News & Commentary

In court papers released today, the ACLU has fired back at attempts by Family Court Chief Judge Jeremiah Jeremiah and the state’s Truancy Court magistrates to remove two National ACLU attorneys from a lawsuit challenging the legality of various Court practices, based on the attorneys’ exercise of their free speech rights. The judges have claimed that National ACLU attorneys Robin Dahlberg and Yelena Konanova engaged in “reckless professional misconduct” by publicly commenting about the lawsuit at the time it was filed, but the ACLU calls the judges’ effort “nothing more than a heavy-handed attempt to stifle the kind of criticism of governmental activities inherent in our democratic system.”

For the second time in little more than a year, the Rhode Island ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, challenging the constitutionality of a state law that discriminates against new political parties. Calling the law “unfair, inequitable and constitutionally infirm,” the lawsuit, filed today by RI ACLU volunteer attorney Mark Freel, seeks to overturn a statute that allows residents to make a donation on their tax return to political parties through a “nonpartisan account,” but excludes new parties from the disbursement.

In a letter faxed today to Coventry School District Superintendent Kenneth DiPietro, the Rhode Island ACLU called for an immediate revision to the school’s dress code policy, which apparently bans students from displaying any images of weapons. Pointing to this week’s highly-publicized incident when eight year old student David Morales was barred from wearing a patriotic hat because it included toy soldiers carrying guns, the ACLU called the dress code clearly unconstitutional. The RI ACLU letter, from executive director Steven Brown, noted:

In an important victory for children’s rights, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston today reversed a federal district court ruling that had thrown out a case against the Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF) for the mistreatment of foster children in its care. RI ACLU volunteer attorneys Andrew Prescott and Steven Richard had filed a "friend of the court" brief last August urging the appellate court to take this action.

A federal district court today rejected attempts by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be dropped from the federal lawsuit filed by the R.I. ACLU on behalf of the family of a detainee who died while in the custody of immigration officials at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng, the 34-year-old Chinese detainee, died in August 2008 after complaining for months to prison officials about being in excruciating pain. Guards and medical personnel at Wyatt continually accused Ng of faking his illness and denied him medical care, and he was only diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and a broken spine less than a week before he died.

The Division of Motor Vehicles has taken a first step to address an ACLU lawsuit filed last month challenging the legality of DMV actions in sending out deficient and confusing notices of alleged decades-old traffic violations to over 1,500 residents. In response to that suit, the DMV has mailed those individuals a new notice advising them of their right to a meaningful hearing to contest the violations, and creating a mechanism to lift in the interim any license suspension that may have been imposed.

The Woonsocket Education Department has agreed to stop sending children to Rhode Island’s unlawfully operated truancy court system and to end its participation in the program completely. The agreement follows a pending class-action lawsuit filed in March by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Rhode Island charging that the state’s truancy court system is devoid of due process protections for children in violation of state and federal law.

The RI ACLU today announced the favorable settlement of a federal lawsuit it filed last year against the Town of Johnston and police chief Richard Tamburini for illegally releasing the private drivers’ license information of a firefighter to a Town Councilman as part of a public dispute between the Council and the Fire Department. The lawsuit, filed by RI ACLU volunteer attorney James Kelleher, was on behalf of the firefighter, Edward Simone.

The Rhode Island ACLU has today filed suit in federal court to contest the Division of Motor Vehicles’ actions in advising thousands of motorists that their license and registration will be suspended due to alleged unpaid fines that may go back decades. The lawsuit the notices sent out by the DMV “facially unconstitutional,” pointing out that they give the recipients no information about the nature of the alleged offense leading to the suspension, about the penalty for the offense, or even the date that the offense purportedly took place.