News & Commentary

Although the numbers have improved significantly since the Rhode Island ACLU sued the Department of Human Services last July for failing to process food stamp applications in a timely manner, almost 3 out of 10 applicants eligible for expedited food stamps are still not being processed within seven days as required by federal law. Those are the results gleaned from reports prepared by DHS and provided to the ACLU as part of the settlement agreement entered in the lawsuit last October.

The Rhode Island ACLU today objected to a request by the Wyatt Detention Center to prevent the public disclosure of videotapes of the treatment by guards of Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng, the 34-year-old Chinese detainee who died in August 2008 while in the facility’s custody. The objection was filed in the ACLU’s on-going lawsuit on behalf of Ng’s family, which challenges the lack of medical care he received while suffering from terminal cancer and a broken spine.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a class-action lawsuit charging that the state’s truancy court system is devoid of due process protections in violation of state and federal law.

The RI ACLU has sharply blasted a plan announced today by Providence Mayor David Cicilline to “institute random drug testing in the Police Department effective immediately.” The ACLU said the proposal was “clearly illegal” and called it “sadly ironic” for the Department, “in the name of rooting out illegal activity by officers,” to propose a policy that, if implemented, would itself be a crime.

Seeking to halt a disturbing trend by public bodies to unlawfully meet in private, the RI ACLU has, for the second time in six months, filed an Open Meetings Act (OMA) lawsuit against a school committee for violating the law’s provisions governing the holding of executive sessions.

The Rhode Island ACLU objected today to attempts by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be dropped from the federal lawsuit filed by the 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 Rhode Island ACLU has today appealed the recent court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Town of Narragansett’s highly-publicized “orange sticker” ordinance.

The Rhode Island ACLU expressed disappointment with a federal appeals court ruling upholding the dismissal of a lawsuit the ACLU filed in 2007 against the R.I. State Police, challenging the legality of the detention and transporting to immigration officials of fourteen people, all Guatemalans, who were stopped in a van on I-95 after the driver changed lanes without using a turn signal. The ACLU lawsuit, filed on behalf of eleven of the individuals, had argued that the detention violated the driver and passengers’ constitutional rights to be free from discrimination and from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Rhode Island ACLU and the R.I. Chapter of the National Organization for Women have today filed an open records lawsuit against the Department of Corrections (DOC), contesting the agency’s refusal to release its policies relating to the use of restraints on women prisoners when they are in labor, delivering a baby or in post-delivery recuperation. The lawsuit, filed in R.I. Superior Court by ACLU volunteer attorneys Neal McNamara and Jillian Folger-Hartwell, seeks a court order releasing the requested documents, imposition of a fine and an award of attorneys’ fees.