Legislation

The ACLU testified against a bill greatly expanding the scope of criminal record checks performed on Department of Children, Youth and Families employees and volunteers.

The Senate steered clear of a troubling State Police proposal passed by the House. The bill would have given law enforcement agencies broad authority to secretly obtain, without a warrant, subscriber information from Internet service providers.

This legislation restricts governmental use of radio frequency identification devices on students. RFID allows a person’s identity and movement to be monitored electronically, and was briefly used by the Middletown school district last year to track elementary school students.

ACLU-promoted legislation was reintroduced to restrict political surveillance and data collection by police.

The Affiliate fought legislation to expand HIV testing while reducing the confidentiality protections in place for patients.

The House and Senate quickly and overwhelmingly overrode a Gubernatorial veto of legislation authorizing state-regulated dispensaries to provide medical marijuana to qualified patients.

Despite a recent and detailed ACLU report documenting that “red light cameras” appear to have had no positive impact on driver safety and have cost the City of Providence close to a million dollars, the legislature authorized their permanent use, repealing a sunset clause on the technology’s utiliza

While significantly increasing the criminal penalties for “indecent exposure,” the legislature refused to approve an amendment which would have prevented police officers from serving as the sole complaining witnesses to such a charge.

In two previous years, the Governor had vetoed ACLU legislation that restricted the state and municipalities from using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology on students, employees or clients.