ACLU: Florida Governor Introduces a Poll Tax, Curtailing Amendment 4

Florida Governor Introduces a Poll Tax, Curtailing Amendment 4
The law forces returning citizens with criminal records to pay for the right to vote.

On November 6, 2018, nearly 65 percent of Florida voters—more than 5 million people—resoundingly approved Amendment 4, restoring voting rights to over a million of their fellow citizens. By passing Amendment 4, Floridians successfully ushered in the largest expansion of the electorate in nearly 50 years. The people of Florida did it on their own, using a constitutional ballot initiative, to finally achieve change where Florida politicians had failed.

Instead of celebrating this progress, Florida politicians are trying to destroy it. The Florida legislature passed, and today the Governor signed, unconstitutional legislation that requires people who are eligible to vote under Amendment 4 to pay the exorbitant court costs, fines, and fees levied against them at the time of their conviction, or lose their right to vote. In turn, the ACLU and partners filed a federal challenge seeking to block the law.

The new law creates two classes of returning citizens: a group wealthy enough to afford their voting rights and another group who cannot afford to vote. But the right to vote should not come with a price tag. Florida’s new law is un-American and unconstitutional. 

The law unconstitutionally conditions voting on whether a person can pay monetary penalties associated with their conviction.  This barrier to voting is particularly unjust because Florida, along with states across the country, has sharply increased monetary penalties on people in the criminal justice system in order to finance its basic government functions.  People often emerge from the system with not just a conviction but mountains of debt that they cannot hope to pay. The charges can include, for example, substantial debt imposed for being appointed a public defender—an assignment made precisely because a person cannot afford counsel.  The impacts are especially harsh for people of color given longstanding racial disparities in wealth and poverty. This system of “cash-register justice” places the greatest costs of funding the criminal justice system onto the backs of the people least able to shoulder the burden.  And now Florida politicians want to use these debilitating monetary penalties to prevent returning citizens from having any vote in changing that system. 

Losing the right to vote—a basic right of citizenship—is one of the many collateral consequences triggered by a felony conviction, and an unjust obstacle to returning citizens’ full participation after they complete their sentence. We are bringing this lawsuit on behalf of ten Floridians, all of whom have achieved a great deal since their conviction. 

Here are some of their stories:

Ms. Riddle has four children, twenty-four grandchildren, and eight great grandchildren. She dropped out of high school at sixteen, then went back to college at 52-years-old and earned a degree. She lost her right to vote before she turned eighteen, so Amendment 4 made her eligible to register to vote for the first time in her life. She fears that because of the new law, she will never be able to cast a ballot in Florida, where she has lived her entire life.

Mr. Mitchell’s enthusiasm for public service is inspiring; he founded and runs organizations to support returning citizens with one-stop access to housing, employment and treatment services information. He works as a peer support specialist and a mentor. And he registers others to vote even though he himself was ineligible to register until January 8, 2019. Like Ms. Riddle, Mr. Mitchell was convicted of a felony when he was a child; Florida took away his right to vote before he was even of eligible age.

Mr. Gruver and Mr. Wrench work to support other members of their community facing addiction. Mr. Gruver works at a homeless facility assisting residents to find treatment and housing. Mr. Wrench has been sober for over seven years and takes twelve step programs into prisons to support people with active addiction. 

Our democracy will be worse off if the Florida legislature is successful in its attempts to silence their voice in the democratic process. 

Published June 29, 2019 at 01:00AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2X94s0Z

ACLU: Florida Governor Introduces a Poll Tax, Curtailing Amendment 4

Florida Governor Introduces a Poll Tax, Curtailing Amendment 4
The law forces returning citizens with criminal records to pay for the right to vote.

On November 6, 2018, nearly 65 percent of Florida voters—more than 5 million people—resoundingly approved Amendment 4, restoring voting rights to over a million of their fellow citizens. By passing Amendment 4, Floridians successfully ushered in the largest expansion of the electorate in nearly 50 years. The people of Florida did it on their own, using a constitutional ballot initiative, to finally achieve change where Florida politicians had failed.

Instead of celebrating this progress, Florida politicians are trying to destroy it. The Florida legislature passed, and today the Governor signed, unconstitutional legislation that requires people who are eligible to vote under Amendment 4 to pay the exorbitant court costs, fines, and fees levied against them at the time of their conviction, or lose their right to vote. In turn, the ACLU and partners filed a federal challenge seeking to block the law.

The new law creates two classes of returning citizens: a group wealthy enough to afford their voting rights and another group who cannot afford to vote. But the right to vote should not come with a price tag. Florida’s new law is un-American and unconstitutional. 

The law unconstitutionally conditions voting on whether a person can pay monetary penalties associated with their conviction.  This barrier to voting is particularly unjust because Florida, along with states across the country, has sharply increased monetary penalties on people in the criminal justice system in order to finance its basic government functions.  People often emerge from the system with not just a conviction but mountains of debt that they cannot hope to pay. The charges can include, for example, substantial debt imposed for being appointed a public defender—an assignment made precisely because a person cannot afford counsel.  The impacts are especially harsh for people of color given longstanding racial disparities in wealth and poverty. This system of “cash-register justice” places the greatest costs of funding the criminal justice system onto the backs of the people least able to shoulder the burden.  And now Florida politicians want to use these debilitating monetary penalties to prevent returning citizens from having any vote in changing that system. 

Losing the right to vote—a basic right of citizenship—is one of the many collateral consequences triggered by a felony conviction, and an unjust obstacle to returning citizens’ full participation after they complete their sentence. We are bringing this lawsuit on behalf of ten Floridians, all of whom have achieved a great deal since their conviction. 

Here are some of their stories:

Ms. Riddle has four children, twenty-four grandchildren, and eight great grandchildren. She dropped out of high school at sixteen, then went back to college at 52-years-old and earned a degree. She lost her right to vote before she turned eighteen, so Amendment 4 made her eligible to register to vote for the first time in her life. She fears that because of the new law, she will never be able to cast a ballot in Florida, where she has lived her entire life.

Mr. Mitchell’s enthusiasm for public service is inspiring; he founded and runs organizations to support returning citizens with one-stop access to housing, employment and treatment services information. He works as a peer support specialist and a mentor. And he registers others to vote even though he himself was ineligible to register until January 8, 2019. Like Ms. Riddle, Mr. Mitchell was convicted of a felony when he was a child; Florida took away his right to vote before he was even of eligible age.

Mr. Gruver and Mr. Wrench work to support other members of their community facing addiction. Mr. Gruver works at a homeless facility assisting residents to find treatment and housing. Mr. Wrench has been sober for over seven years and takes twelve step programs into prisons to support people with active addiction. 

Our democracy will be worse off if the Florida legislature is successful in its attempts to silence their voice in the democratic process. 

Published June 29, 2019 at 05:30AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2X94s0Z

ACLU: We are Fighting for Immigrants' Rights. Here's What You Can Do.

We are Fighting for Immigrants' Rights. Here's What You Can Do.
We know that a better future is possible, and we at the ACLU, along with our supporters and allies, are daring to create it.

The images of Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria, who lost their lives trying to seek refuge in the United States, have left us haunted. They serve as an ever-important reminder of the urgency of the fight for immigrant justice on our southern border and the need to stand up to the Trump administration's policies denying humanitarian protection and basic due process to families fleeing for their lives. 

We remain at the frontlines of the family separation fight. In early 2018, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit to stop the separation of families at the border and to require the immediate reunion of all separated children and parents. And last June, a federal judge issued a national injunction in our lawsuit, requiring the reunification of thousands. We have continually fought the administration’s efforts to stonewall the reunification and continue their zero-tolerance policy toward people who come to the United States seeking asylum.

We are in court working to block President Trump’s abuse of emergency powers to secure funds for a border wall Congress denied (thanks in part to our advocacy in D.C.). In May, a federal judge ruled in our lawsuit, which we filed on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC), that President Trump couldn’t get his wall by illegally diverting taxpayer money. The Sierra Club and SBCC represent the communities who live in, protect, and treasure the lands and communities along the southern border. The Trump administration appealed that decision, and we await the next steps from the 9^th circuit.

