News & Commentary

Disability Rights Rhode Island (DRRI, formerly the R.I. Disability Law Center) and attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project (ACLU) and its Rhode Island Affiliate (ACLU-RI), today filed a federal class action lawsuit against the R.I. Department of Corrections (RIDOC) alleging multiple constitutional violations of the rights of prisoners with serious and persistent mental illness (SPMI).

The R.I. Supreme Court has revised a court rule that favorably resolves objections that had been raised in a federal lawsuit filed last year by ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorneys on behalf of SouthCoast Fair Housing (SCFH), which had been prevented by the rule from providing legal help to victims of housing discrimination in RI. As a result of the revisions, SCFH will be dismissing the suit.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island (ACLU) and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice  (NCLEJ) today announced the dismissal of its almost three-year-old lawsuit that challenged the widespread failure of the state Department of Human Services (DHS) to timely provide SNAP food stamp benefits to needy families due to its troubled UHIP computer system.

The ACLU will be in court on Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 9:30am to argue that the federal government must obtain a warrant before accessing the private health information in New Hampshire’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP). The hearing will be held in Boston before the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has called on the Narragansett Town Council to table a proposed discussion of an ordinance tonight that would bar members of the public from making "personal" or "slanderous" remarks, or becoming "boisterous," during the public comment portion of Council meetings.

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 announced the favorable resolution of a lawsuit it filed in May, challenging the state Division of Taxation’s position that a special sales tax exemption for Rhode Island authors applied only to works of fiction, and not to non-fiction, because non-fiction was not considered “creative and original.” The lawsuit argued that making such a distinction on the content of the work violated the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The ACLU dismissed the case today after confirming that the authors who applied for exemptions since the suit was filed have had them granted by the Division.

In an important decision for the rights of immigrants – and for a humane and fair immigration system – a federal judge in Rhode Island today ordered the release of a man whom the U.S. State Department is trying to extradite back to the Dominican Republic (DR) even though an immigration board found he would likely be tortured if returned there.

A U.S. Department of Justice memo, formally released yesterday as a result of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of RI and RI Legal Services (and also obtained independently by the Boston Globe), contains a blistering critique of the Providence school district’s (PSD) treatment of English language learner (EL) students.  But, the ACLU and RILS said today, release of the memo does more than document a systematic violation of EL students’ rights by the PSD. Specifically, it also highlights a blatant abuse of the Access to Public Records Act by the Providence school district, and underlines the RI Department of Education’s (RIDE) own failure to require PSD’s compliance with federal and state law obligations regarding the legal rights of EL students.