How to sum up 2020: Stressful? Uncertain? Hard? If you’re like some ACLU staffers, one note of help came quite literally from listening to music. For a special year-end holiday episode, we asked a few staffers to tell us which song provided the service of …
Governor Jared Polis of Colorado — otherwise a trailblazer when it comes to criminal legal reform — recently said, “There’s no way [the COVID-19 vaccine] is going to go to prisoners before it goes to the people who haven’t committed any crime.” Under fire …
This week, the ACLU is back in court working to protect the constitutional right to abortion in Arkansas. In 2017, the state legislature passed four anti-abortion laws to severely restrict access to abortion. If allowed to take effect, these laws would ban …
Over the past month, two high-profile incidents reaffirmed why police body cameras cannot serve as a police transparency and accountability tool as long as state law empowers the police to determine what footage the public gets to see. As we have said time …
The FBI is secretly breaking the encryption that secures our cell phones and laptops from identity thieves, hackers, and abusive governments, and it refuses to even acknowledge that it has information about these efforts — even though some details have …
This blog is the eighth in a series outlining a reimagined, just, and humane immigration system for the United States. The past four years proved that the Biden-Harris administration must be bold and focused on overhauling the immigration system. The …
Over the last couple years, it’s become increasingly clear that facial recognition technology doesn’t work well, and would be a civil liberties and privacy nightmare even if it did. But that’s not stopping the Trump administration from moving forward with …
President Trump has assailed the right to vote during his entire time in the Oval Office. Trump’s term was bookended with baseless claims of voter fraud, an unoriginal yet effective trope that has been used throughout our country’s history to erect …
The 2020 election was notable for many reasons, but one winner really stood out: drug legalization. Five states legalized either medicinal or adult use of marijuana. Oregon and went even further, becoming the first state to decriminalize the personal use …
The federal government has not been kind to transgender people over the last four years. Trans students were put at risk when the Department of Education withdrew critical guidance explaining how schools must protect transgender students. Trans people …
This piece was originally published in Washington Post The administration of President-elect Joe Biden must do more than reverse the cruel immigration policies of the Trump administration. While the Trump administration’s policies have been particularly …
It took a split second for my whole world to come crashing down. My teammates on the University of Connecticut’s women’s soccer team were jumping and screaming and hugging each other. We had just won a championship game. It was one of the happiest moments …
In the middle of the 2020 pandemic, America was shaken by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the protests that erupted in the aftermath. But the disturbing trends we see today in police violence are the same patterns we’ve seen over the …
On our podcast, At Liberty, we learn a lot about history, civil rights and civil liberties issues, and how we can use legal advocacy to move the needle. This week, we spent time talking about how we can best share that knowledge with others, especially the …
President Trump’s relentless destruction of our immigration system is well documented. However, the myriad ways in which he attacked and targeted Black and Brown people seeking immigration benefits or citizenship, and even U.S. citizens is less discussed. …
People with disabilities face enormous barriers in the United States today — from a pandemic that is killing disabled people, especially those in institutions, at staggering rates; to schools that too often fail, traumatize, and criminalize students with …
The approximately 15 million residents of the Southwest border region live under a massive federal police presence and extensive surveillance: the ever-present hum of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) helicopters overhead; residents’ information …
Over the last four years, the Trump administration has embraced a distorted view of religious freedom that is rooted in bigotry against minority faiths and atheists and promotes an official preference for Christianity. They’ve targeted Muslims for no …
In the last four years, the Trump administration has aggressively dismantled federal protections that ensure equal treatment against racial discrimination, amplified racist rhetoric, and explicitly targeted communities of color with harmful executive …
Imagine waking up one day, unlocking your phone, and realizing that you could no longer send or receive messages through your favorite app. Or make or receive calls. Or scroll through your social media feed. Imagine that all of these functions were rolled …
