Legislation

We opposed legislation that would have allowed the Attorney General’s health care advocate (HCA) to receive unredacted confidential health care information of individuals without consent.

We supported a variety of legislation which proposed to decriminalize certain drugs entirely or to change the threshold for which the possession of a certain amount of a controlled substance becomes a crime.

The importance of the 2019 Reproductive Privacy Act – and continued advocacy around abortion rights – is especially clear in light of the slew of anti-choice bills which were introduced during this session.

Opposed by the ACLU, this legislation would have allowed Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRN) to attest to a patient’s mental health condition and participate in certifying patients for mandated outpatient treatment, an action which is presently something that only doctors can do.

We testified in favor of two bills which would have explicitly decriminalized sex work and ensured that sex workers would be able to approach their work without inappropriate stigmatization.

We testified in support of a bill which would have granted legal immunity to individuals engaged in commercial sexual activity who report a crime that they are either a victim of or witness to.

Critical proposed changes to the state’s Fair Employment Practices Act were introduced in two separate pieces of legislation.

We opposed legislation which would have created a "school security committee" charged with facilitating the presence of “armed security personnel” in every school and promoting techniques for student surveillance.

We opposed legislation which would have required that all campus police officers at a public institution of higher education in RI be armed.