But we’re not just responding to the moment — we’re building for immigrant justice in the future. The ACLU is a nationwide organization, with an on-the-ground presence in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Because we have a vibrant presence in every state, we at the ACLU are not only able to push back against abuses and litigate, but also work to enact pro-immigrant rights laws.

The Border Rights Center (BRC), housed at the ACLU of Texas, advocates for the 15 million people from California to Texas who call our southwest border home. The ACLU staff in our affiliates and the BRC work closely with border communities and people coming to the United States, and serve as an important watchdog on the federal immigration agencies at the border, especially Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This week, they shared this latest dispatch about the inhumanity and suffering of the people in our government’s care at the border.

After we filed our family separation lawsuit, it quickly became clear that the Trump administration didn’t have a plan to meet the court-ordered deadlines to reunite families. In one court filing, lawyers for the Trump administration suggested that the ACLU should take on the responsibility of finding those missing parents. Because the government wasn’t willing to carry out the search itself, the ACLU, along with a small group of other organizations, set out to do just that. We will continue to track down the families impacted by the family separation crisis. Details of our investigative work — the family separation crisis by the numbers — are here. 

Across the country, we, in partnership with movement leaders and activists, have built coalitions necessary to move a proactive agenda forward in the states. In Washington state, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Utah, New York, and others, we’ve seen legislatures stand up for immigrants, and we have been proud to support allies and fellow community members in pushing for positive change. 

In Washington, we helped lead the coalition that just three weeks ago passed the American Dream and American Promise Act to protect Dreamers as well as Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure beneficiaries from deportation. It’s a historic piece of legislation that affects more than two million immigrants and is the first stand-alone bill granting a pathway to citizenship to pass a chamber of Congress since 2010. It also represents an essential victory for undocumented activists and all those whose lives have been thrown into uncertainty by the Trump administration. We are currently looking towards the Senate to pass this bill so that it can become law.

Even in the midst of extreme rhetoric, many of these wins will limit the Trump administration’s ability to carry out its threats to deport millions.

Across the country, volunteers with our Rights for All campaign are asking presidential candidates to commit to an overhaul of our immigration system. We know that executive leadership is necessary to create a fair and achievable path to citizenship for people who are undocumented, to reduce the number of people languishing in immigration detention, and to put an end to ICE’s reliance on local law enforcement to facilitate deportations.

Our volunteers are securing commitments from presidential candidates and holding them accountable to civil rights for all, regardless of immigration status. We are already seeing the impact of this work, with the criminalization of border-crossing — a policy against which the ACLU has fought for years — getting significant attention at the first democratic presidential debate.

The ACLU is also educating people in America about their rights, especially when dealing with immigration officials. Last year, we joined forces with Brooklyn Defender Services to create and distribute a series of powerful and informative videos based on true stories to provide real action points for what to do when ICE is outside our doors, in our homes, in our communities, and/or arrests us. The videos are available in English, Spanish, Urdu, Arabic, Hatian Creole, Russian, and Mandarin.

We also have a set of materials about your rights if you are asked about your immigration status by law enforcement, detained by CBP, and other immigration-specific scenarios here. And if you are a DACA recipient or you’re within the 100-mile border zone, we have Know Your Rights materials. All of our Know Your Rights content can be found here. 

We know that a better future is possible, and we at the ACLU, along with our supporters and allies, are daring to create it.

What You Can Do

Call Congress and tell them to give no additional funds to the Department of Homeland Security. Your taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund abusive immigration policies, increased detention, or an unnecessary border wall or barrier.

Make the call

 

Published June 28, 2019 at 09:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2Xgpuzw

ACLU: We are Fighting for Immigrants' Rights. Here's What You Can Do.

We are Fighting for Immigrants' Rights. Here's What You Can Do.
We know that a better future is possible, and we at the ACLU, along with our supporters and allies, are daring to create it.

The images of Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria, who lost their lives trying to seek refuge in the United States, have left us haunted. They serve as an ever-important reminder of the urgency of the fight for immigrant justice on our southern border and the need to stand up to the Trump administration's policies denying humanitarian protection and basic due process to families fleeing for their lives. 

We remain at the frontlines of the family separation fight. In early 2018, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit to stop the separation of families at the border and to require the immediate reunion of all separated children and parents. And last June, a federal judge issued a national injunction in our lawsuit, requiring the reunification of thousands. We have continually fought the administration’s efforts to stonewall the reunification and continue their zero-tolerance policy toward people who come to the United States seeking asylum.

We are in court working to block President Trump’s abuse of emergency powers to secure funds for a border wall Congress denied (thanks in part to our advocacy in D.C.). In May, a federal judge ruled in our lawsuit, which we filed on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC), that President Trump couldn’t get his wall by illegally diverting taxpayer money. The Sierra Club and SBCC represent the communities who live in, protect, and treasure the lands and communities along the southern border. The Trump administration appealed that decision, and we await the next steps from the 9^th circuit.

But we’re not just responding to the moment — we’re building for immigrant justice in the future. The ACLU is a nationwide organization, with an on-the-ground presence in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Because we have a vibrant presence in every state, we at the ACLU are not only able to push back against abuses and litigate, but also work to enact pro-immigrant rights laws.

The Border Rights Center (BRC), housed at the ACLU of Texas, advocates for the 15 million people from California to Texas who call our southwest border home. The ACLU staff in our affiliates and the BRC work closely with border communities and people coming to the United States, and serve as an important watchdog on the federal immigration agencies at the border, especially Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This week, they shared this latest dispatch about the inhumanity and suffering of the people in our government’s care at the border.

After we filed our family separation lawsuit, it quickly became clear that the Trump administration didn’t have a plan to meet the court-ordered deadlines to reunite families. In one court filing, lawyers for the Trump administration suggested that the ACLU should take on the responsibility of finding those missing parents. Because the government wasn’t willing to carry out the search itself, the ACLU, along with a small group of other organizations, set out to do just that. We will continue to track down the families impacted by the family separation crisis. Details of our investigative work — the family separation crisis by the numbers — are here. 

Across the country, we, in partnership with movement leaders and activists, have built coalitions necessary to move a proactive agenda forward in the states. In Washington state, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Utah, New York, and others, we’ve seen legislatures stand up for immigrants, and we have been proud to support allies and fellow community members in pushing for positive change. 

In Washington, we helped lead the coalition that just three weeks ago passed the American Dream and American Promise Act to protect Dreamers as well as Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure beneficiaries from deportation. It’s a historic piece of legislation that affects more than two million immigrants and is the first stand-alone bill granting a pathway to citizenship to pass a chamber of Congress since 2010. It also represents an essential victory for undocumented activists and all those whose lives have been thrown into uncertainty by the Trump administration. We are currently looking towards the Senate to pass this bill so that it can become law.

Even in the midst of extreme rhetoric, many of these wins will limit the Trump administration’s ability to carry out its threats to deport millions.

Across the country, volunteers with our Rights for All campaign are asking presidential candidates to commit to an overhaul of our immigration system. We know that executive leadership is necessary to create a fair and achievable path to citizenship for people who are undocumented, to reduce the number of people languishing in immigration detention, and to put an end to ICE’s reliance on local law enforcement to facilitate deportations.

Our volunteers are securing commitments from presidential candidates and holding them accountable to civil rights for all, regardless of immigration status. We are already seeing the impact of this work, with the criminalization of border-crossing — a policy against which the ACLU has fought for years — getting significant attention at the first democratic presidential debate.

The ACLU is also educating people in America about their rights, especially when dealing with immigration officials. Last year, we joined forces with Brooklyn Defender Services to create and distribute a series of powerful and informative videos based on true stories to provide real action points for what to do when ICE is outside our doors, in our homes, in our communities, and/or arrests us. The videos are available in English, Spanish, Urdu, Arabic, Hatian Creole, Russian, and Mandarin.

We also have a set of materials about your rights if you are asked about your immigration status by law enforcement, detained by CBP, and other immigration-specific scenarios here. And if you are a DACA recipient or you’re within the 100-mile border zone, we have Know Your Rights materials. All of our Know Your Rights content can be found here. 

We know that a better future is possible, and we at the ACLU, along with our supporters and allies, are daring to create it.

