ACLU: Three Redistricting Cases to Watch

Three Redistricting Cases to Watch

Next year, voters across the country will head to polls to cast their ballots for congressional and state representatives. The choices we’ll have before us as voters are dictated by what district we live in — lines that are redrawn every 10 years. This critical process, called redistricting, is intended to ensure each district accurately reflects the people who live there. But in practice, some states have strayed from that ideal and instead drawn district lines that dilute the power of voters of color, particularly Black voters, in an effort to manipulate election results.

This manipulation undermines our democracy. Voters should pick their politicians; not the other way around. Ensuring district maps are drawn equitably is key to fair and effective representation for all voters, reconciling decades of power imbalances, and systemic equality. Here are three notable cases in which the ACLU is advocating for fair maps.

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Louisiana: Robinson v. Ardoin

This month, we celebrated a win in our challenge to the congressional map enacted by Louisiana Legislators following the 2020 census. Louisiana’s congressional map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by failing to provide Black voters an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice in a second district, thereby diluting their voting power. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the map was discriminatory, and likely violated the VRA.

Black voters from the two largest and majority-Black cities in Louisiana have long been packed into a single congressional district, weakening their political influence and ability to advocate for their concerns within the halls of congress. The Legislature is required by the court to draw a new map by May 2024. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this process to ensure the next map accurately reflects Louisiana voters in time for the upcoming election season.

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South Carolina: Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP

In 2022, South Carolina adopted a racially-gerrymandered map that moved hundreds of thousands of voters to different congressional districts, carefully calibrating the districts’ Black populations in all but one district to a low enough level to deny Black voters the equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. Alongside our partners, we challenged the map’s constitutionality in court on behalf of the South Carolina NAACP and affected voters. After a two-week trial, a panel of three federal judges unanimously concluded that South Carolina’s congressional map is unconstitutional, and the state appealed to the Supreme Court.

The court heard oral arguments in October, and we await their decision.

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Alabama: Allen v. Milligan

In October, a district court in Alabama once again ordered the state to adopt a congressional map with two districts where Black voters have the opportunity to elect the candidates of their choice. This win followed two years of litigation by the ACLU and our partners on behalf of four individual voters, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the NAACP of Alabama. We challenged Alabama’s congressional district boundaries as racially discriminatory under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. In Alabama, voting is racially polarized, and white and Black voters largely support different candidates. Despite having seven congressional districts and a Black voting-age population of over 27 percent, Alabama only allowed Black voters an opportunity to elect a representative in one district, or 14 percent of the state’s delegation.

The district court’s ruling followed a historic win for voting rights at the Supreme Court in 2022, reaffirming the need for Section 2 to protect Black political power, when the court ruled in our favor.

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Published November 30, 2023 at 02:39AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/KdfGzby

ACLU: Indigenous and Filipino Women are Leading the Fight for Reproductive Justice in Guam

Indigenous and Filipino Women are Leading the Fight for Reproductive Justice in Guam

Picture this: A 12-year-old girl is raped and impregnated, and because there are no abortion providers within 4,000 miles of where she lives, she must carry the pregnancy to term.

It doesn’t sound like something that could happen in the United States, right? But for the people of Guåhan, what is more commonly known as the U.S. unincorporated territory of Guam, this was the reality in 2019, even when Roe v. Wade was still law. That year, the only abortion provider on the island retired — and it was this story that sparked the creation of Famalao’an Rights, a reproductive justice initiative fighting for access to reproductive care for everyone on the island.

The fight for abortion access has always been an uphill battle in Guåhan. The first Christian missionaries in Micronesia arrived in Guåhan in the 1500s alongside Spanish colonization, bringing a Catholic religion that heavily influenced CHamoru culture and spirituality. Today, the island’s total population is about 70 percent Roman Catholic, a force that has undoubtedly contributed to harsh anti-choice local government policies for decades.

In 1990, the Guam Legislature passed the strictest anti-abortion law in the United States at the time, making it illegal to even speak about where to get abortions. This law was eventually deemed unconstitutional and unenforceable due to Roe. With the 2022 decision to overturn Roe, however, there were attempts to revive the 1990 anti-abortion law. These efforts were eventually shot down by the Supreme Court of Guam earlier this year after it held the ban was null and void.

The dominance of Catholic religion in Guåhan has also cultivated social and cultural stigma surrounding reproductive health care, particularly abortion. The immense pressure of Catholic, pro-life advocates discouraged medical abortion providers from providing care on the island.

Since 2019, Famalao’an Rights has been at the forefront of safeguarding reproductive health care and bodily autonomy. In the beginning, we were mostly an informational social media campaign, posting infographics and short podcasts on the issue of abortion and its history and importance for the island on platforms such as Instagram and Twitter.

Then, as the government attempted to limit abortion access further, we became community organizers. In 2021, the Guam Legislature proposed legislation that sought to ban abortions after five weeks of pregnancy. The proposed law mirrored similar abortion bans enacted in states like Georgia and Texas. The Guam Legislature eventually passed the ban, to which Governor Lourdes Leon Guerrero, i Maga’hågan Guåhan (the first elected woman governor of Guam) replied with a harshly-worded veto. The Legislature failed to override the governor’s veto, and with that, the ban failed.

During the 2021 attempt to ban abortions, Famalao’an Rights rallied the community together to send over 1,000 testimonies in opposition of the bill to the Guam Legislature. Dozens of people stood with us during multiple protests in front of the Guam Congress Building, and our movement has only grown since then.

It is now 2023, and Famalao’an Rights has accomplished much for the advancement of reproductive justice in Guåhan. Our team of Indigenous (CHamoru and Pohnpeian) and Filipino women leaders have secured the organization’s nonprofit status to support urgent reproductive justice initiatives, donated to local communities in crises during the recent supertyphoon Mawar, advocated for the status and delivery of menstrual products to the island’s schools, and more. We also plan to provide monetary support for those who seek medication abortion via the Hawaii Clinic. Monetary support will vary on a case by case basis, and will be available until all funds allotted are expended. Further, Famalao’an Rights has worked diligently with the ACLU to ensure telemedicine access for medication abortion remains available in Guåhan.

