News & Commentary

In an important victory for the public’s right to know, the R.I. Department of Corrections (DOC) has significantly modified regulations governing media access that it had proposed in September.  At the time, the ACLU had argued that the rules would “allow for a regime of censorship over the news media in their efforts to interview inmates and inform the public.” The revised regulations, being filed with the Secretary of State’s office this week, favorably address virtually every concern that the RI ACLU and others had raised in testimony to the DOC.

The Rhode Island ACLU today sharply criticized state Attorney General Patrick Lynch for urging Congress to pass a law giving telephone companies retroactive immunity for having illegally shared telephone records with the National Security Agency as part of the government’s “war on terror.” The Congressional bill, if passed, would also pre-empt any state investigations of violations of customer’s privacy rights by the companies. This would kill a pending consumer complaint that the local ACLU filed in May 2006 with the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers against Verizon and AT&T.

Claiming that the program raises “enormous privacy and safety concerns,” the RI ACLU has called on Middletown school officials to halt a planned pilot program in which elementary school children will be tagged with electronic chips to monitor their whereabouts. The program, using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, will track the movements of Aquidneck Elementary School students who take school district buses by placing RFID chips on the children’s backpacks.

The Rhode Island ACLU has filed a federal civil rights complaint against the state’s Department of Human Services for violating a federal law and a consent agreement with the federal government that requires the agency to provide appropriate interpreter services to clients with limited English proficiency (LEP). The 11-page complaint follows both controversial comments recently made by Governor Carcieri denouncing state-funded interpreters for DHS clients, and layoffs of all the agency’s Southeast Asian interpreters.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today released a report sharply critical of Governor Donald Carcieri’s civil rights record during the first year of his second term in office. The 50-page report “The Politics of Division,” focuses on five major issues the Governor has dealt with this year, and argues that “in a period of just a few months and in a wide variety of contexts, he has shown a virtually complete lack of interest in recognizing, much less protecting, the civil rights of individuals and groups that have been long-standing victims of discriminatory treatment.”

Less than two weeks after Governor Donald Carcieri announced layoffs of four interpreters from the Department of Human Services (DHS), the RI ACLU today revealed that DHS is bound by a consent agreement with the federal government to “schedule interpreters or bilingual staff when necessary” to communicate with clients who have limited English proficiency (LEP), and to have procedures in place “permitting timely and effective telephone communication between LEP persons and DHS staff.”

Almost half of the police departments in the state that are required to post online their police complaint forms and procedures have failed to do so, according to a report released today by the Rhode Island ACLU. The requirement, contained in the Racial Profiling Prevention Act of 2004, was designed to make it easier for victims of police misconduct to file complaints with departments.

Twenty-two civil rights and community organizations in Rhode Island today sent a letter to Governor Donald Carcieri, condemning his recent publicized comments that criticized the availability of state-employed language interpreters in the courts and other state agencies to help individuals who have difficulty speaking or comprehending English. The letter claims that the Governor’s statements “feed into the xenophobic atmosphere that permeates the immigration debate in our state and has encouraged a palpable discriminatory attitude towards people of certain ethnicities and races.”

The ACLU of Rhode Island today announced a favorable settlement in its lawsuit against Rhode Island College for censoring a sign display supporting reproductive freedom that was sponsored by a student women’s rights group on campus. The signs were taken down after administrators received objections about them from a priest. The ACLU lawsuit, filed by volunteer attorney Jennifer Azevedo, had argued that the college violated the First Amendment rights of the student group, the Women’s Studies Organization (WSO) of RIC, and its three student officers. The highlight of the settlement is an award by RIC of $5,000 to the student group.