What You Can Do

Call Congress and tell them to give no additional funds to the Department of Homeland Security. Your taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund abusive immigration policies, increased detention, or an unnecessary border wall or barrier.

Make the call

 

Published June 29, 2019 at 02:00AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2Xgpuzw

ACLU: The Supreme Court’s Most Consequential Ruling for Privacy in the Digital Age, One Year In

The Supreme Court’s Most Consequential Ruling for Privacy in the Digital Age, One Year In
Lower courts should make clear, as the Supreme Court does, that we don’t forfeit our Fourth Amendment rights by operating a laptop, car, or cellphone.

This month marks a year since the Supreme Court issued its landmark privacy decision in Carpenter v. United States, ruling that the government must get a warrant before accessing a person’s sensitive cellphone location data.

Carpenter, which the ACLU argued before the Supreme Court, concerned information revealing where Timothy Carpenter had traveled with his phone. The police, searching for evidence to connect Carpenter to the scenes of various robberies, obtained months’ worth of Carpenter’s detailed location data from his cellphone company without a warrant. That data exposed Carpenter’s daily routines, including where he slept and attended church.

The court held that government access to such detailed location data provides a method of “near-perfect surveillance,” and recognized that the Fourth Amendment must protect such sensitive information. It added that old-world legal rules don’t automatically apply in the digital age.

The Supreme Court’s decision stands as one of the most consequential rulings regarding privacy in the digital age, providing a roadmap for lower courts to protect many other kinds of sensitive data from warrantless government intrusion. One year in, we’re working to ensure that lower courts heed the high court’s call and extend the lessons of Carpenter to other contexts.

For instance, we were in the Georgia Supreme Court last week arguing that Carpenter made clear  courts cannot “mechanically apply” older legal doctrines that allow warrantless searches to new, complex digital-age contexts. Instead, courts should carefully assess what protections are necessary in light of rapidly advancing technology and increasingly accessible data.

In that case, the state of Georgia is arguing that a legal doctrine dating back to the early 20^th century should give police the authority to obtain — without a warrant — the vast and detailed data modern cars collect on us. This data can include everything from our car’s speed and braking data, to call record and text history, to music preferences and GPS coordinates. Under the dated doctrine, known as the “vehicle exemption,” police do not need a warrant to search a car for physical items due to the “ready mobility of vehicles,” which might drive away before a warrant is obtained. But, as we argued in court last week, that old rule shouldn’t be extended to override people’s unprecedented privacy interest in new kinds of sensitive digital data.

Similarly, in our lawsuit challenging the government’s warrantless searches of electronic devices at the U.S. border, the federal government has been invoking a centuries-old rule allowing border agents to search travelers’ physical luggage without individualized suspicion or a warrant for contraband or import violations. We argue that old-world rules can’t be twisted into unfettered authority to search the incredible volumes of data on people’s phones and laptops when they return from a trip abroad.

In both cases, Carpenter (and a predecessor Supreme Court case, Riley v. California) provide a powerful rebuke to the government’s arguments. The quantities and types of information that might be discovered by a manual search of a car’s trunk and glove compartment — or a traveler’s luggage — pale in comparison to the kinds of comprehensive data stored on our electronic devices today. This requires greater protections under the Fourth Amendment.

Carpenter also holds that, in the digital age, our sensitive information does not lose Fourth Amendment protections merely because we store that information on a “third party” server, such as with Google or DropBox. This is a game-changer.

In the digital age, it is virtually impossible to avoid leaving a trail of highly sensitive data. Our information is saved not only on our personal laptops and phones, but also on the servers of the companies with which we interact. As we argued in a case now before the First Circuit Court of Appeals, the government can no longer get away with warrantless searches of our personal information by relying on the “third party” doctrine.

That case concerns the Drug Enforcement Administration’s efforts to access — without a warrant — people’s prescription records stored in the New Hampshire Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, a secure state-run database set up for public health purposes. The DEA is arguing that when people reveal their symptoms to their doctor and bring the doctor’s prescription to their pharmacist, they have given up their Fourth Amendment privacy rights in that sensitive health information. That can’t be right when the result is unfettered police access to deeply private information about our health and medical history.

In other cases, we have similarly argued that people’s location history stored in gargantuan automated license plate reader databases should be protected by a warrant requirement because of the intense privacy interest in digitized location data recognized in Carpenter.

The Supreme Court rightfully understood in Carpenter that courts have an essential role in ensuring that privacy protections remain vital in the digital age. While the government advocates for unfettered access to the personal information companies are sweeping up on us, it’s crucial the courts make clear, as Carpenter does, that we do not forfeit our Fourth Amendment rights simply for owning a laptop, driving a car, or having a cellphone.  

Published June 28, 2019 at 09:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2JiKgFc

ACLU: We are Fighting for Immigrant Rights. Here's What You Can Do.

We are Fighting for Immigrant Rights. Here's What You Can Do.
We know that a better future is possible, and we at the ACLU, along with our supporters and allies, are daring to create it.

The images of Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria, who lost their lives trying to seek refuge in the United States, have left us haunted. They serve as an ever-important reminder of the urgency of the fight for immigrant justice on our southern border and the need to stand up to the Trump administration's policies denying humanitarian protection and basic due process to families fleeing for their lives. 

We remain at the frontlines of the family separation fight. In early 2018, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit to stop the separation of families at the border and to require the immediate reunion of all separated children and parents. And last June, a federal judge issued a national injunction in our lawsuit, requiring the reunification of thousands. We have continually fought the administration’s efforts to stonewall the reunification and continue their zero-tolerance policy toward people who come to the United States seeking asylum.

We are in court working to block President Trump’s abuse of emergency powers to secure funds for a border wall Congress denied (thanks in part to our advocacy in D.C.). In May, a federal judge ruled in our lawsuit, which we filed on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC), that President Trump couldn’t get his wall by illegally diverting taxpayer money. The Sierra Club and SBCC represent the communities who live in, protect, and treasure the lands and communities along the southern border. The Trump administration appealed that decision, and we await the next steps from the 9^th circuit.

But we’re not just responding to the moment — we’re building for immigrant justice in the future. The ACLU is a nationwide organization, with an on-the-ground presence in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Because we have a vibrant presence in every state, we at the ACLU are not only able to push back against abuses and litigate, but also work to enact pro-immigrant rights laws.

The Border Rights Center (BRC), housed at the ACLU of Texas, advocates for the 15 million people from California to Texas who call our southwest border home. The ACLU staff in our affiliates and the BRC work closely with border communities and people coming to the United States, and serve as an important watchdog on the federal immigration agencies at the border, especially Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This week, they shared this latest dispatch about the inhumanity and suffering of the people in our government’s care at the border.

After we filed our family separation lawsuit, it quickly became clear that the Trump administration didn’t have a plan to meet the court-ordered deadlines to reunite families. In one court filing, lawyers for the Trump administration suggested that the ACLU should take on the responsibility of finding those missing parents. Because the government wasn’t willing to carry out the search itself, the ACLU, along with a small group of other organizations, set out to do just that. We will continue to track down the families impacted by the family separation crisis. Details of our investigative work — the family separation crisis by the numbers — are here. 

Across the country, we, in partnership with movement leaders and activists, have built coalitions necessary to move a proactive agenda forward in the states. In Washington state, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Utah, New York, and others, we’ve seen legislatures stand up for immigrants, and we have been proud to support allies and fellow community members in pushing for positive change. 

In Washington, we helped lead the coalition that just three weeks ago passed the American Dream and American Promise Act to protect Dreamers as well as Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure beneficiaries from deportation. It’s a historic piece of legislation that affects more than two million immigrants and is the first stand-alone bill granting a pathway to citizenship to pass a chamber of Congress since 2010. It also represents an essential victory for undocumented activists and all those whose lives have been thrown into uncertainty by the Trump administration. We are currently looking towards the Senate to pass this bill so that it can become law.

Even in the midst of extreme rhetoric, many of these wins will limit the Trump administration’s ability to carry out its threats to deport millions.

Across the country, volunteers with our Rights for All campaign are asking presidential candidates to commit to an overhaul of our immigration system. We know that executive leadership is necessary to create a fair and achievable path to citizenship for people who are undocumented, to reduce the number of people languishing in immigration detention, and to put an end to ICE’s reliance on local law enforcement to facilitate deportations.