In 2019, having pathways to abortion access was only a dream for us. Of course, there is still a long way to go. But one way or another, we believe that Guam will be a place where every person has safe and timely access to reproductive health care, and a place where everyone can have full bodily autonomy.

We need you with us to keep fighting

Donate today

Published November 29, 2023 at 08:52PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/pmDWxIK

ACLU: Indigenous and Filipino Women are Leading the Fight for Reproductive Justice in Guam

Indigenous and Filipino Women are Leading the Fight for Reproductive Justice in Guam

Picture this: A 12-year-old girl is raped and impregnated, and because there are no abortion providers within 4,000 miles of where she lives, she must carry the pregnancy to term.

It doesn’t sound like something that could happen in the United States, right? But for the people of Guåhan, what is more commonly known as the U.S. unincorporated territory of Guam, this was the reality in 2019, even when Roe v. Wade was still law. That year, the only abortion provider on the island retired — and it was this story that sparked the creation of Famalao’an Rights, a reproductive justice initiative fighting for access to reproductive care for everyone on the island.

The fight for abortion access has always been an uphill battle in Guåhan. The first Christian missionaries in Micronesia arrived in Guåhan in the 1500s alongside Spanish colonization, bringing a Catholic religion that heavily influenced CHamoru culture and spirituality. Today, the island’s total population is about 70 percent Roman Catholic, a force that has undoubtedly contributed to harsh anti-choice local government policies for decades.

In 1990, the Guam Legislature passed the strictest anti-abortion law in the United States at the time, making it illegal to even speak about where to get abortions. This law was eventually deemed unconstitutional and unenforceable due to Roe. With the 2022 decision to overturn Roe, however, there were attempts to revive the 1990 anti-abortion law. These efforts were eventually shot down by the Supreme Court of Guam earlier this year after it held the ban was null and void.

The dominance of Catholic religion in Guåhan has also cultivated social and cultural stigma surrounding reproductive health care, particularly abortion. The immense pressure of Catholic, pro-life advocates discouraged medical abortion providers from providing care on the island.

Since 2019, Famalao’an Rights has been at the forefront of safeguarding reproductive health care and bodily autonomy. In the beginning, we were mostly an informational social media campaign, posting infographics and short podcasts on the issue of abortion and its history and importance for the island on platforms such as Instagram and Twitter.

Then, as the government attempted to limit abortion access further, we became community organizers. In 2021, the Guam Legislature proposed legislation that sought to ban abortions after five weeks of pregnancy. The proposed law mirrored similar abortion bans enacted in states like Georgia and Texas. The Guam Legislature eventually passed the ban, to which Governor Lourdes Leon Guerrero, i Maga’hågan Guåhan (the first elected woman governor of Guam) replied with a harshly-worded veto. The Legislature failed to override the governor’s veto, and with that, the ban failed.

During the 2021 attempt to ban abortions, Famalao’an Rights rallied the community together to send over 1,000 testimonies in opposition of the bill to the Guam Legislature. Dozens of people stood with us during multiple protests in front of the Guam Congress Building, and our movement has only grown since then.

It is now 2023, and Famalao’an Rights has accomplished much for the advancement of reproductive justice in Guåhan. Our team of Indigenous (CHamoru and Pohnpeian) and Filipino women leaders have secured the organization’s nonprofit status to support urgent reproductive justice initiatives, donated to local communities in crises during the recent supertyphoon Mawar, advocated for the status and delivery of menstrual products to the island’s schools, and more. We also plan to provide monetary support for those who seek medication abortion via the Hawaii Clinic. Monetary support will vary on a case by case basis, and will be available until all funds allotted are expended. Further, Famalao’an Rights has worked diligently with the ACLU to ensure telemedicine access for medication abortion remains available in Guåhan.

In 2019, having pathways to abortion access was only a dream for us. Of course, there is still a long way to go. But one way or another, we believe that Guam will be a place where every person has safe and timely access to reproductive health care, and a place where everyone can have full bodily autonomy.

We need you with us to keep fighting

Donate today

Published November 30, 2023 at 02:22AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/PIf2RzQ

Republic of Nauru: 2023 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Republic of Nauru

Republic of Nauru: 2023 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Republic of Nauru
Published November 28, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Sierra Leone: Eighth Review Under the Extended Credit Facility Arrangement, Request for a Waiver of Nonobservance of Performance Criterion, and Financing Assurances Review

Sierra Leone: Eighth Review Under the Extended Credit Facility Arrangement, Request for a Waiver of Nonobservance of Performance Criterion, and Financing Assurances Review
Published November 27, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

ACLU: Lifting the Veil on the Design of Predictive Tools in the Criminal Legal System

Lifting the Veil on the Design of Predictive Tools in the Criminal Legal System

Recently, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) — the research arm of the Department of Justice (DOJ) — put out a call for researchers to participate in what they called the “Recidivism Forecasting Challenge”. The challenge was designed to use information about people on parole in Georgia to “improve the ability to forecast recidivism using person-and place-based variables,” encourage “non-criminal justice forecasting researchers to compete against more ‘traditional’ criminal justice researchers,” and provide “critical information to community corrections departments.” Challenge contestants were awarded a collective total of $723,000 for their submitted models.

While heralded by the NIJ as a successful effort that “demonstrate[d] the value of open data and open competition,” in reality, the challenge was marked by serious and fundamental flaws. One of the winning papers encapsulated the issues with the challenge best when they said, “We are hesitant to accept any insights gained from submitted models and question the reliability of their performance. We would also discourage the use of any submitted models in live environments.” Six of the other 25 winning papers also expressed their concerns about the use of models created for the challenge in real-world environments.

So, what contributed to the challenge’s failures?

