were discriminated against because of their sex. If Aimee was a valued employee when her boss thought she was a man, but unacceptable when he learned she was a woman, it’s frankly hard to see what it could be other than sex discrimination. In addition, the court in Aimee’s case — following court decisions over many years — held that discrimination based on transgender status is a form of sex discrimination because it’s impossible to describe what it means to be transgender without talking about a person’s sex.

Similarly, the court in Don’s case held that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination because you can’t describe what it means to be gay without talking about a person’s sex.

In addition, the courts held that both Aimee and Don were penalized for failing to conform to their employer’s sex stereotypes — in Don’s case that men should be attracted to women and in Aimee’s case that people who are assigned the male sex at birth are not supposed to look and behave as women.

The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission agrees that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And for several years it has been enforcing that statute on behalf of LGBTQ people from every corner of the country who face workplace discrimination.

Unfortunately, President Trump’s Justice Department has taken the opposite position — arguing in both of these cases that it’s perfectly legal under federal law to fire Aimee because she’s trans and Don because he’s gay.

The Supreme Court ruling that Trump seeks — that firing LGBTQ people is legal — would shock most of America. A core American value is that people should be judged in the workplace based on their performance, not their identity. It’s a travesty that our government is advocating for discrimination to be legal.

The stakes here are huge. If federal law says it’s fine to fire someone because she’s lesbian or transgender, other federal civil rights laws may well not protect LGBTQ people, either. The federal education anti-discrimination law may not stop schools from harassing transgender students. The Federal Housing Act may not stop landlords from evicting same-sex couples. And the Affordable Care Act may not prevent health care providers from turning away transgender people. In fact, such a ruling could lead to the very “erasing” of transgender people from civil rights laws that the Trump Administration is reported to have been considering last fall.

Tragically, Don died in a skydiving accident in 2014. Don’s surviving partner, Bill Moore, and his sister, Melissa Zarda, have continued the lawsuit on behalf of Don’s estate. Bill and Melissa will be at the Supreme Court this spring along with Aimee, and all three will fight to ensure that the court doesn’t strip millions of LGBTQ people in America of the federal non-discrimination protections that current law provides.

Here’s hoping the court lives up to the nation’s values and rejects the Trump administration’s effort to relegate LGBTQ people to second-class status.

Published April 22, 2019 at 09:00PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2vplMDH

ACLU: Marijuana Legalization is a Racial Justice Issue

Marijuana Legalization is a Racial Justice Issue
When it comes to legalizing weed, economic justice for communities of color must be our guiding principle.

Marijuana has been a key driver of mass criminalization in this country and hundreds of thousands of people, the majority of whom are Black or Latinx, have their lives impacted by a marijuana arrest each year. But the tide is turning against the remnants of a drug war targeted at Black and Brown people that was never meant to increase public safety in the first place. Legalization is an important step towards ending the war on drugs, and it cannot come soon enough.

Legalizing marijuana must come with expungement, with reinvestment in the communities most harmed by enforcement, with limitations on how police can interact with people who they suspect of a marijuana offense, with legal nonpublic spaces for smoking marijuana for those who cannot smoke in their residence, with a prohibition on deportation for people with marijuana convictions, and with full inclusion of those most impacted by criminalization of marijuana in the new marijuana industry.

Currently, nine states and the District of Columbia allow for recreational use among adults, while 31 states allow for medical use of marijuana. The laws reflect growing public support. Two out of three Americans are in favor of legalization, which has majority support in all age groups and political affiliations.

While progress in reforming our nation’s drug laws is vital, we must remember that if we legalize without righting the wrongs of past marijuana enforcement, we risk reinforcing the decades of disproportionate harm communities of color have faced and endured. People in the United States use and sell marijuana at roughly the same rate regardless of their race, yet a Black person is almost four times more likely than a white person to be arrested for marijuana possession nationwide. In addition, roughly 13,000 people were deported or separated from their communities and families in 2013 alone for drug-related offenses.

While it is not a panacea for past harms, thoughtful legalization can help us forge a more equitable future.

Today, overcriminalized communities continue to suffer from the fallout our nation’s drug laws, even in states that have legalized marijuana and seen dramatic drops in the number of people arrested for marijuana crimes. That’s because legalization has not eradicated the indefensible rate at which Black and Latinx people are arrested for marijuana offenses in these states. In fact, many states have seen an even steeper rise in the percentage of Black and Latinx people having their lives impacted by a marijuana arrest. Two years after decriminalization in the nation’s capital, a Black person is 11 times more likely than a white person to be arrested for public use of marijuana.  

This is one of the main reasons enforcement is key to reform. When it comes to drug law reform, policing, which more rightly can be titled over-policing, is at the headwaters of the injustices communities of color suffer.  We must address, combat, and eventually eliminate discriminatory policing practices and the structural racial bias at every step of our criminal legal system. Legalization measures must have equity as a vital component to avoid continuing to harm certain and to address the years of hardship and stigma that criminalizing marijuana has wrought.

Along with the harm of incarceration and conviction, a simple marijuana charge has a negative ripple effect.

