Legislation

In a civil liberties defeat, the General Assembly passed a bill significantly expanding the number of sex offenders whose names and photos will be posted on a state web site for public viewing.

In another unfortunate civil liberties loss, the House defeated a bill that would have required police to record most interrogations of suspects charged with capital offenses.

The Senate took no action on a bill approved by the House that would have doubled the criminal penalties for various drug crimes if committed within 300 yards of a public college or university.

By overwhelming margins, the legislature approved a bill to allow people with specific serious and terminal illnesses to possess small amounts of marijuana for medical purposes, if authorized by a physician.

Two bills promoted by the Affiliate in response to the government’s continuing “war on terrorism” died in committee.

A number of bills with civil liberties implications died in the General Assembly this session.

In order to give members a more in-depth sense of the Affiliate’s legislative work, we have picked one topic – open government – and briefly summarize how the ACLU helped shape a variety of pieces of legislation, both large and small, on the issue this session.

The Affiliate achieved its first legislative victory of the session back in February, when the Governor withdrew his extremely dangerous “homeland security” bill just days after he had proposed it.