News & Commentary

The ACLU of RI today filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Woonsocket for unlawfully withholding critically needed grant funds from Sojourner House, a social service agency that helps victims of domestic violence. Filed by ACLU of RI volunteer attorneys Matthew Oliverio and Stephen Prignano, the lawsuit alleges that the City withheld the funds without cause or due process, and retaliated against the agency after it petitioned other government agencies for help in resolving the dispute over the funds.

The ACLU of RI, joined by three media organizations, today submitted a “friend of the court” brief in support of a federal lawsuit filed by the Providence Journal seeking a ruling on the constitutionality of Superior Court Associate Justice Netti Vogel’s controversial orders in April that initially blocked the release of the juror list, and barred members of the public from contacting the jurors, in a completed, high-profile murder case.

Within hours of learning that the ACLU had agreed to represent Newport blogger Christian Winthrop, the Japan-America Society dropped him from a lawsuit it had filed alleging that he had engaged in trademark infringement -- based solely on articles he had posted on his website.  ACLU executive director Steven Brown hailed the Society's about-face, saying that the suit against Winthrop, who runs the Newport Buzz, was “a blatant violation of his First Amendment rights.”  The suit, which remains pending in federal court against some City of Newport officials, has its origins in a dispute between the Society and the City of Newport over the running of the Black Ships Festival, which the City had helped fund in the past. Last month, the Society decided to move the festival to Bristol, and when the City decided to go ahead with its own celebration, the Society demanded that the City stop referring to it as the Black Ships Festival.  In response, the City renamed its competing festival the “Newport-Shimoda Sister City Celebration.” But the Society sued Newport officials for having initially used the term “Black Ships Festival” to refer to its event.

The 2018 Legislative Session seemed like it should be the year of #MeToo, but when the General Assembly adjourned at the end of June with an exhausting Saturday session (that almost went into Sunday) they failed to approve legislation ensuring equal pay for equal work, or any of the bills that emerged from a commission tasked with helping address sex harassment in the workplace.

With only one month remaining for RI school districts to implement comprehensive policies protecting transgender and gender non-conforming students, a recent public records inquiry by the ACLU of RI has found a handful of districts still have no policies in place or have implemented policies that miss the mark entirely.

This week is another busy one at the General Assembly with about a month of the session left. Here is a summary of some of the bills affecting civil liberties that are being considered in committee or on the floor this week, but note that more may be added to the calendars in the next day:

The ACLU of RI, joined by four media organizations, today submitted a “friend of the court” brief to contest Superior Court Associate Justice Netti Vogel’s orders last month blocking the release of the juror list, and barring members of the public from contacting the jurors, in a completed, high-profile murder case. The brief, submitted by ACLU volunteer attorneys Thomas W. Lyons and Rhiannon Huffman, is on behalf of the ACLU; the New England First Amendment Coalition; the R.I. Press Association; Nexstar Media Group, which owns WPRI-TV; and Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns WJAR-TV. The brief supports a recent lawsuit filed by the Providence Journal, which was rebuffed in its effort to obtain the jury list after Jorge DePina was convicted of the second-degree murder of his daughter. The brief submitted today in support of the Journal cites numerous state and federal court decisions for the proposition that the public and the media have a First Amendment right to both interview willing jurors after a verdict and to obtain the list of jurors. In terms of the public interest in this information, the brief cites a study of news articles involving juror interviews, which found that            “post-verdict interviews serve valuable purposes: they can help ensure jury accountability; they can help the public understand, and therefore accept, trial outcomes; they can educate the public about the realities of jury service; and they can improve the justice system’s functioning by exposing mistakes, misunderstandings, and misconduct.” The brief concludes by arguing: “The Superior Court’s orders facially violate the Providence Journal’s freedoms of the press and of speech [and] … the freedom of speech of other Rhode Islanders who may wish to speak with the jurors about the jurors’ exercise of their citizenship duties.  This prevents all of us from confirming whether the jury acted as the conscience of the community in discharging those duties and whether the jurors were confident in their verdict.  The Superior Court’s orders are also overbroad in that they place no reasonable limits as to the time, place, or manner of their prohibitions against free speech.” In addition to the free speech and free press claims, the brief claims that the Court’s orders violated due process because the judge implemented them without any notice or opportunity to be heard.                                                                                        Yesterday, Judge Vogel partially revised her April 6th order by stating that “[m]embers of the media are not precluded from contacting the jurors.” However, the order did not address at all the denial of the media list to the Providence Journal, and did not make clear whether members of the public, as opposed to the media, were allowed to contact the jurors.            A hearing on the motion to overturn the orders is scheduled for May 14th at 2 PM before Superior Court Judge Maureen Keough. Full text of the brief is available here. STATEMENTS FROM PARTICIPANTS IN THE BRIEF:

The ACLU of Rhode Island has expressed strong opposition to recently proposed regulations that would restrict the types of advertising allowed at T.F. Green Airport. 

ACLU of RI executive director Steven Brown issued the following statement in response to a directive by RI Superior Court Judge Netti C. Vogel in a recently concluded high-profile murder case involving Jorge DePina.  The directive bars members of the general public, including the news media, from contacting jurors in the case and blocks the release of the juror list: