Legislation

The House has passed legislation to require photo identification of voters at the polls. The Affiliate and other civil rights groups lobbied against its passage.

Two separate pieces of voting rights legislation have been approved by the Senate.

In response to the ACLU’s successful court case on behalf of the Moderate Party of RI, a bill was introduced to reduce from 5% to 1% the percentage of signatures required for a group to qualify for political party status.

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 ACLU opposition, both the House and Senate have passed a bill authorizing Woonsocket schools to require students to wear school uniforms.