News & Commentary

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.

Newly obtained documents reveal that Rhode Island state officials are concerned that federal legislation called the Real ID Act will require extensive changes to existing practices at the Registry of Motor Vehicles and will carry expenses of more than $20 million that will have to be absorbed by state taxpayers and license applicants. The Act, passed by Congress last spring without public hearings, imposes federal regulations on the design, issuance and management of state driver’s licenses – turning them, for all practical purposes, into a National ID card. RI ACLU executive director Steven Brown today called the information contained in the documents “one of many compelling reasons for Congress to repeal this ill-conceived law.”

The Rhode Island ACLU has filed an appeal in federal court on behalf 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 based on vague and generalized “security” concerns. The appeal, filed by ACLU volunteer attorney Carly Beauvais Iafrate, argues that the preaching ban violates a federal law designed to protect the religious freedom of institutionalized persons.

The Rhode Island ACLU today released a 35-page report that challenges recent highly-publicized claims about Rhode Island’s high alcohol fatality accident rate and the accompanying push for punitive drunk driving legislation at the State House this year. The report was released at a news conference today at which the ACLU was joined by the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Association of Rhode Island (DATA) in echoing the report’s findings and calling for an emphasis on treatment and other non-punitive measures to address the problem.

ACLU volunteer attorney John Dineen has asked a federal judge to hold Anthony Fire District Chief Walter Mruk in contempt of court – and personally fine him – for failing to abide by a consent agreement he entered into more than a year ago in an ACLU free speech case. The underlying suit had challenged a “gag order” issued by Mruk, barring two firefighters from publicly expressing fire-department related concerns without first getting his approval.