Legislation

Building upon the important work of the Reproductive Privacy Act, the Equality in Abortion Act would have ensured that abortion care is covered by Medicaid and within the health insurance plans of state employees.

Legislation supported by the ACLU would have allowed for certain terminally ill patients to make knowing and competent decisions about death and peacefully determine the end of their lives with dignity, autonomy, and privacy.

We opposed this legislation which would have given any police officer the authority currently given to high-ranking law enforcement personnel to obtain personally identifiable information from telecommunication companies without any judicial intervention.

While current Rhode Island law prohibits employment discrimination based upon a medical marijuana patient’s status as a cardholder, some employers have claimed that they can fire or not hire a cardholder who tests positive for marijuana on a drug test.

The importance of the passage of the Reproductive Privacy Act in 2019 – and continued advocacy around abortion rights – is especially clear in light of the slew of anti-choice bills which were introduced during this session.

As students largely transitioned to virtual education over the past year of the COVID-19 pandemic, issues of student privacy on school-loaned devices rightly crept to the forefront of public conversation.

For over a decade, our organization has maintained that the inclusion of personal health care and medical information through the RI Health Insurance Exchange (HIE) must be on a strictly voluntary basis through an opt-in, rather than an opt-out, system.

A bill introduced to remove the sunset provision in a law which established a team within the Department of Health to review drug-related overdoses prompted our opposition to language which continued to make law enforcement personnel central to the composition of the team.

This important piece of technology, privacy, and law enforcement policy would have prohibited law enforcement agencies from using stingray devices without a court order.