News & Commentary

A federal court has preliminarily approved a settlement agreement between Brown University and lawyers representing student-athletes who brought a class-action lawsuit after the school cut several varsity women's athletics teams.

A proposed settlement has been reached in the class action lawsuit against Brown University. The suit was filed following cuts to the varsity athletics program which undermined gender equality at the school.

In response to our release of documents showing Brown University's disturbing plans to undermine a long-standing Title IX consent agreement, the University has claimed that it has never wavered from its commitment to the agreement. Nice try. We'll let the documents speak for themselves.

A series of internal emails and documents recently made public reveal an intentional plan by Brown University officials to undermine and ultimately destroy a long-standing consent decree to comply with federal Title IX laws that ensure equal opportunity for female athletes at the college.

More than twenty years after Brown Univ. violated federal Title IX law by engaging in gender discrimination in its athletics program, legal representatives are back in court, alleging that the school is at it again.

The 2019 Top 10. A completely unexhaustive list of (some of) the most absurd civil liberties violations we encountered this year. 

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today announced the settlement of a pair of sex discrimination lawsuits it had filed in 2016 on behalf of two female EMT/firefighters who alleged that the Harmony Fire District in Glocester had terminated them from their jobs because of concerns they had raised about differential treatment between male and female firefighters. The lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court by ACLU of RI volunteer attorney Sonja Deyoe, were on behalf of Kimberly Perreault, who served as an EMT/firefighter for the Harmony Fire District for 12 years before being terminated in January 2015 for purportedly being “unhappy” with the fire department, and Linda Ferragamo, who had also worked at the department for over a decade before being fired after supporting Perreault’s complaints and objecting to her termination. Without admitting any liability, the Department has agreed to pay Perreault and Ferragamo $12,500 each. The settlement agreements also acknowledge that both women were qualified for the job and were performing their work in “a competent fashion” when they were terminated.

The ACLU of RI today announced the settlement of an age and sex discrimination lawsuit filed last year against the now-closed Newport Grand Casino on behalf of a female employee who claimed that she had been paid less than a younger male employee performing the same duties in the same position. The suit was on behalf of Paula Borrelli, who had worked at Newport Grand since 2007 until the casino closed in 2018.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today commended six current and former elected state officials who have signed onto court briefs this month to urge the U.S. Supreme Court not to roll back civil rights protections for LGBTQ people when it hears a trio of discrimination cases this fall. All of the cases  involve people who were fired for being LGBTQ.