Legislation

In July, the House passed legislation overhauling the state’s sex offender registration and community notification laws, replacing them with federal standards so costly that few states have chosen to implement them.

The House adopted amendments proposed by the ACLU in addressing legislation that restricted the possession of the plants salvia divinorum and datura stramonium, or Gypsum Weed.

In response to the tragic events of Sandy Hook and Aurora, the General Assembly leadership introduced a package of gun control legislation covering a wide variety of issues.

In February, the ACLU testified before the House Judiciary committee in opposition to a bill permitting landlords to refuse to rent to individuals based solely on their cultivation of medical marijuana.

In an attempt to combat illicit prescription drug use, Rhode Island maintains a prescription monitoring database. The ACLU testified in support of legislation that would impose privacy protections on the database’s use.

The General Assembly again weighed, but took no action on, Attorney General legislation drastically overhauling Rhode Island’s computer crimes laws, altering the definitions of old laws and creating a wide array of new offenses.

An ACLU bill designed to protect privacy in the criminal justice system died this year.

This legislation generally prohibits employers from asking if applicants have been convicted of a crime at the initial application process, giving applicants a chance to be interviewed and an opportunity for employers to see an applicant’s qualifications and not solely their mistakes.

In some tension with its passage of “ban the box” legislation, the General Assembly this year continued its trend of pushing to impose criminal background checks on applicants for a number of employment and volunteer positions.