We argue in a new research study critiquing the challenge that a failure to engage impacted communities (those whose data was used for the challenge) as well as public defenders and other advocates for impacted communities contributed in part to some of the failures of this project. The standard going forward for developing predictive tools should draw on recent resources from the federal government to inform decision-making around whether to develop predictive tools. These efforts should center around developing strong protections for the people whose data is used to build automated systems and the people who may ultimately be evaluated by those systems if they are deployed.

Challenge Accepted? A Critique of the 2021 National Institute of Justice Recidivism Forecasting Challenge

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

So, why does this matter?

The NIJ has a lot of power, given its position within the Department of Justice, to shape the way that local community corrections departments think about recidivism. We submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the DOJ to try to better understand how the results of the challenge have been or will be used but have not yet received a response to our request. While it is not fully clear yet how the results of the challenge will be used by the DOJ, the NIJ has already signaled that these types of tools are important to it by spending close to $1 million creating and executing the challenge. Furthermore, the DOJ, through the Bureau of Prisons, already uses a risk assessment tool, PATTERN, to make critical decisions about incarcerated populations. The use of this tool has been roundly criticized by several civil rights organizations.

Beyond influencing decisions about imprisonment and government surveillance, the data produced by law enforcement agencies and the predictions generated from risk assessment tools are often used in making decisions that can have a catastrophic impact on people’s lives — including loss of parental rights, homelessness, prolonged job insecurity, immigration consequences (including deportation), and inability to access credit. The voices of those impacted by these tools should be embedded in the design and implementation of these tools, as they are the individuals who will have to suffer the consequences of poorly designed systems. By involving impacted communities in the development of predictive tools, the design of these types of systems may look dramatically different, or these tools may be determined to not be useful at all.

For more information about the NIJ’s Recidivism Forecasting Challenge and its shortcomings, check out our paper below. Our paper was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization at the end of October, where it won an Honorable Mention for the New Horizons Award.

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Published November 23, 2023 at 01:52AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/iEapu3X

ACLU: Lifting the Veil on the Design of Predictive Tools in the Criminal Legal System

Lifting the Veil on the Design of Predictive Tools in the Criminal Legal System

Recently, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) — the research arm of the Department of Justice (DOJ) — put out a call for researchers to participate in what they called the “Recidivism Forecasting Challenge”. The challenge was designed to use information about people on parole in Georgia to “improve the ability to forecast recidivism using person-and place-based variables,” encourage “non-criminal justice forecasting researchers to compete against more ‘traditional’ criminal justice researchers,” and provide “critical information to community corrections departments.” Challenge contestants were awarded a collective total of $723,000 for their submitted models.

While heralded by the NIJ as a successful effort that “demonstrate[d] the value of open data and open competition,” in reality, the challenge was marked by serious and fundamental flaws. One of the winning papers encapsulated the issues with the challenge best when they said, “We are hesitant to accept any insights gained from submitted models and question the reliability of their performance. We would also discourage the use of any submitted models in live environments.” Six of the other 25 winning papers also expressed their concerns about the use of models created for the challenge in real-world environments.

So, what contributed to the challenge’s failures?

We argue in a new research study critiquing the challenge that a failure to engage impacted communities (those whose data was used for the challenge) as well as public defenders and other advocates for impacted communities contributed in part to some of the failures of this project. The standard going forward for developing predictive tools should draw on recent resources from the federal government to inform decision-making around whether to develop predictive tools. These efforts should center around developing strong protections for the people whose data is used to build automated systems and the people who may ultimately be evaluated by those systems if they are deployed.

Challenge Accepted? A Critique of the 2021 National Institute of Justice Recidivism Forecasting Challenge

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

So, why does this matter?

The NIJ has a lot of power, given its position within the Department of Justice, to shape the way that local community corrections departments think about recidivism. We submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the DOJ to try to better understand how the results of the challenge have been or will be used but have not yet received a response to our request. While it is not fully clear yet how the results of the challenge will be used by the DOJ, the NIJ has already signaled that these types of tools are important to it by spending close to $1 million creating and executing the challenge. Furthermore, the DOJ, through the Bureau of Prisons, already uses a risk assessment tool, PATTERN, to make critical decisions about incarcerated populations. The use of this tool has been roundly criticized by several civil rights organizations.

Beyond influencing decisions about imprisonment and government surveillance, the data produced by law enforcement agencies and the predictions generated from risk assessment tools are often used in making decisions that can have a catastrophic impact on people’s lives — including loss of parental rights, homelessness, prolonged job insecurity, immigration consequences (including deportation), and inability to access credit. The voices of those impacted by these tools should be embedded in the design and implementation of these tools, as they are the individuals who will have to suffer the consequences of poorly designed systems. By involving impacted communities in the development of predictive tools, the design of these types of systems may look dramatically different, or these tools may be determined to not be useful at all.

For more information about the NIJ’s Recidivism Forecasting Challenge and its shortcomings, check out our paper below. Our paper was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization at the end of October, where it won an Honorable Mention for the New Horizons Award.

We need you with us to keep fighting

Donate today

Published November 22, 2023 at 08:22PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/pweMKuJ

Malawi: Second Review Under the Staff-Monitored Program with Executive Board Involvement and Request for an Arrangement Under the Extended Credit Facility-Press Release; Staff Report

Malawi: Second Review Under the Staff-Monitored Program with Executive Board Involvement and Request for an Arrangement Under the Extended Credit Facility-Press Release; Staff Report
Published November 22, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Republic of San Marino: 2023 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Republic of San Marino

Republic of San Marino: 2023 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Republic of San Marino
Published November 22, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Cabo Verde: Technical Assistance Report-Consumer Price Index

Cabo Verde: Technical Assistance Report-Consumer Price Index
Published November 21, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Republic of Kosovo: First Reviews Under the Stand-By Arrangement and the Arrangement Under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility and Request for Modification of Reform Measure-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Republic of Kosovo

Republic of Kosovo: First Reviews Under the Stand-By Arrangement and the Arrangement Under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility and Request for Modification of Reform Measure-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Republic of Kosovo
Published November 20, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

ACLU: Why Meaningful Algorithm Auditing is Key to Protecting Civil Rights in the Digital Age

Why Meaningful Algorithm Auditing is Key to Protecting Civil Rights in the Digital Age

Employers today rely on various kinds of artificial intelligence (AI) or other automated tools in their hiring processes, including to advertise job opportunities, screen applications, assess candidates, and conduct interviews. Many of these tools carry well-documented risks of discrimination that can exacerbate existing inequities in the workplace. Employers should avoid tools altogether that carry a high risk of discrimination based on disabilities, race, sex and other protected characteristics, such as personality assessments and AI-analyzed interviews. But where an employer is considering using or is already using an AI tool, robust auditing for discrimination and other harms is one critical step to address the dangers that these tools pose and ensure that it is not violating civil rights laws.

