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.
For over thirty years, a federal statute has made it unlawful for any “federal, state or local government agency to deny to any individual any right, benefit, or privilege provided by law because of such...
Legislation to stigmatize and humiliate the poor — by requiring welfare applicants to be drug-tested and fingerprinted — was the subject of recent hearings.
The ACLU testified against a bill greatly expanding the scope of criminal record checks performed on Department of Children, Youth and Families employees and volunteers.
In 2008, the legislature authorized broad-based medical testing of newborns. This year, an ACLU bill was introduced to fine-tune the statute, requiring a medical benefit and known treatment before “other...
ACLU-promoted legislation was reintroduced to restrict political surveillance and data collection by police.
This legislation restricts governmental use of radio frequency identification devices on students. RFID allows a person’s identity and movement to be monitored electronically, and was briefly used by the...