News & Commentary

Calling it “a major victory for transparency in our judicial system,” the Rhode Island ACLU today applauded comments from R.I. Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Suttell, as reported in the Providence Journal, that the Court had no immediate plans to implement a controversial 25-year-old state law allowing retired judges to preside over secret civil cases for compensation. At a public hearing in January, the RI ACLU had raised numerous concerns about the proposal. 

Responding to a complaint filed by the R.I. ACLU in January, the R.I. Commission for Human Rights has found “probable cause” to believe that Senesco Marine, a large ship construction and repair facility in North Kingstown, has violated state anti-discrimination laws designed to prevent job bias against individuals with disabilities.

Saying that the City’s action “raises serious constitutional concerns,” the Rhode Island ACLU has called on Pawtucket Mayor James Doyle to rescind a decision that has prevented a sexuality education center from opening in the city. In a letter to the Mayor released today, Rhode Island ACLU executive director Steven Brown labeled as “pretextual” the city’s purported reasons for barring the center from operating in Pawtucket.

The Rhode Island ACLU has today filed a discrimination complaint against CVS Caremark Corporation, challenging the company’s requirement that job applicants for various customer service and other positions answer certain questions that the ACLU claims are unlawful. The complaint, filed with the R.I. Commission for Human Rights, argues that some of the inquiries violate state and federal laws that generally bar employers from eliciting any information, directly or indirectly, that pertain to job applicants’ mental or physical disabilities.

The Rhode Island ACLU today filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Pawtucket, charging that the Parks and Recreation Division has, for a number of years, given preferential treatment to parochial schools over public schools in granting permits for the use of city athletics fields. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of seven Pawtucket parents and their children, seeks a court order declaring unconstitutional both the preferential treatment to religious schools and the City’s lack of any objective standards for granting permits for use of the fields.

The Rhode Island ACLU and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, a national organization that promotes economic justice for low-income families, today announced that a favorable settlement had been reached in their federal lawsuit filed in July against the state Department of Human Services (DHS), alleging that the state’s failure to timely process food stamp applications was resulting in the denial of “desperately needed assistance to help [applicants] feed their families,” and forcing them to “suffer hunger as a result.” The class-action lawsuit, filed by RI ACLU volunteer attorney Lynette Labinger and attorneys for the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, had sought an injunction requiring the state to process food stamp applications within the time frames established by federal law.

In response to a lawsuit filed by the Rhode Island ACLU last month, U.S. District Judge William Smith has today struck down a Central Falls charter provision that kept Mayoral candidate Hipolito Fontes off the ballot. The judge agreed that the local Board of Canvassers acted unconstitutionally in disqualifying him from the ballot for allegedly failing to submit sufficient nomination signatures.

The Rhode Island ACLU and The Barrington Times have today filed new claims in a pending lawsuit against the Barrington School Committee, alleging additional and repeated Open Meetings Act (OMA) violations.

The Rhode Island ACLU has today filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Central Falls Mayoral candidate Hipolito Fontes, arguing that the local Board of Canvassers acted unconstitutionally in disqualifying him from the ballot earlier this month for allegedly failing to submit sufficient nomination signatures.