Legislation

The General Assembly passed another ACLU-drafted free speech bill, this time ensuring citizens the right to criticize their elected officials in public newspapers.

The General Assembly passed campaign finance legislation aimed at combatting so-called Super PACs, but which carried serious ramifications for small organizations, including non-profits, which engage in referenda campaigns or even publicly references legislators too close to an election.

In May, the Affiliate testified before the House and Senate Judiciary committees in opposition to legislation which would remove the requirement that legal notices be posted in a newspaper, and instead permit them to be posted on a website.

Budget Article 32 would double, from $1 million to $2 million, the tax credit program for businesses that make donations to “scholarship organizations” that funnel money to private and parochial schools for tuition purposes.

Under a bill proposed by the Attorney General, any person who posts on a website opinions or information – even factual data – could be potentially subject to criminal charges if the posting is designed to “harass” and could cause a person “substantial emotional distress.”

The ACLU testified against a bill that would authorize the license suspension of teachers who engage in a strike, defined so broadly as to include a teacher’s “abstaining” even in part “from the full performance of his or her duties in his or her normal manner without permission.”

The Affiliate successfully opposed a bill that sought to expand the definition of criminal “harassment” to include not just unwanted direct contact, but also the posting of information on Web sites about people.

The ACLU also successfully objected when a completely revised “welfare reform” provision in the proposed 2009 budget authorized the Department of Human Services to apply for federal funding for so-called “healthy marriage” programs.

Despite the state’s difficult fiscal times, the legislature approved a bill that will require public school districts to continue providing certain taxpayer-funded services to students with disabilities in parochial schools.