News & Commentary

As the state begins preparations for a possible flu pandemic, the RI ACLU today cautioned that Rhode Islanders face another serious consequence should an outbreak occur: the government’s potential use of extraordinary powers that could significantly diminish residents’ freedom, privacy and equality. That is because the state’s emergency health power laws, according to RI ACLU executive director Steven Brown, are “incredibly far-reaching and authorize some of the most sweeping powers in the country to deal with a health care emergency.”

Responding to a report released earlier this year by the RI ACLU, the state’s library network has revised its Internet filtering procedure to increase access to information for public library patrons, addressing ACLU fears that libraries were “inappropriately discouraging or barring patron access to constitutionally protected material.”

The ACLU of Rhode Island has taken legal action against the Foster-Glocester School District for violating the state’s open records law. The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court yesterday by ACLU volunteer attorney Karen Davidson, charges that district officials failed to respond to four requests from the ACLU for documents involving its compliance with a provision in the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law.

As part of a national campaign aimed at combating questionable federally-funded abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula in the public schools, the ACLU of Rhode Island has called on the state Department of Education to review one such program in the state. The ACLU said that the curriculum, called “Right Time, Right Place,” raises serious privacy and discrimination concerns.

The ACLU of Rhode Island, together with the National ACLU and the National Congress of American Indians, today filed a "friend of the court" brief in the pending appeal between the state of Rhode Island and the Narragansett Indian Tribe over the highly publicized 2003 state police raid of the Tribe's smoke shop. The brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, argues 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."

Expressing “dismay and disappointment” at the state’s actions, the ACLU of Rhode Island today called on state officials to stop conducting criminal background checks on all of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees who have relocated to Rhode Island this week. The ACLU called the checks “intrusive, humiliating and discriminatory.” Below is a statement issued by RI ACLU executive director Steven Brown:

As students head back to school, the R.I. ACLU said today that a survey of school district practices across the state shows that many districts are not fully protecting the privacy rights of students in interactions with military recruiters. In a letter sent to school district superintendents across the state, the Rhode Island ACLU urged administrators to improve their procedures to inform parents and students about their right to control the release of student information to the military.

At the urging of the ACLU, local media outlets and open records advocates, the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island announced that it will amend a proposed court rule that, as originally written, would have severely curtailed the First Amendment rights of lawyers, litigants and court employees. 

The ACLU of Rhode Island has called on the Coventry School Committee to abandon its practice of barring community members from speaking about “personnel, litigation or negotiation” during the public comment portion of its meetings.  In a letter sent to the school committee and its solicitor, the ACLU argued that the policy was clearly unconstitutional.