Our volunteers are securing commitments from presidential candidates and holding them accountable to civil rights for all, regardless of immigration status. We are already seeing the impact of this work, with the criminalization of border-crossing — a policy against which the ACLU has fought for years — getting significant attention at the first democratic presidential debate.

The ACLU is also educating people in America about their rights, especially when dealing with immigration officials. Last year, we joined forces with Brooklyn Defender Services to create and distribute a series of powerful and informative videos based on true stories to provide real action points for what to do when ICE is outside our doors, in our homes, in our communities, and/or arrests us. The videos are available in English, Spanish, Urdu, Arabic, Hatian Creole, Russian, and Mandarin.

We also have a set of materials about your rights if you are asked about your immigration status by law enforcement, detained by CBP, and other immigration-specific scenarios here. And if you are a DACA recipient or you’re within the 100-mile border zone, we have Know Your Rights materials. All of our Know Your Rights content can be found here. 

We know that a better future is possible, and we at the ACLU, along with our supporters and allies, are daring to create it.

What You Can Do

Call Congress and tell them to give no additional funds to the Department of Homeland Security. Your taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund abusive immigration policies, increased detention, or an unnecessary border wall or barrier.

Make the call

 

Published June 28, 2019 at 09:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2XaoqgC

ACLU: The Supreme Court’s Most Consequential Ruling for Privacy in the Digital Age, One Year In

The Supreme Court’s Most Consequential Ruling for Privacy in the Digital Age, One Year In
Lower courts should make clear, as the Supreme Court does, that we don’t forfeit our Fourth Amendment rights by operating a laptop, car, or cellphone.

This month marks a year since the Supreme Court issued its landmark privacy decision in Carpenter v. United States, ruling that the government must get a warrant before accessing a person’s sensitive cellphone location data.

Carpenter, which the ACLU argued before the Supreme Court, concerned information revealing where Timothy Carpenter had traveled with his phone. The police, searching for evidence to connect Carpenter to the scenes of various robberies, obtained months’ worth of Carpenter’s detailed location data from his cellphone company without a warrant. That data exposed Carpenter’s daily routines, including where he slept and attended church.

The court held that government access to such detailed location data provides a method of “near-perfect surveillance,” and recognized that the Fourth Amendment must protect such sensitive information. It added that old-world legal rules don’t automatically apply in the digital age.

The Supreme Court’s decision stands as one of the most consequential rulings regarding privacy in the digital age, providing a roadmap for lower courts to protect many other kinds of sensitive data from warrantless government intrusion. One year in, we’re working to ensure that lower courts heed the high court’s call and extend the lessons of Carpenter to other contexts.

For instance, we were in the Georgia Supreme Court last week arguing that Carpenter made clear  courts cannot “mechanically apply” older legal doctrines that allow warrantless searches to new, complex digital-age contexts. Instead, courts should carefully assess what protections are necessary in light of rapidly advancing technology and increasingly accessible data.

In that case, the state of Georgia is arguing that a legal doctrine dating back to the early 20^th century should give police the authority to obtain — without a warrant — the vast and detailed data modern cars collect on us. This data can include everything from our car’s speed and braking data, to call record and text history, to music preferences and GPS coordinates. Under the dated doctrine, known as the “vehicle exemption,” police do not need a warrant to search a car for physical items due to the “ready mobility of vehicles,” which might drive away before a warrant is obtained. But, as we argued in court last week, that old rule shouldn’t be extended to override people’s unprecedented privacy interest in new kinds of sensitive digital data.

Similarly, in our lawsuit challenging the government’s warrantless searches of electronic devices at the U.S. border, the federal government has been invoking a centuries-old rule allowing border agents to search travelers’ physical luggage without individualized suspicion or a warrant for contraband or import violations. We argue that old-world rules can’t be twisted into unfettered authority to search the incredible volumes of data on people’s phones and laptops when they return from a trip abroad.

In both cases, Carpenter (and a predecessor Supreme Court case, Riley v. California) provide a powerful rebuke to the government’s arguments. The quantities and types of information that might be discovered by a manual search of a car’s trunk and glove compartment — or a traveler’s luggage — pale in comparison to the kinds of comprehensive data stored on our electronic devices today. This requires greater protections under the Fourth Amendment.

Carpenter also holds that, in the digital age, our sensitive information does not lose Fourth Amendment protections merely because we store that information on a “third party” server, such as with Google or DropBox. This is a game-changer.

In the digital age, it is virtually impossible to avoid leaving a trail of highly sensitive data. Our information is saved not only on our personal laptops and phones, but also on the servers of the companies with which we interact. As we argued in a case now before the First Circuit Court of Appeals, the government can no longer get away with warrantless searches of our personal information by relying on the “third party” doctrine.

That case concerns the Drug Enforcement Administration’s efforts to access — without a warrant — people’s prescription records stored in the New Hampshire Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, a secure state-run database set up for public health purposes. The DEA is arguing that when people reveal their symptoms to their doctor and bring the doctor’s prescription to their pharmacist, they have given up their Fourth Amendment privacy rights in that sensitive health information. That can’t be right when the result is unfettered police access to deeply private information about our health and medical history.

In other cases, we have similarly argued that people’s location history stored in gargantuan automated license plate reader databases should be protected by a warrant requirement because of the intense privacy interest in digitized location data recognized in Carpenter.

The Supreme Court rightfully understood in Carpenter that courts have an essential role in ensuring that privacy protections remain vital in the digital age. While the government advocates for unfettered access to the personal information companies are sweeping up on us, it’s crucial the courts make clear, as Carpenter does, that we do not forfeit our Fourth Amendment rights simply for owning a laptop, driving a car, or having a cellphone.  

Published June 29, 2019 at 02:00AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2JiKgFc

ACLU: We are Fighting for Immigrant Rights. Here's What You Can Do.

We are Fighting for Immigrant Rights. Here's What You Can Do.
We know that a better future is possible, and we at the ACLU, along with our supporters and allies, are daring to create it.

The images of Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria, who lost their lives trying to seek refuge in the United States, have left us haunted. They serve as an ever-important reminder of the urgency of the fight for immigrant justice on our southern border and the need to stand up to the Trump administration's policies denying humanitarian protection and basic due process to families fleeing for their lives. 

We remain at the frontlines of the family separation fight. In early 2018, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit to stop the separation of families at the border and to require the immediate reunion of all separated children and parents. And last June, a federal judge issued a national injunction in our lawsuit, requiring the reunification of thousands. We have continually fought the administration’s efforts to stonewall the reunification and continue their zero-tolerance policy toward people who come to the United States seeking asylum.

We are in court working to block President Trump’s abuse of emergency powers to secure funds for a border wall Congress denied (thanks in part to our advocacy in D.C.). In May, a federal judge ruled in our lawsuit, which we filed on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC), that President Trump couldn’t get his wall by illegally diverting taxpayer money. The Sierra Club and SBCC represent the communities who live in, protect, and treasure the lands and communities along the southern border. The Trump administration appealed that decision, and we await the next steps from the 9^th circuit.

But we’re not just responding to the moment — we’re building for immigrant justice in the future. The ACLU is a nationwide organization, with an on-the-ground presence in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Because we have a vibrant presence in every state, we at the ACLU are not only able to push back against abuses and litigate, but also work to enact pro-immigrant rights laws.

The Border Rights Center (BRC), housed at the ACLU of Texas, advocates for the 15 million people from California to Texas who call our southwest border home. The ACLU staff in our affiliates and the BRC work closely with border communities and people coming to the United States, and serve as an important watchdog on the federal immigration agencies at the border, especially Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This week, they shared this latest dispatch about the inhumanity and suffering of the people in our government’s care at the border.

After we filed our family separation lawsuit, it quickly became clear that the Trump administration didn’t have a plan to meet the court-ordered deadlines to reunite families. In one court filing, lawyers for the Trump administration suggested that the ACLU should take on the responsibility of finding those missing parents. Because the government wasn’t willing to carry out the search itself, the ACLU, along with a small group of other organizations, set out to do just that. We will continue to track down the families impacted by the family separation crisis. Details of our investigative work — the family separation crisis by the numbers — are here. 