But as usual, the devil is in the details.

Know Your Rights | Know Your Digital Rights: Digital Discrimination in Hiring

Learn more about how automated tools are used in the hiring process and your digital rights under these laws.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

A rigorous and holistic discrimination audit of an automated tool — both before and periodically after deployment — can provide employers information to help them determine whether to adopt a tool at all, what mitigation measures may be needed, and whether they need to abandon a tool after adoption. Auditing can also bring much needed transparency when audits are shared with the public, providing critical information for job applicants, researchers, and regulators. On the other hand, algorithm audits that are not carefully crafted can be gamed to present a misleading picture of the system in question or can serve as a cursory box-checking exercise, potentially legitimizing systems that may be discriminatory.

As regulators and legislators are increasingly focused on addressing the impacts of automated systems in critical areas like hiring and employment, including creating requirements for auditing, these efforts must be carefully crafted to ensure that the audits increase accountability in practice. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to algorithm auditing, audits for bias and discrimination should:

• Evaluate the system’s performance using carefully selected metrics — metrics that consider both when the system works and when it fails.
• Break down performance for people in different groups, including but not limited to race, sex, age, and disability status, and the intersections of those groups.
• Use data that faithfully represents how the system is used in practice.
• Be conducted by auditors who are independent from the entity that built or deployed the algorithm.

In many cases, audits can and should be conducted by interdisciplinary teams of subject matter experts, including social scientists, lawyers and policy researchers, that consult with people who will be impacted by these tools and the users of the system itself. Researchers and practitioners have created many different resources describing how these kinds of audits can be operationalized.

Why the details of algorithm audits are so critical

Examining emerging “bias audits” produced in connection with a recently enacted law in New York City (Local Law 144) helps demonstrate why these details are so critical. Because of this law, employers using some of these kinds of technologies are required to publish “bias audits” with statistics about how often job applicants advance in the hiring process when an automated tool is used, broken down for people of different races and sexes.

Some news coverage has described this law as requiring employers to “prove their AI hiring software isn’t sexist or racist.” But a closer look at these “bias audits” indicates that they are incomplete evaluations of bias and discrimination. First, the auditing requirement only applies to a limited set of the types of automated tools used in hiring processes today. So far, we’ve only been able to locate around a dozen bias audits — even though 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies reportedly use some type of automated system in their hiring processes. The law also doesn’t require the audits to assess possible biases related to many characteristics where discrimination in hiring and employment has long been a concern, including disability, age, and pregnancy.

The Historic New Law Protecting Fairness for Pregnant Workers

After a decade of advocacy, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is finally going into effect.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

When it comes to what’s in the audits, the statistics required to be calculated and reported can provide some basic information about which automated tools employers are using in their hiring processes and the number of job applications being evaluated by these tools. But these audits fall short of meaningful transparency in several ways. For one example, some of the audits we’ve seen so far don’t even provide the name or vendor of the tool being audited. The audits also don’t examine whether the tools work as advertised or whether they accurately assess the relevant skills or capabilities needed for a job. In addition, these bias audits may not fully portray the experiences of candidates or practices of employers for multiple reasons. Several of the audits, including this one of an AI-driven candidate screening tool and this one of an AI-driven applicant scoring tool are missing a lot of data on candidates who were evaluated by the automated tool in question.

The published audits also frequently rely on data that is pooled together from multiple employers that use the same tool, even though they may be using the tool in very different ways. Companies characterize these audits as designed to “ensure non-discrimination against protected groups,” when in fact this data pooling may mask stark disparities or discriminatory practices by employers.

More generally, algorithm audits should be publicly available and easy to access as a matter of transparency. Even though employers are required to publish the audits on their websites, so far, we’ve found it quite difficult to locate these bias audits. That’s why we worked with the New York Civil Liberties Union to create a public tracker of all the ones we’ve seen so far (if you know of Local Law 144 bias audits that employers have posted that we missed, let us know by emailing analytics_inquiry@aclu.org).

As automated systems become more entrenched in every part of our lives, audits of these systems can be crucial to identifying and preventing their harms. But for that to be the case, algorithm audits must be holistic, ongoing, and reflective of the ways automated systems are used in practice. Technologists, civil rights advocates, policymakers, and interdisciplinary researchers should work together to ensure that algorithm audits live up to their potential.

We need you with us to keep fighting

Donate today

Published November 20, 2023 at 11:14PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/LaPstZg

ACLU: Why Meaningful Algorithm Auditing is Key to Protecting Civil Rights in the Digital Age

Why Meaningful Algorithm Auditing is Key to Protecting Civil Rights in the Digital Age

Employers today rely on various kinds of artificial intelligence (AI) or other automated tools in their hiring processes, including to advertise job opportunities, screen applications, assess candidates, and conduct interviews. Many of these tools carry well-documented risks of discrimination that can exacerbate existing inequities in the workplace. Employers should avoid tools altogether that carry a high risk of discrimination based on disabilities, race, sex and other protected characteristics, such as personality assessments and AI-analyzed interviews. But where an employer is considering using or is already using an AI tool, robust auditing for discrimination and other harms is one critical step to address the dangers that these tools pose and ensure that it is not violating civil rights laws.

But as usual, the devil is in the details.

