News & Commentary

The state Department of Labor and Training has agreed to take a series of interim steps to begin rectifying the situation faced by thousands of residents whose unemployment insurance benefit payments were frozen without notice or explanation as part of a fraud investigation. The agreement came at a court hearing late yesterday before U.S. District Judge William Smith on a request by ACLU of Rhode Island attorneys for a temporary restraining order against the state.

Below is the ACLU of Rhode Island's statement in response to the adoption today of curfew orders by the cities of Cranston, Providence and Warwick:

ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorney Amato DeLuca filed suit in federal court seeking monetary damages on behalf of a former Narragansett High School student with special education needs who was thrown to the ground, choked and falsely arrested by a school resource officer (SRO) over a rude hand gesture the student gave the SRO. A videotaped record of the incident, which occurred two years ago, shows SRO Kyle Rooney forcefully slamming to the floor and restraining 11th-grader Michael Blanchette for a few minutes before removing him from the school in handcuffs.

ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorneys Ellen Saideman and Lynette Labinger today filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the state Department of Labor and Training’s (DLT) actions in summarily freezing weekly unemployment insurance benefit payments to hundreds of Rhode Islanders without any notice or explanation.

An ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorney has filed a charge of race discrimination against the Providence Police Department on behalf of an African-American recruit who was involuntarily dismissed last year from the Police Academy just a few weeks before graduation and after enduring months of harassment from trainers at the Academy. ACLU cooperating attorney Laura Harrington has today also filed a formal claim for damages with the City as a legal prerequisite to the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of the recruit, Michael Clark.

YOU CAN BE “FATTY” BUT NOT “CHUBBY”; “TIPSY” BUT NOT “DRUNK”; ADVERTISE “HEAVEN” BUT NOT “HELL”; SAY “DOGDOO” BUT NOT “DOOBIE”; BE AN “OLDFRT” BUT NOT A “JOCKY”; AND PROUDLY TRUMPET “FRIAR” BUT NOT “HOOSIER”

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…” – Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”

The 2019 Top 10. A completely unexhaustive list of (some of) the most absurd civil liberties violations we encountered this year. 

In what the ACLU of Rhode Island calls an “outrageous and shameful” attack on one of its own students, the Barrington School Committee has filed a lawsuit in R.I. Superior Court against a middle school student who successfully challenged before the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) his three-day out-of-school suspension. In seeking to overturn RIDE’s decision, the school committee is demanding a recovery of its attorneys’ fees against the student and RIDE.