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.
This bill would have established a mandatory prison sentence of ten years for first-degree sexual assault offenses. We recognize the seriousness of this crime, but mandatory sentencing undermines...
Though we appreciate the intentions behind this legislation, which would eliminate the statute of limitations for filing civil suits alleging sexual abuse, we...
This legislation would waive the costs of criminal background checks for individuals seeking employment in a number of childcare positions. Rhode Island General Laws §28-6.3-1 has long provided that “[n]o...
We opposed legislation which would expand the crime of stalking to include the act of following someone and using an electronic device to record their movements in a manner that is “seriously annoying.”
Following the widespread and surreptitious installation across the state of deceptively named “automated license plate reader” cameras that actually have incredibly invasive technological capabilities, we...
We opposed a bill seeking to increase the penalties for a variety of driving offenses, noting that the approach of sending people to prison for longer periods of time and imposing steeper fines on offenders...