Across the country, we, in partnership with movement leaders and activists, have built coalitions necessary to move a proactive agenda forward in the states. In Washington state, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Utah, New York, and others, we’ve seen legislatures stand up for immigrants, and we have been proud to support allies and fellow community members in pushing for positive change. 

In Washington, we helped lead the coalition that just three weeks ago passed the American Dream and American Promise Act to protect Dreamers as well as Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure beneficiaries from deportation. It’s a historic piece of legislation that affects more than two million immigrants and is the first stand-alone bill granting a pathway to citizenship to pass a chamber of Congress since 2010. It also represents an essential victory for undocumented activists and all those whose lives have been thrown into uncertainty by the Trump administration. We are currently looking towards the Senate to pass this bill so that it can become law.

Even in the midst of extreme rhetoric, many of these wins will limit the Trump administration’s ability to carry out its threats to deport millions.

Across the country, volunteers with our Rights for All campaign are asking presidential candidates to commit to an overhaul of our immigration system. We know that executive leadership is necessary to create a fair and achievable path to citizenship for people who are undocumented, to reduce the number of people languishing in immigration detention, and to put an end to ICE’s reliance on local law enforcement to facilitate deportations.

Our volunteers are securing commitments from presidential candidates and holding them accountable to civil rights for all, regardless of immigration status. We are already seeing the impact of this work, with the criminalization of border-crossing — a policy against which the ACLU has fought for years — getting significant attention at the first democratic presidential debate.

The ACLU is also educating people in America about their rights, especially when dealing with immigration officials. Last year, we joined forces with Brooklyn Defender Services to create and distribute a series of powerful and informative videos based on true stories to provide real action points for what to do when ICE is outside our doors, in our homes, in our communities, and/or arrests us. The videos are available in English, Spanish, Urdu, Arabic, Hatian Creole, Russian, and Mandarin.

We also have a set of materials about your rights if you are asked about your immigration status by law enforcement, detained by CBP, and other immigration-specific scenarios here. And if you are a DACA recipient or you’re within the 100-mile border zone, we have Know Your Rights materials. All of our Know Your Rights content can be found here. 

We know that a better future is possible, and we at the ACLU, along with our supporters and allies, are daring to create it.

What You Can Do

Call Congress and tell them to give no additional funds to the Department of Homeland Security. Your taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund abusive immigration policies, increased detention, or an unnecessary border wall or barrier.

Make the call

 

Published June 29, 2019 at 02:00AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2XaoqgC

ACLU: Georgia Tried to Ban Abortion, So We Sued.

Georgia Tried to Ban Abortion, So We Sued.
Abortion bans place people in danger, and Georgia’s is no exception.

Alabama. Arkansas. Kentucky. Ohio. And today, Georgia. That’s the list of states where the ACLU has had to go to court over the last few months to challenge laws banning abortion.

The Georgia law bans abortion at six weeks of pregnancy and is in clear violation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.  In fact, that is the whole point of the law.  Georgia politicians, including Governor Brian Kemp, emboldened by President Trump’s appointment of two new justices to the Supreme Court, think this is their chance to get the court to take away the constitutional right to abortion altogether.

But we aren’t going back. Together, with a broad coalition of health care providers and advocates, including SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, we’ve asked the court to block the law before it ever goes into effect. It’s important to know that the law is not in effect now. Abortion is still legal in Georgia and we intend to keep it that way.

Taking away a person’s ability to get an abortion is inexcusable and unconstitutional.  But Georgia lawmakers weren’t content to stop there. The law they passed also threatens access to a vast range of routine treatments that people need when they are pregnant. For example, a physician could face criminal prosecution for prescribing antibiotics that accidentally harm an embryo or fetus. Such a threat can only drive doctors away from treating pregnant Georgians.

Lawmakers who pushed this bill claim they want to protect life, yet the effect of this reckless law would be to endanger people. And pregnant people in Georgia already face unacceptable risks. According to Georgia’s own Department of Public Health, women in the state die from pregnancy-related causes at one of the highest rates in the nation. Black people, in particular, die at three times the rate that white people do. That is so even though over 60 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the state are preventable.

Rather than address these real threats to the well-being of Georgians, the state’s politicians have chosen to make pregnancy even riskier by subjecting doctors to criminal prosecution and interfering with a patient’s decisions — intruding where politicians have no business.

Abortion bans place people in danger, period, and Georgia’s is no exception. Whether someone seeks to terminate a pregnancy or to have a baby, the Georgia bill would strip them of their rights and needlessly expose them to harm.

With this lawsuit, we and our partners are sending a clear message to those who passed this bill: they will not succeed. We are confident that the law will not pass muster with a court, and that the authority to make important medical and life decisions will remain in the hands of Georgia’s people, not its politicians.

Published June 28, 2019 at 10:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3234Yl1

ACLU: Georgia Tried to Ban Abortion, So We Sued.

Georgia Tried to Ban Abortion, So We Sued.
Abortion bans place people in danger, and Georgia’s is no exception.

Alabama. Arkansas. Kentucky. Ohio. And today, Georgia. That’s the list of states where the ACLU has had to go to court over the last few months to challenge laws banning abortion.

The Georgia law bans abortion at six weeks of pregnancy and is in clear violation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.  In fact, that is the whole point of the law.  Georgia politicians, including Governor Brian Kemp, emboldened by President Trump’s appointment of two new justices to the Supreme Court, think this is their chance to get the court to take away the constitutional right to abortion altogether.

But we aren’t going back. Together, with a broad coalition of health care providers and advocates, including SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, we’ve asked the court to block the law before it ever goes into effect. It’s important to know that the law is not in effect now. Abortion is still legal in Georgia and we intend to keep it that way.

Taking away a person’s ability to get an abortion is inexcusable and unconstitutional.  But Georgia lawmakers weren’t content to stop there. The law they passed also threatens access to a vast range of routine treatments that people need when they are pregnant. For example, a physician could face criminal prosecution for prescribing antibiotics that accidentally harm an embryo or fetus. Such a threat can only drive doctors away from treating pregnant Georgians.

Lawmakers who pushed this bill claim they want to protect life, yet the effect of this reckless law would be to endanger people. And pregnant people in Georgia already face unacceptable risks. According to Georgia’s own Department of Public Health, women in the state die from pregnancy-related causes at one of the highest rates in the nation. Black people, in particular, die at three times the rate that white people do. That is so even though over 60 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the state are preventable.

Rather than address these real threats to the well-being of Georgians, the state’s politicians have chosen to make pregnancy even riskier by subjecting doctors to criminal prosecution and interfering with a patient’s decisions — intruding where politicians have no business.

Abortion bans place people in danger, period, and Georgia’s is no exception. Whether someone seeks to terminate a pregnancy or to have a baby, the Georgia bill would strip them of their rights and needlessly expose them to harm.

With this lawsuit, we and our partners are sending a clear message to those who passed this bill: they will not succeed. We are confident that the law will not pass muster with a court, and that the authority to make important medical and life decisions will remain in the hands of Georgia’s people, not its politicians.

Published June 28, 2019 at 06:00PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/3234Yl1

ACLU: Working in Prison, I Witnessed the Inhumane Conditions of Solitary for Incarcerated Women

Working in Prison, I Witnessed the Inhumane Conditions of Solitary for Incarcerated Women
Solitary confinement can amount to torture. One practitioner witnessed this first hand, and shares her story and her journey to action.

At the first checkpoint at Tennessee Prison for Women, there was a large, scrolling television screen behind the desk displaying the image of two pairs of hands – one pair with a key and one pair in handcuffs. The message read, “You can either be one of us or one of them.” I had been working in the facility for less than a year, but this message exemplified an uneasiness I had long felt without articulating: The prison’s façade of “rehabilitation” masked a system so blatantly punitive and practically ineffective that the choice itself was impossible, offensive, and encapsulated all that was wrong with this failed iteration of the carceral state.  

As a senior clinical therapist at the prison, I provided mental health services to women in solitary confinement. Initially, and admittedly somewhat idealistically, I viewed my job as stabilizing my patients, improving their ability to cope, and ideally moving them toward healthier living and functioning as part of a multidisciplinary team.

