Legislation

Showing that it’s never too late to do the right thing, the General Assembly enacted legislation redrawing Senate district lines around the metropolitan Providence area.

In a rebuff to the Governor, the legislature restored to the FY 2005 budget funding requested by the state judiciary to hire six Spanish-speaking court interpreters.

The ACLU was not displeased to see the House take no action on a Senate bill to establish a “civil rights advocate” in the Attorney General’s office.

For the third year in a row, Affiliate lobbying helped defeat a bill, based in part on a USA Patriot Act provision, to give local law enforcement authorities broad authority to obtain from Internet service providers information, including bank and credit card information, of subscribers.

Responding to ACLU free speech concerns, the legislature significantly amended a bill to ban “video voyeurism” before approving it.

In the waning hours of the session, the legislature approved an important ACLU bill designed to address privacy concerns raised by the state’s new barcoded drivers’ licenses.

The legislature took no action on a bill introduced late in the session to allow cities and towns to use “red light cameras.”

Despite strong lobbying efforts by a local patients’ advocacy group, the General Assembly took no action this year on medical marijuana legislation.

The legislature passed an ACLU bill that removes from a variety of professional licensing statutes an archaic requirement that licensees be “free from contagious disease.”