Legislation

The ACLU testified against a budget article proposed by the Governor that would increase from $5 to $25 the cost for a criminal records check.

For almost a decade, the ACLU and the Public Defender successfully fought off a proposal to allow police officers to forcibly obtain blood samples from individuals involved in serious car accidents where there was a suspicion of DUI.

On a positive note, the Assembly sent a package of sex offender legislation back to committee, killing the bills for the year.

In one of the most troubling actions of the session, the legislature hurriedly passed a bill making it a crime for any sex offender to live within 300 feet of a school.

ACLU lobbying removed language from an Attorney General bill that would have allowed the names of juvenile sex offenders to be posted on a state website.

In approving a complete rewrite of the regulatory statute governing optometrists, the General Assembly – at the ACLU’s urging – took a modest step forward in eliminating troubling and archaic language that appears in most occupational licensing statutes.

One court has called “civil death” laws “an outdated and inscrutable common law precept” and “a medieval fiction in a modern world,” but Rhode Island is one of only four states to still have such a law.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

As has happened in previous years, the House took no action on a Senate bill that would have allowed for the forced administration of blood tests on persons in vehicular accidents involving death or serious injury.