Over time, however, I found myself in the unfortunate position of “sounding board” – of becoming a receptacle for the dark energy that saturated their life experience in agonizingly inhuman conditions.

Confined to a cell the size of a parking space for more than 23 hours a day, my patients were bombarded by unremitting florescent lighting and constantly deafening sounds, both of which impaired proper sleep and eroded their psychological well-being. The architecture of punishment was also a major factor. High ceilings and concrete floors ensured they found no normalcy, and were either too hot or too cold. Cells were also arranged, or designed, in a way that made it next to impossible for them to have effective communication between them and, outside of incidental contact during escorting, they by course experienced no human touch at all.

Most of my patients came and went from solitary as part of a determinant stay of just a few days for minor rule infractions. They quickly resumed their lives on the main compound once released. But, some women in solitary confinement were not so lucky. These women, for a variety of reasons, were barred from joining the general prison population for months, years, and even decades. This is what people mean when they say “prolonged solitary confinement,” and it is as devastating as it sounds.

Some women were placed there because of behavioral problems, others by virtue of their sentence, still others for their own protection. A few, called “safekeepers,” were there out of a need for proper treatment of a medical or mental health condition. These women - and the institutional response to them - made that choice at checkpoint so hard for me to answer.

The women with whom I worked were part of the 80,000-100,000 people enduring solitary confinement every day and hundreds of thousands of people enduring solitary confinement every year in this country, an increasing number of whom are women due in part to the swelling numbers of women entering the US correctional system. Under the pretext of “safety” and “security”, many prisons and jails across the country house people in prolonged solitary without any due process or independent oversight. The lack of accountability breeds bad practices and violations of rights and dignity. In other words, these women endure excessive and often retaliatory placement in solitary that can last for years or decades without any real justification. The human mind is not equipped to tolerate that kind of extended isolation, especially when the environmental conditions mix both sensory deprivation and sensory overload. While some incarcerated women had a capacity to withstand it better than others, in the end, no one escaped without being changed by the experience.

In addition to the trauma they suffered, at base these women felt ignored and discarded. Like ghosts searching endlessly for a clairvoyant to interpret their needs, they felt abandoned by each person passing their door.

The direct result of this perpetual cycle of cresting and falling hope was an ever-increasing agitation and irritability. They yelled and banged on their doors. They paced for hours inside their cell. They picked fights with each other and staff. As these symptoms progressed, they entered an existential crisis, vacillating between a semi-conscious state of detached numbness and desperate attempts to feel something. To feel anything. Many became fixated on seemingly insignificant things, responding dramatically to even the slightest of provocation. Some would brood for days over a perceived injustice, then spend weeks, or even months, carefully planning a retaliatory strike. Still others would turn inward, capitulating to the despair and isolating even further.

Deprived of so much, and in the absence of something to occupy their minds or somewhere constructive to channel that negative energy, these women would create their own distraction-rich reality. And because they believed they had nothing left to lose, those distractions would frequently escalate into violence. Prolonged solitary confinement doesn’t make prisons safer. Quite the opposite actually; prolonged solitary confinement creates the very violence prisons claim they are trying to control.

During my time working in the prison, I often reminded myself that as painful as it was for me to witness this kind of suffering, I could disconnect from it at any time. My patients had no such luxury.

When I accepted a faculty position at Tennessee State University, I experienced some ambivalence about leaving the prison. Frankly, I believed my job with these women was incomplete. So, as has become my charge and calling, I became an advocate for them on the outside. Back to the question of whose “side” I chose, in the end it was the side of my patients. I remain hopeful that the other side, the side in power will soon find the wisdom and impetus to move toward safer alternatives to prolonged solitary confinement. The very rights and health of incarcerated women are on the line.  

Published June 28, 2019 at 04:30PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2RFzMTX

ACLU: Working in Prison, I Witnessed the Inhumane Conditions of Solitary for Incarcerated Women

Working in Prison, I Witnessed the Inhumane Conditions of Solitary for Incarcerated Women
Solitary confinement can amount to torture. One practitioner witnessed this first hand, and shares her story and her journey to action.

At the first checkpoint at Tennessee Prison for Women, there was a large, scrolling television screen behind the desk displaying the image of two pairs of hands – one pair with a key and one pair in handcuffs. The message read, “You can either be one of us or one of them.” I had been working in the facility for less than a year, but this message exemplified an uneasiness I had long felt without articulating: The prison’s façade of “rehabilitation” masked a system so blatantly punitive and practically ineffective that the choice itself was impossible, offensive, and encapsulated all that was wrong with this failed iteration of the carceral state.  

As a senior clinical therapist at the prison, I provided mental health services to women in solitary confinement. Initially, and admittedly somewhat idealistically, I viewed my job as stabilizing my patients, improving their ability to cope, and ideally moving them toward healthier living and functioning as part of a multidisciplinary team.

Over time, however, I found myself in the unfortunate position of “sounding board” – of becoming a receptacle for the dark energy that saturated their life experience in agonizingly inhuman conditions.

Confined to a cell the size of a parking space for more than 23 hours a day, my patients were bombarded by unremitting florescent lighting and constantly deafening sounds, both of which impaired proper sleep and eroded their psychological well-being. The architecture of punishment was also a major factor. High ceilings and concrete floors ensured they found no normalcy, and were either too hot or too cold. Cells were also arranged, or designed, in a way that made it next to impossible for them to have effective communication between them and, outside of incidental contact during escorting, they by course experienced no human touch at all.

Most of my patients came and went from solitary as part of a determinant stay of just a few days for minor rule infractions. They quickly resumed their lives on the main compound once released. But, some women in solitary confinement were not so lucky. These women, for a variety of reasons, were barred from joining the general prison population for months, years, and even decades. This is what people mean when they say “prolonged solitary confinement,” and it is as devastating as it sounds.

Some women were placed there because of behavioral problems, others by virtue of their sentence, still others for their own protection. A few, called “safekeepers,” were there out of a need for proper treatment of a medical or mental health condition. These women - and the institutional response to them - made that choice at checkpoint so hard for me to answer.

The women with whom I worked were part of the 80,000-100,000 people enduring solitary confinement every day and hundreds of thousands of people enduring solitary confinement every year in this country, an increasing number of whom are women due in part to the swelling numbers of women entering the US correctional system. Under the pretext of “safety” and “security”, many prisons and jails across the country house people in prolonged solitary without any due process or independent oversight. The lack of accountability breeds bad practices and violations of rights and dignity. In other words, these women endure excessive and often retaliatory placement in solitary that can last for years or decades without any real justification. The human mind is not equipped to tolerate that kind of extended isolation, especially when the environmental conditions mix both sensory deprivation and sensory overload. While some incarcerated women had a capacity to withstand it better than others, in the end, no one escaped without being changed by the experience.

In addition to the trauma they suffered, at base these women felt ignored and discarded. Like ghosts searching endlessly for a clairvoyant to interpret their needs, they felt abandoned by each person passing their door.

The direct result of this perpetual cycle of cresting and falling hope was an ever-increasing agitation and irritability. They yelled and banged on their doors. They paced for hours inside their cell. They picked fights with each other and staff. As these symptoms progressed, they entered an existential crisis, vacillating between a semi-conscious state of detached numbness and desperate attempts to feel something. To feel anything. Many became fixated on seemingly insignificant things, responding dramatically to even the slightest of provocation. Some would brood for days over a perceived injustice, then spend weeks, or even months, carefully planning a retaliatory strike. Still others would turn inward, capitulating to the despair and isolating even further.

Deprived of so much, and in the absence of something to occupy their minds or somewhere constructive to channel that negative energy, these women would create their own distraction-rich reality. And because they believed they had nothing left to lose, those distractions would frequently escalate into violence. Prolonged solitary confinement doesn’t make prisons safer. Quite the opposite actually; prolonged solitary confinement creates the very violence prisons claim they are trying to control.

During my time working in the prison, I often reminded myself that as painful as it was for me to witness this kind of suffering, I could disconnect from it at any time. My patients had no such luxury.

When I accepted a faculty position at Tennessee State University, I experienced some ambivalence about leaving the prison. Frankly, I believed my job with these women was incomplete. So, as has become my charge and calling, I became an advocate for them on the outside. Back to the question of whose “side” I chose, in the end it was the side of my patients. I remain hopeful that the other side, the side in power will soon find the wisdom and impetus to move toward safer alternatives to prolonged solitary confinement. The very rights and health of incarcerated women are on the line.  

