News & Commentary

In an effort to protect the rights of violent crime victims, the ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of regulations adopted by outgoing General Treasurer Paul Tavares that authorize the denial or reduction of compensation to such victims based solely on their having an unrelated drug-related criminal history or DUI conviction in their past. The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court by RI ACLU volunteer attorney Frederic Marzilli, is on behalf of the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Association of Rhode Island (DATA). In July, DATA and other organizations that service people with substance abuse problems had sharply criticized the regulations as “discriminatory and mean-spirited.”

The Rhode Island ACLU today said the state Department of Education had failed to adequately review a harmful abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum developed by Heritage of Rhode Island before letting it back into the schools.  In a five-page letter submitted to the department today, the ACLU urged officials to reconsider the decision, saying that the curriculum raises serious medical accuracy and discrimination concerns.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a lawsuit on behalf of Portsmouth High School senior Patrick Agin, whose planned yearbook photo was rejected by the principal on the grounds that it violates the school district’s “zero tolerance” policy for weapons. In the photo, Patrick is dressed in a medieval chain mail coat with a prop sword over his shoulder, representing his long-standing interest in medieval history. Patrick is a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, an organization that promotes research and reenactments of medieval history.

In a victory for free speech rights, the ACLU announced today that, less than a month after its filing, South Kingstown political candidate Andrew Bilodeau has dismissed his SLAPP suit against Jonathan Daly-LaBelle.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a federal 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 lawsuit also challenges a new sign policy that the college has adopted in response to this incident. The suit, filed by ACLU volunteer attorney Jennifer Azevedo, argues that the college’s actions and the sign policy violate the First Amendment rights of the student group, the Women’s Studies Organization (WSO) of RIC, and its three student officers, Nichole Aguiar, Sarah Satterlee and Jennifer Magaw.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed an open records lawsuit against the R.I. State Police for refusing to release to the ACLU a copy of a five-minute videotape of a controversial traffic stop of a van with fourteen Guatemalans that took place on I-95 this summer, and for also failing to turn over copies of the agency’s policies governing traffic enforcement procedures.

Citing the important free speech issues involved in the case, the ACLU of Rhode Island has today filed a response and counter-claim on behalf of Jonathan Daly-LaBelle, a South Kingstown resident who was sued for defamation by a political candidate, Andrew Bilodeau, a day before this month’s elections. Bilodeau’s suit alleged that Daly-LaBelle defamed him and violated state campaign finance laws by disseminating a political flier that was critical of Bilodeau’s campaign. 

In an important religious freedom case, the ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a 49-page brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston in support of an ACI inmate who has been barred from preaching during Christian religious services at the state prison. The plaintiff, Wesley Spratt, had been preaching at ACI services for seven years before he was unilaterally stopped from doing so in 2003 based on vague and generalized “security” concerns. In June, U.S. District Judge William Smith upheld the state’s ban in a brief three-page opinion, rejecting ACLU arguments that the ban violates a major federal law designed to protect the religious freedom of the institutionalized.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and lawsuit filed earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today announced it had received documentation confirming that federal officials entered information about a local peaceful protest into a terrorism database.