News & Commentary

The ACLU of RI has filed a federal lawsuit charging the Providence Police with discrimination and other rights violations against a Black recruit who was dismissed Academy.

In advance of bail hearings beginning at 10 AM today before U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy to consider the release of ICE detainees at the Wyatt Detention Center, the judge has released a 15-page decision explaining her decision to order the hearings.

Below is the ACLU of Rhode Island's statement in response to the adoption today of curfew orders by the cities of Cranston, Providence and Warwick:

In response to a class-action lawsuit filed by ACLU attorneys two weeks ago seeking urgent relief for immigration detainees at the Wyatt Detention Center facing the increasing spread of Covid-19 at the facility, a federal judge today ordered expedited bail hearings for the detainees.

As conflict over race-based discriminatory police practices permeates the country, ACLU of RI cooperating attorneys Shannah Kurland and Lynette Labinger today filed suit in federal court over a Pawtucket School Resource Officer’s (SRO) gratuitous and unlawful handcuffing and arrest last year of Tre’sur Johnson, a 13-year-old African-American honors student at Goff Middle School. The suit alleges that the defendants’ treatment of her violated numerous constitutional and statutory rights, including her right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Today the ACLU released a report showing that Black people in Rhode Island are 3.3 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession despite comparable marijuana usage rates among the two racial groups. Similar arrest disparities were documented in a 2013 report issued by the ACLU, but they have gotten worse, not better, over the past decade. The report also shows that the racial disparities are even more pronounced, and way above the national average, outside Providence County. The findings of the new research are especially disturbing given Rhode Island’s marijuana reform over the last decade in decriminalizing arrests for possession of small amounts of the drug.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island and the National ACLU have today filed an emergency lawsuit seeking the immediate release of three immigrants being detained at the Wyatt Detention Center who are at high risk for serious illness or death in the event of COVID-19 infection.

Rhode Island Legal Services and the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island have today filed a lawsuit in R.I. Superior Court challenging a decision issued this month by the Council of Elementary and Secondary Education (CESE) that upholds a method of providing services to English Language Learners (EL) that the two groups claim clearly violates federal and state law and significantly shortchanges the educational rights of EL students.

An ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorney has filed a charge of race discrimination against the Providence Police Department on behalf of an African-American recruit who was involuntarily dismissed last year from the Police Academy just a few weeks before graduation and after enduring months of harassment from trainers at the Academy. ACLU cooperating attorney Laura Harrington has today also filed a formal claim for damages with the City as a legal prerequisite to the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of the recruit, Michael Clark.