Legislation

We supported a variety of bills introduced this session which would strengthen the Fair Employment Practices Act, protect domestic workers, and prevent an employer from signing a non-disclosure agreement as a condition of employment.

The ACLU has previously opposed legislation which would give broad authority to municipalities to regulate and prohibit “live entertainment,” since such discretion and authority has great potential to raise serious First Amendment concerns. This bill would give this authority to the town of Bristol.

The ACLU has consistently opposed the imposition of mandatory minimum sentencing terms on the grounds that they are ineffective, costly, eliminate individualized consideration of the offender and the offense, and place too much power in the hands of prosecutors instead of neutral judges.

We suggested several amendments to legislation which would have allowed the state police to create a comprehensive, statewide records management program.

A campaign finance bill introduced only in the last week of the 2019 session raised important First Amendment concerns, prompting the ACLU’s opposition.

Nothing encapsulated the issue of the “statehouse to prison pipeline” better in the 2018 session than the general assembly’s passage of legislation which would punish by up to a year in prison any person who “maliciously teases” a police horse or canine.

This legislation allows Boards of Canvassers to combine voting districts for many elections, and ultimately passed without amendments which we proposed to ensure proper notification to voters and limits on the voters who can be sent to a polling location.

We opposed this bill which would have created an “animal abuse registry” similar to the registration requirements already in effect for persons convicted of sex offenses.