Know Your Rights | Know Your Digital Rights: Digital Discrimination in Hiring

Learn more about how automated tools are used in the hiring process and your digital rights under these laws.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

A rigorous and holistic discrimination audit of an automated tool — both before and periodically after deployment — can provide employers information to help them determine whether to adopt a tool at all, what mitigation measures may be needed, and whether they need to abandon a tool after adoption. Auditing can also bring much needed transparency when audits are shared with the public, providing critical information for job applicants, researchers, and regulators. On the other hand, algorithm audits that are not carefully crafted can be gamed to present a misleading picture of the system in question or can serve as a cursory box-checking exercise, potentially legitimizing systems that may be discriminatory.

As regulators and legislators are increasingly focused on addressing the impacts of automated systems in critical areas like hiring and employment, including creating requirements for auditing, these efforts must be carefully crafted to ensure that the audits increase accountability in practice. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to algorithm auditing, audits for bias and discrimination should:

• Evaluate the system’s performance using carefully selected metrics — metrics that consider both when the system works and when it fails.
• Break down performance for people in different groups, including but not limited to race, sex, age, and disability status, and the intersections of those groups.
• Use data that faithfully represents how the system is used in practice.
• Be conducted by auditors who are independent from the entity that built or deployed the algorithm.

In many cases, audits can and should be conducted by interdisciplinary teams of subject matter experts, including social scientists, lawyers and policy researchers, that consult with people who will be impacted by these tools and the users of the system itself. Researchers and practitioners have created many different resources describing how these kinds of audits can be operationalized.

Why the details of algorithm audits are so critical

Examining emerging “bias audits” produced in connection with a recently enacted law in New York City (Local Law 144) helps demonstrate why these details are so critical. Because of this law, employers using some of these kinds of technologies are required to publish “bias audits” with statistics about how often job applicants advance in the hiring process when an automated tool is used, broken down for people of different races and sexes.

Some news coverage has described this law as requiring employers to “prove their AI hiring software isn’t sexist or racist.” But a closer look at these “bias audits” indicates that they are incomplete evaluations of bias and discrimination. First, the auditing requirement only applies to a limited set of the types of automated tools used in hiring processes today. So far, we’ve only been able to locate around a dozen bias audits — even though 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies reportedly use some type of automated system in their hiring processes. The law also doesn’t require the audits to assess possible biases related to many characteristics where discrimination in hiring and employment has long been a concern, including disability, age, and pregnancy.

The Historic New Law Protecting Fairness for Pregnant Workers

After a decade of advocacy, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is finally going into effect.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

When it comes to what’s in the audits, the statistics required to be calculated and reported can provide some basic information about which automated tools employers are using in their hiring processes and the number of job applications being evaluated by these tools. But these audits fall short of meaningful transparency in several ways. For one example, some of the audits we’ve seen so far don’t even provide the name or vendor of the tool being audited. The audits also don’t examine whether the tools work as advertised or whether they accurately assess the relevant skills or capabilities needed for a job. In addition, these bias audits may not fully portray the experiences of candidates or practices of employers for multiple reasons. Several of the audits, including this one of an AI-driven candidate screening tool and this one of an AI-driven applicant scoring tool are missing a lot of data on candidates who were evaluated by the automated tool in question.

The published audits also frequently rely on data that is pooled together from multiple employers that use the same tool, even though they may be using the tool in very different ways. Companies characterize these audits as designed to “ensure non-discrimination against protected groups,” when in fact this data pooling may mask stark disparities or discriminatory practices by employers.

More generally, algorithm audits should be publicly available and easy to access as a matter of transparency. Even though employers are required to publish the audits on their websites, so far, we’ve found it quite difficult to locate these bias audits. That’s why we worked with the New York Civil Liberties Union to create a public tracker of all the ones we’ve seen so far (if you know of Local Law 144 bias audits that employers have posted that we missed, let us know by emailing analytics_inquiry@aclu.org).

As automated systems become more entrenched in every part of our lives, audits of these systems can be crucial to identifying and preventing their harms. But for that to be the case, algorithm audits must be holistic, ongoing, and reflective of the ways automated systems are used in practice. Technologists, civil rights advocates, policymakers, and interdisciplinary researchers should work together to ensure that algorithm audits live up to their potential.

We need you with us to keep fighting

Donate today

Published November 20, 2023 at 05:44PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/qnLRvVx

Seychelles: Technical Assistance Report–Public Investment Management Assessment–PIMA and Climate PIMA

Seychelles: Technical Assistance Report–Public Investment Management Assessment–PIMA and Climate PIMA
Published November 20, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Pakistan: Technical Assistance Report–Public Investment Management Assessment–PIMA and Climate PIMA

Pakistan: Technical Assistance Report–Public Investment Management Assessment–PIMA and Climate PIMA
Published November 17, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Republic of Korea: 2023 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Republic of Korea

Republic of Korea: 2023 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for the Republic of Korea
Published November 16, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

Mexico: Arrangement Under the Flexible Credit Line and Cancellation of Current Arrangement-Press Release and Staff Report

Mexico: Arrangement Under the Flexible Credit Line and Cancellation of Current Arrangement-Press Release and Staff Report
Published November 16, 2023 at 08:00AM
Read more at imf.org

ACLU: The Latest Must-Pass Bill Barreling Through Congress is an Attack on Gender-Affirming Care

The Latest Must-Pass Bill Barreling Through Congress is an Attack on Gender-Affirming Care

The fiscal year 2024 appropriations process has been littered with anti-LGBTQ attacks. Republican members of the House of Representatives have inserted anti-LGBTQ provisions into all 12 of the must-pass appropriations bills. These riders include restrictions on gender-affirming care, allowances for discrimination against same-sex couples, prohibitions of drag performances, banning of pride flag displays, and restrictions on diversity and inclusion programs.

These harmful anti-LGBTQ provisions come at a time when legislative attacks against the LGBTQ community are at an all-time high. As of this month, 506 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year alone. Bills such as the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would prohibit transgender students from participating in sports teams that align with their gender identity, have been introduced in the House of Representatives at alarming rates. In fact, the House has already passed other pieces of legislation that are considered to be must-pass bills, such as the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, with provisions that ban gender-affirming care, drag performances, and pride flag displays.

Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures

In the last few years states have advanced a record number of bills that attack LGBTQ rights, especially transgender youth. The ACLU is tracking...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Out of all the appropriations bills, however, the Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for FY 2024 is arguably the most nefarious and dangerous for the transgender community. The anti-LGBTQ riders in this bill seek to prohibit funds from being used for implementing anti-discrimination and equity programs, taking discriminatory action against anyone that speaks or acts in accordance with the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, or displaying pride flags. Section 534 of this bill would also prohibit funds from being used for gender-affirming surgical procedures or hormone therapies. If passed, this will have extensive, damaging effects.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, one of the departments funded by the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill. CMS provides health coverage through Medicaid to about 84.5 million enrollees as of July 2023, including eligible low-income adults. Currently, Medicaid is one the largest payers for health care in the United States.

Protect Trans Care Now

As wave after wave of extreme measures to criminalize and strip trans people of rights and safety continue, tell Congress to act.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

As of December 2022, about 276,000 transgender people in the United States are enrolled in Medicaid and about 60 percent of these beneficiaries reside in states or territories where Medicaid programs specifically include coverage for gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy, surgical procedures, and other gender-affirming treatments. Another 27 percent of transgender Medicaid beneficiaries live in states where laws are silent or unclear on coverage for gender-affirming care. In 14 states, laws do not include express statutes or policies addressing gender-affirming care under Medicaid. In four additional states, policies explicitly exclude this care under state Medicaid programs, but actions by state legislatures, officials, and courts have indicated that these states have inconsistently enforced or may not be enforcing these policies. Unfortunately, about 14 percent of transgender Medicaid beneficiaries reside in states that expressly ban access to gender-affirming care covered by Medicaid.

This 14 percent will grow drastically with the passage of the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill. Without funding for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Medicaid programs will be unable to cover gender-affirming surgical programs or hormone therapies for thousands of transgender people, many of whom are low-income.

Not only will too many lack the sufficient funds to turn to private medical programs or services, but states are also increasingly introducing and passing restrictions on gender-affirming care across the country. There are currently 135 state bills targeting health care for transgender people, many of which seek to ban gender-affirming care, establish criminal penalties for providing such care, or block funding to medical centers that offer this life-saving care.

---

When the lives of transgender people are at risk, what can you do?

You and your elected members of Congress are our last line of defense against this national threat. All of us, collectively, must work to stop any effort to harm or criminalize our trans friends, families, and communities. Tell your members of Congress that gender-affirming care is safe, medically necessary, evidence-based, and life-saving. Tell your members of Congress that every leading medical organization in the country, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, all strongly oppose efforts to criminalize and deny gender-affirming care. Tell your members of Congress that individual health care decisions should be made between a patient and their doctor —not with fear-mongering politicians who have little to no medical expertise.

Together, we can work to protect trans people and prevent more nefarious attacks on the trans community, and the greater LGBTQ community at large, from coming to fruition.

Is there a reason we use quotes here but not in the first paragraph when we refer to “must-pass” bills?

What you can do:

Protect Trans Care Now

Send your message

Published November 16, 2023 at 04:47PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/x4cXbjE

ACLU: The Latest Must-Pass Bill Barreling Through Congress is an Attack on Gender-Affirming Care

The Latest Must-Pass Bill Barreling Through Congress is an Attack on Gender-Affirming Care

The fiscal year 2024 appropriations process has been littered with anti-LGBTQ attacks. Republican members of the House of Representatives have inserted anti-LGBTQ provisions into all 12 of the must-pass appropriations bills. These riders include restrictions on gender-affirming care, allowances for discrimination against same-sex couples, prohibitions of drag performances, banning of pride flag displays, and restrictions on diversity and inclusion programs.

These harmful anti-LGBTQ provisions come at a time when legislative attacks against the LGBTQ community are at an all-time high. As of this month, 506 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year alone. Bills such as the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would prohibit transgender students from participating in sports teams that align with their gender identity, have been introduced in the House of Representatives at alarming rates. In fact, the House has already passed other pieces of legislation that are considered to be must-pass bills, such as the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, with provisions that ban gender-affirming care, drag performances, and pride flag displays.

Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures

In the last few years states have advanced a record number of bills that attack LGBTQ rights, especially transgender youth. The ACLU is tracking...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Out of all the appropriations bills, however, the Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for FY 2024 is arguably the most nefarious and dangerous for the transgender community. The anti-LGBTQ riders in this bill seek to prohibit funds from being used for implementing anti-discrimination and equity programs, taking discriminatory action against anyone that speaks or acts in accordance with the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, or displaying pride flags. Section 534 of this bill would also prohibit funds from being used for gender-affirming surgical procedures or hormone therapies. If passed, this will have extensive, damaging effects.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, one of the departments funded by the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill. CMS provides health coverage through Medicaid to about 84.5 million enrollees as of July 2023, including eligible low-income adults. Currently, Medicaid is one the largest payers for health care in the United States.

Protect Trans Care Now

As wave after wave of extreme measures to criminalize and strip trans people of rights and safety continue, tell Congress to act.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

As of December 2022, about 276,000 transgender people in the United States are enrolled in Medicaid and about 60 percent of these beneficiaries reside in states or territories where Medicaid programs specifically include coverage for gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy, surgical procedures, and other gender-affirming treatments. Another 27 percent of transgender Medicaid beneficiaries live in states where laws are silent or unclear on coverage for gender-affirming care. In 14 states, laws do not include express statutes or policies addressing gender-affirming care under Medicaid. In four additional states, policies explicitly exclude this care under state Medicaid programs, but actions by state legislatures, officials, and courts have indicated that these states have inconsistently enforced or may not be enforcing these policies. Unfortunately, about 14 percent of transgender Medicaid beneficiaries reside in states that expressly ban access to gender-affirming care covered by Medicaid.

