News & Commentary

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

Responding to a lawsuit filed last week by the ACLU of RI, a federal judge has, with the State's consent, entered a temporary restraining order against the Department of Human Services’ continued use of procedurally deficient notices that have demanded SNAP recipients reimburse the state for overpayments that they purportedly received years earlier. The notice, the ACLU alleged in the lawsuit, failed to provide sufficient information for recipients to determine its accuracy.

In addition to marking our 60th Anniversary, 2019 was also our strongest year ever defending the rights of all in the Ocean State.  We were active in more than 50 lawsuits, lobbied on a record number of bills, and our work behind the scenes is more robust than ever. Our donors’ ongoing support makes all of this possible, so if you’re a donor, thank you. If you haven’t yet contributed to the ACLU of RI, please make a tax-deductible year-end contribution today. To give you a clear look at the impact that your support can have, here are three victories that stand out from our 60th year fighting for civil liberties in Rhode Island:

For the third time in as many years, cooperating attorneys for the ACLU of Rhode Island have filed a class-action lawsuit related to the state’s troubled UHIP computer system. This latest suit, filed in U.S. District Court by ACLU cooperating attorneys Ellen Saideman and Lynette Labinger, challenges the adequacy of notices sent by the state Department of Human Services (DHS) to some SNAP recipients, demanding that they reimburse the state for benefits overpayments that they purportedly received years earlier.

The R.I. Department of Human Services illegally used an employee’s non-conviction criminal history to terminate her employment, an ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorney has claimed in a charge of discrimination filed with the R.I. Commission for Human Rights on behalf of Coventry resident Cheryl Robbio.

The following op-ed ran in several local papers earlier this month:

The American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project and the ACLU of Rhode Island have today filed a “friend of the court” brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston in support of a lower court ruling barring the extradition of a man whom the U.S. State Department is trying to return to the Dominican Republic (DR) even though an immigration appeals board found he would likely be tortured if returned there.

ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorneys have intervened in an inmate’s pro se legal action seeking to hold the state Department of Corrections (DOC) in contempt of court for violating a 47-year old consent decree that established minimum standards for the discipline and classification of inmates at the ACI.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today announced the favorable settlement of a federal lawsuit filed last year on behalf of North Smithfield resident Jason Richer, challenging the police department’s refusal to remove from its files a note falsely claiming that he was “dangerous,” “psychologically unstable,” and had numerous weapons at his house. Since the purpose of such notes is to alert police officers of possible dangers when they interact with individuals, the suit raised concerns that it “increase[d] the possibility that a police officer, believing Mr. Richer to be psychologically unstable . . . and heavily armed, may overreact” if they were called to his house, or otherwise interacted with him, for any reason.