News & Commentary

The ACLU of Rhode Island has today filed suit in federal court, challenging the constitutionality of various aspects of Rhode Island’s campaign finance law and the Board of Elections’ interpretations of the law that impermissibly restrict the rights of individuals and entities to campaign for and against ballot questions. The lawsuit, filed by ACLU volunteer attorney Howard Merten, argues that the various laws and policies at issue violate the First Amendment and serve to chill the free speech rights of the ACLU, its contributors and like-minded advocates.

In a mixed decision, U.S. District Judge William Smith today ruled that the City of Cranston violated the First Amendment last year when Mayor Stephen Laffey adopted a policy giving his office unbridled authority to approve the erection of “appropriate” displays for the holiday season in front of City Hall. Agreeing with ACLU arguments, the judge ruled that the policy did not “sufficiently protect the free speech rights of Cranston’s citizens.”

Responding to an ACLU lawsuit filed earlier this morning, the state Board of Elections has agreed to count all provisional ballots cast by voters who are unable to provide identification at their polling place. The Board had previously indicated that it would disqualify all such ballots cast by individuals who had registered to vote by mail since January 1, 2003 but who did not submit an identification document with their application. ACLU volunteer attorney John W. Dineen called the Board’s reversal of position “a vindication of the voting rights of hundreds of Rhode Island residents.”

The ACLU of RI has this morning filed an emergency lawsuit against the state, seeking a court order requiring elections officials to count potentially hundreds of ballots to be cast tomorrow that the Board of Elections plans to reject as invalid. The suit, filed by RI ACLU volunteer attorney John W. Dineen on behalf of RI Parents for Progress, a low-income advocacy organization engaged in voter registration activities, argues that the Board’s position is a violation of voter rights and a 2002 federal law known as the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

In a letter to the state Board of Elections, the ACLU of RI has called on the Board to revise its planned procedures for handling certain provisional ballots that will be cast in Tuesday’s election, because the Board’s policy “has the potential to unfairly disenfranchise hundreds, if not thousands, of legitimate voters – especially voters in poorer districts.”

The ACLU of Rhode Island today called on RI State Board of Elections Chair Roger Begin and Secretary of State Matt Brown to retract advice given yesterday by the U.S. Attorney’s office to election officials, encouraging them to consider conducting searches of voters’ belongings at polling places on election day.  In a letter faxed today to the two officials, RI ACLU executive director Steven Brown said the search recommendation was “extraordinarily troubling on a number of levels, and raises fundamental constitutional problems.”

The ACLU of Rhode Island has called on local hospitals to reject anticipated earmarked federal funding for immigrant health care that could have a serious and negative health impact on undocumented immigrants in the state.

A consent judgment was entered in Rhode Island Superior Court today, formally declaring null and void the “preliminary” election held on Tuesday for two non-partisan at-large school committee seats in Lincoln. The consent judgment follows a temporary restraining order issued on Tuesday by Judge Daniel Procaccini against certification of those election results in an ACLU lawsuit challenging the legality of the election.

The Rhode Island ACLU is asking a R.I. Superior Court judge to enjoin certification of the results of a “preliminary election” being held today to winnow down the list of candidates to appear on the November ballot for non-partisan at-large school committee seats in Lincoln. In a lawsuit filed yesterday on behalf of town residents John Cullen and Edward Slattery, ACLU volunteer attorney Annie Goldberg argues that the Town had no authority to hold such an election, and that all the qualified candidates should be eligible for the November ballot.