News & Commentary

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.

Attorneys for the ACLU of Rhode Island and R.I. Legal Services (RILS) today filed a lawsuit against the Providence School District for hiding information about its extensive violations of the rights of English Language Learner (EL) students that led to a settlement agreement between the school system and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) more than a year ago.

Responding to an Access to Public Records Act (APRA) complaint that the ACLU of Rhode Island filed last month, the Woonsocket Police Department has released copies of its final investigations of internally-generated complaints of police misconduct that it had previously declared confidential. Last month, the ACLU had filed a formal complaint with the Attorney General when the department refused to provide the records to Dimitri Lyssikatos, a member of the Rhode Island Accountability Project. As a result of the City’s change of position, ACLU of RI cooperating attorney James Cullen is withdrawing the pending complaint.

ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown issued the following statement today in response to last night's incident outside the Wyatt Detention Center where protesters were pepper-sprayed and one person was seriously injured by a pickup truck used by a correctional officer to try to break up protesters blocking the facility's parking lot:

The South Kingstown School Committee has approved an ACLU of RI-drafted resolution clarifying that SK schools will not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) absent a valid judicial warrant that has been verified by the district superintendent and its legal counsel.  A similar policy was approved by the Central Falls School District in June 2017. Although an ICE policy purports to restrict enforcement actions in “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches and hospitals, that policy has not been uniformly followed, and immigration enforcement actions across the nation have been unpredictable. The motion to approve the resolution was unanimous. “We applaud the SK School Committee for passing this important resolution to protect immigrant students and families.  We hope other school committees in RI will follow their lead,” said Steven Brown, ACLU of RI executive director.