This 14 percent will grow drastically with the passage of the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill. Without funding for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Medicaid programs will be unable to cover gender-affirming surgical programs or hormone therapies for thousands of transgender people, many of whom are low-income.

Not only will too many lack the sufficient funds to turn to private medical programs or services, but states are also increasingly introducing and passing restrictions on gender-affirming care across the country. There are currently 135 state bills targeting health care for transgender people, many of which seek to ban gender-affirming care, establish criminal penalties for providing such care, or block funding to medical centers that offer this life-saving care.

---

When the lives of transgender people are at risk, what can you do?

You and your elected members of Congress are our last line of defense against this national threat. All of us, collectively, must work to stop any effort to harm or criminalize our trans friends, families, and communities. Tell your members of Congress that gender-affirming care is safe, medically necessary, evidence-based, and life-saving. Tell your members of Congress that every leading medical organization in the country, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, all strongly oppose efforts to criminalize and deny gender-affirming care. Tell your members of Congress that individual health care decisions should be made between a patient and their doctor —not with fear-mongering politicians who have little to no medical expertise.

Together, we can work to protect trans people and prevent more nefarious attacks on the trans community, and the greater LGBTQ community at large, from coming to fruition.

Is there a reason we use quotes here but not in the first paragraph when we refer to “must-pass” bills?

What you can do:

Protect Trans Care Now

Send your message

Published November 16, 2023 at 10:17PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/sDp3HMu

ACLU: The U.S. Touts Itself as a Global Leader in Human Rights. A New U.N. Report Says Otherwise.

The U.S. Touts Itself as a Global Leader in Human Rights. A New U.N. Report Says Otherwise.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Committee delivered a searing report highlighting the U.S. government’s failure to meet its human rights obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This international treaty, ratified by the U.S. in 1992, is one of only three key human rights treaties that the U.S. has ratified.

The U.N. committee’s concluding observations echo many of the concerns and recommendations raised by civil society groups last month during the U.S. review, where they sounded the alarm on violations of various human rights issues including Indigenous rights, voting rights, freedom of expression and assembly, gender equality and reproductive rights, criminal legal reform, immigrants’ rights, and more. Here are three key takeaways from the committee’s report.

---

1. Establishing a national human rights institution is a critical first step to advancing national progress on human rights.

Among their concluding observations, the committee stressed the lack of progress in establishing a national human rights institution (NHRI). An NHRI would play a crucial role in monitoring and ensuring that international human rights standards are being upheld at the national level.

While the Biden administration has called for continued dialogue around an NHRI in the U.S., concrete actions have yet to materialize. The committee’s urgent recommendations corroborate the longstanding demand from civil society groups to establish a presidential commission to explore options for creating an NHRI. Already, this call to action has been backed by several members of Congress and the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies.

---

2. The U.S. should ensure that family separations never happen again.

The committee urged the U.S. to “redouble its efforts to ensure the reunification of all separated children with their families, guarantee that such family separations are prohibited in the future, and ensure that victims have access to effective remedies and receive full reparation, including adequate compensation and appropriate support services.” These recommendations align with those in the ACLU’s shadow report on family separation, and coincided with the ACLU’s announcement of a major settlement in Ms. L. v. ICE, which established that the U.S. government must continue to identify families that were separated by Trump’s zero-tolerance policy and provide a pathway for them to seek asylum in the U.S. The committee also raised concerns regarding racial discrimination and due process violations in the U.S. child welfare system, including the disproportionate number of Black and Indigenous children separated from their families.

Shadow Report to UN Human Rights Committee: Family Separation in the U.S. Child Welfare System, at the U.S.-Mexico Border, and of Indigenous Communities

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

---

3. The U.S. should adopt critical criminal legal system reforms, including abolishing the death penalty and placing a moratorium on life sentences without parole.

The committee concretely addresses a wide range of human rights violations in the U.S. criminal legal system, including extreme sentencing, which the ACLU has raised in our joint report with the Princeton Advocacy Policy Clinic. Most notably, the committee called on the U.S. to “establish a moratorium on the imposition of sentences to life imprisonment without parole.” This was a result of powerful testimonies and advocacy by various groups, including the Abolitionist Law Center and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which raised the torturous practice of death by incarceration to the committee.

The committee also urged the U.S. to establish a federal moratorium of the death penalty, abolish life without parole sentences for children, as well as the mandatory and non-homicide-related sentence of life imprisonment without parole, and make parole more accessible to all prisoners, including those sentenced to life imprisonment. For the first time, the committee called on the U.S. to expand parole eligibility for all incarcerated individuals, irrespective of age or the crime committed. These recommendations were also echoed in the recent report by the U.N. Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement, which visited the U.S. last spring.

Michigan Lawmakers Must Protect the Rights of Children and Join the Global Consensus

Efrén Paredes, Jr., incarcerated since the age of 15, explains why Michigan must turn the page on juvenile-life-without-parole sentences.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

---

The time to act is now.

The U.S. touts itself as a global leader of universal human rights. Yet the committee’s report memorializes the immense gap between U.S. laws and policies and international human rights norms — even in the area in which the U.S. has heralded itself as a leader for decades: civil and political rights. And while the Biden administration has prioritized human rights in some ways, it has failed to pursue bold actions to demonstrate that it is leading by the power of example.

While the responsibility to implement the committee’s concluding observations lies with federal, state, and local governments, the Biden administration should immediately devote the necessary attention and resources to realizing these recommendations.

It can start by creating a transparent and permanent executive branch human rights monitoring body to review and create a plan of action to implement the committee’s recommendations. It can also convene a White House summit on domestic human rights to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This would be an excellent opportunity to appoint a presidential commission to study the creation of an NHRI in the U.S. Additionally, the White House should instruct all federal departments and agencies to review and implement the committee’s observations and create incentives for state and local governments to do so under their jurisdiction.

The committee has asked the U.S. to follow up in three years with its progress in three main areas: reproductive rights, voting rights and freedom of assembly. While the next U.S. periodic review will take place in 2031, the U.S. government must immediately start implementing these recommendations and ensure that this process is informed by meaningful consultation with civil society organizations. As the world watches, we cannot waste any time to realize human rights for all in the U.S.