Published June 28, 2019 at 09:00PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2RFzMTX

ACLU: Arkansas Politicians Continue to Push Abortion out of Reach. So We Sued. Again.

Arkansas Politicians Continue to Push Abortion out of Reach. So We Sued. Again.
As long as Arkansas politicians keep passing unconstitutional laws, the ACLU will keep taking them to court.

Across the country, extremist politicians emboldened by President Trump’s agenda have passed a tsunami of abortion bans and restrictions, each one more cruel and outlandish than the last. Elected officials in Arkansas have the shameful distinction of having been at the forefront of this nationwide crusade to criminalize abortion, and the ACLU has gone to court again and again to block these laws from taking effect.

This year, Arkansas politicians sank to a new low with a trifecta of unconstitutional laws designed to eliminate access to safe and legal abortion in Arkansas — and once again, we’re taking them to court. The ACLU, the ACLU of Arkansas, and Planned Parenthood are suing on behalf of Little Rock Family Planning Services, Planned Parenthood Great Plains, and two physician providers to stop these laws from taking effect.

Instead of taking steps to improve health care for Arkansas families, Arkansas legislators are again targeting abortion providers with medically unnecessary restrictions intended to close clinics and push abortion even further out of reach. In the state with the third highest maternal mortality rate in the country, it is shameful that Arkansas politicians are spending their time passing blatantly unconstitutional laws masquerading as an attempt to protect people’s health. The laws do nothing to improve the safety of abortion (which is already incredibly safe) and instead will decimate the ability of people to get care in a state that is already down to only three abortion providers.

Unfortunately, Arkansas is not alone in attempting to shut down clinics in order to prevent people from getting the care they need. Our neighbor, Missouri, is down to just one clinic, and the state is using bogus restrictions to shut it down. And five other states have only one clinic providing abortion left.

Arkansas legislators didn’t stop there. They also passed two different abortion bans that directly violate Roe v. Wade. The first bans abortions at 18 weeks of pregnancy, even if the woman’s health is in danger. The second bans abortion based on a person’s motivation for seeking one. This would turn patients into suspects, health providers into investigators, and clinics into interrogation rooms. They’ve tried to disguise this ban as an effort to stop discrimination against people with disabilities, but the ban does nothing to actually improve the lives of people living with disabilities.   

This isn’t the Arkansas we want to live in. Our communities are strongest when families can access medical care, make their own personal decisions, and are treated with dignity — regardless of when or whether they decide to become parents.

Our lawsuit notes that the two abortion bans (Act 493 and Act 619) stand in direct conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade by outright banning abortion prior to viability. The third law, Act 700, also violates the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt by imposing significant burdens on abortion access with no medical or health benefit.

Even more fundamentally, these laws are antithetical to our values and to the basic principle of personal autonomy. The decision about whether and when to become a parent is one of the most deeply personal decisions anyone can make. Politicians should never have the right to make that decision for us.

Published June 27, 2019 at 09:00PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2RFfrhm

ACLU: Supreme Court Finds that Wilbur Ross Lied To Put Citizenship Question on the 2020 Census

Supreme Court Finds that Wilbur Ross Lied To Put Citizenship Question on the 2020 Census
The ruling affirms that the Trump administration cannot offer pretextual reasons to cover up its anti-immigrant attacks.

This morning, the Supreme Court told the country what we and our clients have long known: that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross provided a false reason for his decision to add a citizenship question to the Decennial Census. The court explained that the Trump administration’s stated reason for adding a citizenship question—enforcement of the Voting Rights Act—was “contrived.” The justices could not “ignore the disconnect between the decision made and the explanation given.” Bottom-line, this decision prevents addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Census based on the administration’s lies.

As we explained in our complaint and as the district court’s decision found, Secretary Ross “was determined to reinstate a citizenship question from the time he entered office.” He adopted the Voting Rights Act as the reason “late in the process” after already having “made up his mind” to add a citizenship question for other, unstated reasons. Ultimately, “the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the Secretary gave for his decision.” In other words, the Secretary’s decision was a solution in search of a problem.

The implications for this decision are huge for immigrants and people of color across the county whose census participation the administration sought to suppress with this question. The ruling  affirms that our clients—the New York Immigration Coalition, Make the Road New York, CASA, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee—would be injured by the addition of this question. Striking this question will remove a major barrier to allowing a full count of all people residing in the United States and prevent the use of the census as a political weapon to harm the representation and funding interests of affected communities.

This decision also helps affirm important good-government principles. As the court explained, federal agencies must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public.” While the Supreme Court’s decision has its flaws—such as refusing to recognize the terribly flawed process in seeking to add this question and Secretary Ross’s ignoring of better alternatives—it does recognize that the public deserves “something better than the explanation offered for the action taken in this case.”

We deserve a 2020 census that seeks to count all of us, rather than using political tools to target communities of color and engage in political manipulation

 

Published June 27, 2019 at 08:45PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2KLzQAW

ACLU: Arkansas Politicians Continue to Push Abortion out of Reach. So We Sued. Again.

Arkansas Politicians Continue to Push Abortion out of Reach. So We Sued. Again.
As long as Arkansas politicians keep passing unconstitutional laws, the ACLU will keep taking them to court.

Across the country, extremist politicians emboldened by President Trump’s agenda have passed a tsunami of abortion bans and restrictions, each one more cruel and outlandish than the last. Elected officials in Arkansas have the shameful distinction of having been at the forefront of this nationwide crusade to criminalize abortion, and the ACLU has gone to court again and again to block these laws from taking effect.

This year, Arkansas politicians sank to a new low with a trifecta of unconstitutional laws designed to eliminate access to safe and legal abortion in Arkansas — and once again, we’re taking them to court. The ACLU, the ACLU of Arkansas, and Planned Parenthood are suing on behalf of Little Rock Family Planning Services, Planned Parenthood Great Plains, and two physician providers to stop these laws from taking effect.

Instead of taking steps to improve health care for Arkansas families, Arkansas legislators are again targeting abortion providers with medically unnecessary restrictions intended to close clinics and push abortion even further out of reach. In the state with the third highest maternal mortality rate in the country, it is shameful that Arkansas politicians are spending their time passing blatantly unconstitutional laws masquerading as an attempt to protect people’s health. The laws do nothing to improve the safety of abortion (which is already incredibly safe) and instead will decimate the ability of people to get care in a state that is already down to only three abortion providers.

Unfortunately, Arkansas is not alone in attempting to shut down clinics in order to prevent people from getting the care they need. Our neighbor, Missouri, is down to just one clinic, and the state is using bogus restrictions to shut it down. And five other states have only one clinic providing abortion left.

Arkansas legislators didn’t stop there. They also passed two different abortion bans that directly violate Roe v. Wade. The first bans abortions at 18 weeks of pregnancy, even if the woman’s health is in danger. The second bans abortion based on a person’s motivation for seeking one. This would turn patients into suspects, health providers into investigators, and clinics into interrogation rooms. They’ve tried to disguise this ban as an effort to stop discrimination against people with disabilities, but the ban does nothing to actually improve the lives of people living with disabilities.   

This isn’t the Arkansas we want to live in. Our communities are strongest when families can access medical care, make their own personal decisions, and are treated with dignity — regardless of when or whether they decide to become parents.

Our lawsuit notes that the two abortion bans (Act 493 and Act 619) stand in direct conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade by outright banning abortion prior to viability. The third law, Act 700, also violates the Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt by imposing significant burdens on abortion access with no medical or health benefit.

Even more fundamentally, these laws are antithetical to our values and to the basic principle of personal autonomy. The decision about whether and when to become a parent is one of the most deeply personal decisions anyone can make. Politicians should never have the right to make that decision for us.

Published June 28, 2019 at 01:30AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2RFfrhm

ACLU: Supreme Court Finds that Wilbur Ross Lied To Put Citizenship Question on the 2020 Census

Supreme Court Finds that Wilbur Ross Lied To Put Citizenship Question on the 2020 Census
The ruling affirms that the Trump administration cannot offer pretextual reasons to cover up its anti-immigrant attacks.

