News & Commentary

In a setback to the religious freedom of institutionalized persons, U.S. District Judge William Smith has ruled that the Department of Corrections could bar an ACI inmate 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 based on vague and generalized “security” concerns. In an appeal filed earlier this year, the RI ACLU had argued that the preaching ban violated a federal law designed to protect the religious freedom of the institutionalized. However, in a brief three-page opinion, Judge Smith, while calling the case “somewhat of a close call,” rejected that argument.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today criticized yesterday’s 4-to-2 court of appeals ruling upholding the state’s 2003 raid of the Narragansett Indian smoke shop as “a very troubling undermining of basic principles of Indian sovereignty.” Last September, the RI ACLU, together with the National ACLU and the National Congress of American Indians, had filed a “friend of the court” brief in the case, arguing that “by executing a search warrant against the Tribe, arresting Tribal officials, and confiscating tribal documents and other property,” the state violated the Tribe’s “sovereign authority over its territory.”

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a complaint with the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers, calling for an investigation of recent allegations that Verizon and AT&T have improperly shared telephone records with the National Security Agency. The complaint was one of twenty filed across the country by ACLU affiliates today in response to the burgeoning spy agency scandal.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has today filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the community advocacy group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), challenging an East Greenwich Town Council ordinance barring the group from engaging in political door-to-door canvassing between 7 and 9 PM, and requiring payment of a permit fee for the group’s canvassing activities. The lawsuit, filed by ACLU volunteer attorney Carolyn Mannis, argues that the restrictions violate ACORN’s First Amendment rights.

Ruling on a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Rhode Island in 2004, U.S. District Judge Ernest Torres yesterday struck down various aspects of Rhode Island’s campaign finance law that the ACLU argued impermissibly restricted the rights of individuals and entities to campaign for and against ballot questions. The lawsuit, filed by ACLU volunteer attorney Howard Merten, argued that the various laws at issue violated the First Amendment and chilled the free speech rights of the ACLU, its contributors and like-minded advocates. In a lengthy ruling, the judge agreed with most of the ACLU’s contentions.

Responding to a complaint filed by the Rhode Island ACLU last September, the Rhode Island Department of Education has issued an advisory to all school districts, instructing them to stop using a federally-funded abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum in the public schools that the ACLU argued raised serious privacy and discrimination concerns.

The Rhode Island ACLU today criticized the “criminalization of student thought” as exemplified by a story in today’s Providence Journal, describing a middle-school student in West Warwick who was visited by police and the Secret Service because of an essay he wrote.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today filed a federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on behalf of four local peace groups, some of whose lawful activities were monitored by the Pentagon, in order to determine the extent and nature of Pentagon spying in the state. The action is part of a national ACLU effort to uncover details of the Pentagon’s recently-uncovered domestic spying program.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has filed a “friend of the court” brief addressing the issue whether the civil commitment hearing of convicted sex offender Todd McElroy should be public. In this highly publicized case, the Governor and Attorney General took steps to invoke the mental health civil commitment process just weeks before McElroy’s 17-year prison sentence was scheduled to end. The ACLU and a number of medical groups have been very critical of the state’s efforts in that regard.