We need you with us to keep fighting

Donate today

Published November 16, 2023 at 01:45AM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/C5a0Xcx

ACLU: The U.S. Touts Itself as a Global Leader in Human Rights. A New U.N. Report Says Otherwise.

The U.S. Touts Itself as a Global Leader in Human Rights. A New U.N. Report Says Otherwise.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Committee delivered a searing report highlighting the U.S. government’s failure to meet its human rights obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This international treaty, ratified by the U.S. in 1992, is one of only three key human rights treaties that the U.S. has ratified.

The U.N. committee’s concluding observations echo many of the concerns and recommendations raised by civil society groups last month during the U.S. review, where they sounded the alarm on violations of various human rights issues including Indigenous rights, voting rights, freedom of expression and assembly, gender equality and reproductive rights, criminal legal reform, immigrants’ rights, and more. Here are three key takeaways from the committee’s report.

---

1. Establishing a national human rights institution is a critical first step to advancing national progress on human rights.

Among their concluding observations, the committee stressed the lack of progress in establishing a national human rights institution (NHRI). An NHRI would play a crucial role in monitoring and ensuring that international human rights standards are being upheld at the national level.

While the Biden administration has called for continued dialogue around an NHRI in the U.S., concrete actions have yet to materialize. The committee’s urgent recommendations corroborate the longstanding demand from civil society groups to establish a presidential commission to explore options for creating an NHRI. Already, this call to action has been backed by several members of Congress and the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies.

2. The U.S. should ensure that family separations never happen again.

The committee urged the U.S. to “redouble its efforts to ensure the reunification of all separated children with their families, guarantee that such family separations are prohibited in the future, and ensure that victims have access to effective remedies and receive full reparation, including adequate compensation and appropriate support services.” It also raised concerns regarding racial discrimination and due process violations in the U.S. child welfare system, including the disproportionate number of Black and Indigenous children separated from their families. These recommendations align with those in the ACLU’s shadow report on family separation, and coincided with the ACLU’s announcement of a major settlement in Ms. L. v. ICE, which established that the U.S. government must continue to identify families that were separated by Trump’s zero-tolerance policy and provide a pathway for them to seek asylum in the U.S.

Shadow Report to UN Human Rights Committee: Family Separation in the U.S. Child Welfare System, at the U.S.-Mexico Border, and of Indigenous Communities

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

3. The U.S. should adopt critical criminal legal system reforms, including abolishing the death penalty and placing a moratorium on life sentences without parole.

The committee concretely addresses a wide range of human rights violations in the U.S. criminal legal system, including extreme sentencing, which the ACLU has raised in our joint report with the Princeton Advocacy Policy Clinic. Most notably, the committee called on the U.S. to “establish a moratorium on the imposition of sentences to life imprisonment without parole.” This was a result of powerful testimonies and advocacy by various groups, including the Abolitionist Law Center and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which raised the torturous practice of death by incarceration to the committee.

The committee also urged the U.S. to establish a federal moratorium of the death penalty, abolish life without parole sentences for children, as well as the mandatory and non-homicide-related sentence of life imprisonment without parole, and make parole more accessible to all prisoners, including those sentenced to life imprisonment. For the first time, the committee called on the U.S. to expand parole eligibility for all incarcerated individuals, irrespective of age or the crime committed. These recommendations were also echoed in the recent report by the U.N. Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement, which visited the U.S. last spring.

Michigan Lawmakers Must Protect the Rights of Children and Join the Global Consensus

Efrén Paredes, Jr., incarcerated since the age of 15, explains why Michigan must turn the page on juvenile-life-without-parole sentences.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

The time to act is now.

The U.S. touts itself as a global leader of universal human rights. Yet the committee’s report memorializes the immense gap between U.S. laws and policies and international human rights norms — even in the area in which the U.S. has heralded itself as a leader for decades: civil and political rights. And while the Biden administration has prioritized human rights in some ways, it has failed to pursue bold actions to demonstrate that it is leading by the power of example.

While the responsibility to implement the committee’s concluding observations lies with federal, state, and local governments, the Biden administration should immediately devote the necessary attention and resources to realizing these recommendations.

It can start by creating a transparent and permanent executive branch human rights monitoring body to review and create a plan of action to implement the committee’s recommendations. It can also convene a White House summit on domestic human rights to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This would be an excellent opportunity to appoint a presidential commission to study the creation of an NHRI in the U.S. Additionally, the White House should instruct all federal departments and agencies to review and implement the committee’s observations and create incentives for state and local governments to do so under their jurisdiction.

The committee has asked the U.S. to follow up in three years with its progress in three main areas: reproductive rights, voting rights and freedom of assembly. While the next U.S. periodic review will take place in 2031, the U.S. government must immediately start implementing these recommendations and ensure that this process is informed by meaningful consultation with civil society organizations. As the world watches, we cannot waste any time to realize human rights for all in the U.S.

We need you with us to keep fighting

Donate today

Published November 15, 2023 at 08:15PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/BJgOLtZ

ACLU: We Quizzed ACLU Experts on Voting Rights. Can You Beat Them?

We Quizzed ACLU Experts on Voting Rights. Can You Beat Them?

Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy and the right that empowers us to enact change and hold elected officials accountable. It is also key to achieving systemic equality, particularly given our country’s long history of limiting access to the ballot for communities of color, especially Black voters, which persists today. Discriminatory policies and legislation continue to prevent voters of color from exercising this right easily, if at all.

As another presidential election year draws near, the ACLU continues to protect the right to vote and push back against attempts to suppress our voices at the ballot box. The ACLU voting rights team is working to expand and protect voting rights around the country. So we decided to put their expertise to the test with some rapid-fire voting rights questions. Watch their answers below, or take a shot at answering some of the questions yourself.

Play the video

Click to see Quiz

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Published November 15, 2023 at 10:59PM
via ACLU https://ift.tt/2kDPWQg