News & Commentary

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.

Calling Governor Gina Raimondo’s two-and-a-half-month old executive order giving public bodies extra time to respond to open records requests “unwarranted and extremely damaging to the public interest,” seven media and open government organizations today called on her to immediately rescind the order.

ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorney Amato DeLuca filed suit in federal court seeking monetary damages on behalf of a former Narragansett High School student with special education needs who was thrown to the ground, choked and falsely arrested by a school resource officer (SRO) over a rude hand gesture the student gave the SRO. A videotaped record of the incident, which occurred two years ago, shows SRO Kyle Rooney forcefully slamming to the floor and restraining 11th-grader Michael Blanchette for a few minutes before removing him from the school in handcuffs.

ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorneys Ellen Saideman and Lynette Labinger today filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the state Department of Labor and Training’s (DLT) actions in summarily freezing weekly unemployment insurance benefit payments to hundreds of Rhode Islanders without any notice or explanation.

The following statement was issued today by ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown on the Governor’s announcement and release of the “Crush Covid RI” app:

The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorneys Deborah Gonzalez and Jared Goldstein, and lawyers from the firm Morgan Lewis filed a class-action lawsuit today against federal immigration officials and the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. The suit, filed as a habeas corpus petition, seeks urgent relief for a class of over 70 immigration detainees at the facility by calling for their conditional release. The suit was filed as the count of detainees at the facility infected with COVID-19 more than doubled in three days.

As the timeline for a typical legislative session begins to draw to a close, the Rhode Island General Assembly has begun to take small and cautious steps towards reconvening for the remainder of the 2020 session. While the details are still up in the air, there are many questions surrounding the ways in which transparency and public oversight can coexist with the facilitation of legislative efforts to meet during a pandemic, and which types of legislation the General Assembly will prioritize before they formally conclude the session.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today announced a favorable settlement in its third, and latest, class-action lawsuit against the R.I. Department of Human Services related to the state’s UHIP computer system. This suit, filed last December in U.S. District Court by ACLU cooperating attorneys Ellen Saideman and Lynette Labinger, had challenged the adequacy of notices sent by the DHS to some SNAP recipients, demanding that they reimburse the state for benefits overpayments that they purportedly received years earlier.

As part of a nationwide effort organized by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Rhode Island today filed an Access to Public Records Act (APRA) request with state officials to obtain information about Rhode Island’s plans to address a likely, and potentially catastrophic, outbreak of COVID-19 at the ACI. The APRA request was one of dozens filed across the country by ACLU Affiliates today.