Legislation

In April, the ACLU testified before the House Judiciary committee on perennial legislation to mandate the carrying of guns by campus police officers.

Across Rhode Island, school districts are blocking from students vastly more information than was intended by the federal law requiring the use of filtering, leaving students unable to complete their assignments and teachers scrambling to change their lesson plans at the very last moment.

The ACLU testified in opposition to legislation amending the state’s medical marijuana act to allow municipalities to impose onerous restrictions on medical marijuana growers, permit landlords to discriminate against their growing tenants, and bar individuals from being a primary caregiver.

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.

In response to last year’s controversy in Cranston over school-sponsored father-daughter dances, the General Assembly severely weakened the state’s sex discrimination laws by allowing schools to promote sex-segregated extracurricular activities.

The ACLU of RI continued its work with student and education groups to stop high-stakes testing from keeping otherwise qualified students from graduating.

The ACLU of RI testified in February before the House Health, Education and Welfare committee in opposition to legislation allowing school committees to charge fees to those students participating in extracurricular activities.