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 Voting Records page.
Though we appreciated its laudable goal, we opposed legislation which would require the state Department of Education to offer a kosher meal school lunch option to school districts.
We opposed this bill that purported to prohibit the production and possession of so-called child pornography.
We opposed this bill which would have created a crime of “menacing,” which would make criminal a wide variety of hyperbolic comments regularly expressed by people in the heat of the moment.
We strongly supported this legislation which would have further protected literature with “educational and governmental” value, as well as materials in a “bona fide school, museum, or public library.”
We opposed legislation that would have made it a felony for teachers, coaches, or any other person in a “position of authority” to fail to report child abuse or neglect.
Though we appreciated the intentions behind this legislation, which would have eliminated the statute of limitations for filing civil suits alleging sexual abuse, we opposed the bill.