Legislation

ACLU lobbying helped bottle up in committee a State Police proposal to give law enforcement officials broad authority to secretly obtain, without a warrant or even a showing of “probable cause,” subscriber calling records and financial information from telephone and Internet service providers.

The House took no action this year on a Senate-approved measure to restrict the state and municipalities from using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology on students, employees or clients.

For the third year in a row, the City of Providence was unsuccessful in its efforts to expand the penalties for prostitution.

Two anti-choice bills were heard by House committee this year, but no votes were taken on them.

Overriding a Gubernatorial veto, Rhode Island took the positive step of making permanent a law passed last year allowing patients with specific serious and terminal illnesses to possess small amounts of marijuana for medical purposes, if authorized by a physician.

This bill originally contained a number of concerning provisions regarding the organ donation process in Rhode Island.

After a long and arduous process, beginning even before the bill’s introduction, a compromise bill addressing procedures for HIV testing of pregnant women was passed into law.

One court has called “civil death” laws “an outdated and inscrutable common law precept” and “a medieval fiction in a modern world,” but Rhode Island is one of only four states to still have such a law.

Despite broad support for the legislation from the General Assembly, the governor also vetoed a bill that would have eliminated the mandatory minimum sentences in place for certain drug offenses.