Having a marijuana conviction on your record can make it difficult to secure and maintain employment, housing, or secure government assistance for the rest of your life. This is why clearing people’s records of marijuana convictions is a necessary addition to any legalization measure. If we believe that marijuana is not worthy of criminal intervention, then it is only right we stop the suffering inflicted on people by a marijuana prosecution. Especially since we know this disproportionately falls on the shoulders, and families, of low-income communities and communities of color.  

Such efforts to extend racial justice must explicitly be tied to a program of economic justice.

People who have been harmed by the enforcement of marijuana must have a place in the bourgeoning marketplace created by legalization. Indeed, any legalization bill should include provisions that enable people who have struggled to find employment due to a marijuana conviction to participate meaningfully in the marijuana industry. Excluding people directly impacted by marijuana criminalization from the industry further entrenches the outsized impact that the war on drugs has had on communities of color.

If we legalize without mindfulness of the full ecosystem of the criminal legal system and how it impacts people, then corporate and industry-backed legalization efforts will lead us away from what is right and just. That is why we must support legalization legislation that truly help roll back overcriminalization, end the failed war on drugs once and for all, and usher in a more equitable future through drug law reform nationwide.

Published April 20, 2019 at 06:15PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2VamNOn

ACLU: Marijuana Legalization is a Racial Justice Issue

Marijuana Legalization is a Racial Justice Issue
When it comes to legalizing weed, economic justice for communities of color must be our guiding principle.

Marijuana has been a key driver of mass criminalization in this country and hundreds of thousands of people, the majority of whom are Black or Latinx, have their lives impacted by a marijuana arrest each year. But the tide is turning against the remnants of a drug war targeted at Black and Brown people that was never meant to increase public safety in the first place. Legalization is an important step towards ending the war on drugs, and it cannot come soon enough.

Legalizing marijuana must come with expungement, with reinvestment in the communities most harmed by enforcement, with limitations on how police can interact with people who they suspect of a marijuana offense, with legal nonpublic spaces for smoking marijuana for those who cannot smoke in their residence, with a prohibition on deportation for people with marijuana convictions, and with full inclusion of those most impacted by criminalization of marijuana in the new marijuana industry.

Currently, nine states and the District of Columbia allow for recreational use among adults, while 31 states allow for medical use of marijuana. The laws reflect growing public support. Two out of three Americans are in favor of legalization, which has majority support in all age groups and political affiliations.

While progress in reforming our nation’s drug laws is vital, we must remember that if we legalize without righting the wrongs of past marijuana enforcement, we risk reinforcing the decades of disproportionate harm communities of color have faced and endured. People in the United States use and sell marijuana at roughly the same rate regardless of their race, yet a Black person is almost four times more likely than a white person to be arrested for marijuana possession nationwide. In addition, roughly 13,000 people were deported or separated from their communities and families in 2013 alone for drug-related offenses.

While it is not a panacea for past harms, thoughtful legalization can help us forge a more equitable future.

Today, overcriminalized communities continue to suffer from the fallout our nation’s drug laws, even in states that have legalized marijuana and seen dramatic drops in the number of people arrested for marijuana crimes. That’s because legalization has not eradicated the indefensible rate at which Black and Latinx people are arrested for marijuana offenses in these states. In fact, many states have seen an even steeper rise in the percentage of Black and Latinx people having their lives impacted by a marijuana arrest. Two years after decriminalization in the nation’s capital, a Black person is 11 times more likely than a white person to be arrested for public use of marijuana.  

This is one of the main reasons enforcement is key to reform. When it comes to drug law reform, policing, which more rightly can be titled over-policing, is at the headwaters of the injustices communities of color suffer.  We must address, combat, and eventually eliminate discriminatory policing practices and the structural racial bias at every step of our criminal legal system. Legalization measures must have equity as a vital component to avoid continuing to harm certain and to address the years of hardship and stigma that criminalizing marijuana has wrought.

Along with the harm of incarceration and conviction, a simple marijuana charge has a negative ripple effect.

Having a marijuana conviction on your record can make it difficult to secure and maintain employment, housing, or secure government assistance for the rest of your life. This is why clearing people’s records of marijuana convictions is a necessary addition to any legalization measure. If we believe that marijuana is not worthy of criminal intervention, then it is only right we stop the suffering inflicted on people by a marijuana prosecution. Especially since we know this disproportionately falls on the shoulders, and families, of low-income communities and communities of color.  

Such efforts to extend racial justice must explicitly be tied to a program of economic justice.

People who have been harmed by the enforcement of marijuana must have a place in the bourgeoning marketplace created by legalization. Indeed, any legalization bill should include provisions that enable people who have struggled to find employment due to a marijuana conviction to participate meaningfully in the marijuana industry. Excluding people directly impacted by marijuana criminalization from the industry further entrenches the outsized impact that the war on drugs has had on communities of color.

If we legalize without mindfulness of the full ecosystem of the criminal legal system and how it impacts people, then corporate and industry-backed legalization efforts will lead us away from what is right and just. That is why we must support legalization legislation that truly help roll back overcriminalization, end the failed war on drugs once and for all, and usher in a more equitable future through drug law reform nationwide.

Published April 20, 2019 at 01:45PM
via ACLU http://bit.ly/2VamNOn