Every year, the ACLU of RI lobbies on hundreds of bills during Rhode Island's annual Legislative Session. Below are some of the bills we have tracked and testified on before the General Assembly. For more info on advocating for the issues you care about, check out our Advocacy 101 Guide. To see how your Reps and Senators voted on various bills over the past few years, visit our Legislative Scorecards page.
As an important piece of criminal justice reform legislation, this bill would have slightly redefined in two ways the definitions of “felony” and “misdemeanor” in Rhode Island law.
We supported a number of pieces of legislation have been introduced with the intention of barring private prisons from operating in the state of RI entirely and limiting the ability for carceral facilities...
We supported this proposed constitutional amendment which would have removed the state Constitution’s onerous requirement that bars individuals from voting in an election, except for President, unless they...
We opposed legislation which would have authorized a civil action against parents who demonstrate “willful or wanton disregard” in their exercise of “supervision and control” over a child who has committed...
In a piece of legislation indicative of the way that the General Assembly often attempts to “carve out” new crimes out of offenses that already are enshrined in state statute, this legislation would have...
Though bullying is a scourge, a piece of legislation which would have statutorily created an “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights” drew our opposition over concerns about its breadth.