This morning, the Supreme Court told the country what we and our clients have long known: that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross provided a false reason for his decision to add a citizenship question to the Decennial Census. The court explained that the Trump administration’s stated reason for adding a citizenship question—enforcement of the Voting Rights Act—was “contrived.” The justices could not “ignore the disconnect between the decision made and the explanation given.” Bottom-line, this decision prevents addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Census based on the administration’s lies.

As we explained in our complaint and as the district court’s decision found, Secretary Ross “was determined to reinstate a citizenship question from the time he entered office.” He adopted the Voting Rights Act as the reason “late in the process” after already having “made up his mind” to add a citizenship question for other, unstated reasons. Ultimately, “the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the Secretary gave for his decision.” In other words, the Secretary’s decision was a solution in search of a problem.

The implications for this decision are huge for immigrants and people of color across the county whose census participation the administration sought to suppress with this question. The ruling  affirms that our clients—the New York Immigration Coalition, Make the Road New York, CASA, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee—would be injured by the addition of this question. Striking this question will remove a major barrier to allowing a full count of all people residing in the United States and prevent the use of the census as a political weapon to harm the representation and funding interests of affected communities.

This decision also helps affirm important good-government principles. As the court explained, federal agencies must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public.” While the Supreme Court’s decision has its flaws—such as refusing to recognize the terribly flawed process in seeking to add this question and Secretary Ross’s ignoring of better alternatives—it does recognize that the public deserves “something better than the explanation offered for the action taken in this case.”

We deserve a 2020 census that seeks to count all of us, rather than using political tools to target communities of color and engage in political manipulation

 

Published June 28, 2019 at 01:15AM
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ACLU: Immigrants’ Rights Aren’t Possible If We Don’t Stop Criminalizing Border Crossing

Immigrants’ Rights Aren’t Possible If We Don’t Stop Criminalizing Border Crossing
Why a little-known section of the U.S. Code got attention at the Democratic Debate

Last night’s Democratic presidential debate shined an unlikely spotlight on a little-known section of the federal code — 8. U.S.C. 1325. This law makes crossing the border without legal authorization a federal misdemeanor. Its counterpart, 8 U.S.C. 1326, makes re-crossing the border a felony. They are the laws the Trump administration has leveraged to take thousands of children from their parents at the border.

Recall their explanation: They claimed they had no choice but to take children from their parents because they were criminally prosecuting the parents pursuant to a zero-tolerance policy. And they claimed that necessitated placing the parents in U.S. Marshals custody and sometimes in federal prison, while their children were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. The laws they were using to prosecute the parents? 8 U.S.C. 1325 and 1326.

The Trump administration is not the first to use these laws, though they are the first to use them against parents on a large scale. The federal government began to rely heavily on the laws that criminalize migration in 2005, in a program called Operation Streamline. Until then, crossing the border without legal authorization was typically treated as a civil offense, not as a crime — migrants apprehended near the border would usually face quick deportation, but no criminal penalties. Since 2005, though, criminal prosecutions for unauthorized border crossing have skyrocketed, and in 2017 and 2018,  they comprised 57 percent of all federal criminal case filings nationwide.

That bears repeating. Last year, prosecutions under 8 U.S.C 1325 and 1326 comprised more than half of all federal prosecutions across the country. That’s more than white collar prosecutions, more than drug-related prosecutions, and more than weapons prosecutions. And to be clear, if the government were not criminally prosecuting these individuals, they’d be placed into civil deportation proceedings anyway.

Like so much of the criminal system, the system under which migrants are prosecuted for crossing the border is replete with due process problems. These individuals have practically no opportunity to consult with an attorney to understand the charges, the consequences of a conviction, and potential avenues of legal relief. Hearings are often conducted en masse, with instructions relating to charges, rights, and terms of plea agreements only nominally individualized. Almost everyone pleads guilty. And after they plead, they are referred for deportation — making the criminal process redundant at best, cruel at worst.

A 2018 study from Human Rights First found that at the border, the government regularly refers asylum seekers — people exercising their legal right to ask for refuge in the United States — for criminal prosecution, delaying or preventing altogether their opportunity to make a claim for protection. This practice blatantly violates U.S. treaty obligations and due process.

These prosecutions have a profound human cost, and they also cost U.S. taxpayers. We all fund the magistrate and district courts, U.S. Attorney’s offices, federal public defenders, Criminal Justice Act panel attorneys, court interpreters, and the prison beds that incarcerate people charged under 8 U.S.C. 1325 and 1326. Grassroots Leadership has estimated that federal incarceration costs alone are $1 billion per year — feeding America’s mass incarceration crisis.

Federal laws that criminalize the act of border-crossing have been on the books since the 1920s, first proposed by members of Congress who were explicitly motivated by eugenics and white supremacy. They belong in the dustbin of history, along with the racism that undergirded them. It is long past time for their repeal.

Published June 27, 2019 at 08:15PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2NhtcnY

ACLU: Immigrants’ Rights Aren’t Possible If We Don’t Stop Criminalizing Border Crossing

Immigrants’ Rights Aren’t Possible If We Don’t Stop Criminalizing Border Crossing
Why a little-known section of the U.S. Code got attention at the Democratic Debate

Last night’s Democratic presidential debate shined an unlikely spotlight on a little-known section of the federal code — 8. U.S.C. 1325. This law makes crossing the border without legal authorization a federal misdemeanor. Its counterpart, 8 U.S.C. 1326, makes re-crossing the border a felony. They are the laws the Trump administration has leveraged to take thousands of children from their parents at the border.

Recall their explanation: They claimed they had no choice but to take children from their parents because they were criminally prosecuting the parents pursuant to a zero-tolerance policy. And they claimed that necessitated placing the parents in U.S. Marshals custody and sometimes in federal prison, while their children were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. The laws they were using to prosecute the parents? 8 U.S.C. 1325 and 1326.

The Trump administration is not the first to use these laws, though they are the first to use them against parents on a large scale. The federal government began to rely heavily on the laws that criminalize migration in 2005, in a program called Operation Streamline. Until then, crossing the border without legal authorization was typically treated as a civil offense, not as a crime — migrants apprehended near the border would usually face quick deportation, but no criminal penalties. Since 2005, though, criminal prosecutions for unauthorized border crossing have skyrocketed, and in 2017 and 2018,  they comprised 57 percent of all federal criminal case filings nationwide.

That bears repeating. Last year, prosecutions under 8 U.S.C 1325 and 1326 comprised more than half of all federal prosecutions across the country. That’s more than white collar prosecutions, more than drug-related prosecutions, and more than weapons prosecutions. And to be clear, if the government were not criminally prosecuting these individuals, they’d be placed into civil deportation proceedings anyway.

Like so much of the criminal system, the system under which migrants are prosecuted for crossing the border is replete with due process problems. These individuals have practically no opportunity to consult with an attorney to understand the charges, the consequences of a conviction, and potential avenues of legal relief. Hearings are often conducted en masse, with instructions relating to charges, rights, and terms of plea agreements only nominally individualized. Almost everyone pleads guilty. And after they plead, they are referred for deportation — making the criminal process redundant at best, cruel at worst.

A 2018 study from Human Rights First found that at the border, the government regularly refers asylum seekers — people exercising their legal right to ask for refuge in the United States — for criminal prosecution, delaying or preventing altogether their opportunity to make a claim for protection. This practice blatantly violates U.S. treaty obligations and due process.

These prosecutions have a profound human cost, and they also cost U.S. taxpayers. We all fund the magistrate and district courts, U.S. Attorney’s offices, federal public defenders, Criminal Justice Act panel attorneys, court interpreters, and the prison beds that incarcerate people charged under 8 U.S.C. 1325 and 1326. Grassroots Leadership has estimated that federal incarceration costs alone are $1 billion per year — feeding America’s mass incarceration crisis.

Federal laws that criminalize the act of border-crossing have been on the books since the 1920s, first proposed by members of Congress who were explicitly motivated by eugenics and white supremacy. They belong in the dustbin of history, along with the racism that undergirded them. It is long past time for their repeal.

Published June 28, 2019 at 12:45AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2NhtcnY