News & Commentary

UPDATE 1/28/20: The Council affirmed the ruling, but directed the Commissioner of Education "to begin the process of revising current ELL regulations." Here is the statement from the organizations that had sought rejection of the ruling:

Bolstered by similar national trends, Rhode Island has enacted several positive and significant criminal justice reform measures over the past few years. Unfortunately, every step forward by the General Assembly seems to be accompanied by a step back.

A legal claim for damages has been sent today to the City of Pawtucket over a School Resource Officer’s (SRO) gratuitous and unlawful handcuffing and arrest of a 13-year-old African-American middle school honors student. The damages claim was submitted by ACLU of Rhode Island cooperating attorney Shannah Kurland as a required legal prerequisite to the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of the student, Tre’sur Johnson.

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 American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today announced the settlement of a pair of sex discrimination lawsuits it had filed in 2016 on behalf of two female EMT/firefighters who alleged that the Harmony Fire District in Glocester had terminated them from their jobs because of concerns they had raised about differential treatment between male and female firefighters. The lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court by ACLU of RI volunteer attorney Sonja Deyoe, were on behalf of Kimberly Perreault, who served as an EMT/firefighter for the Harmony Fire District for 12 years before being terminated in January 2015 for purportedly being “unhappy” with the fire department, and Linda Ferragamo, who had also worked at the department for over a decade before being fired after supporting Perreault’s complaints and objecting to her termination. Without admitting any liability, the Department has agreed to pay Perreault and Ferragamo $12,500 each. The settlement agreements also acknowledge that both women were qualified for the job and were performing their work in “a competent fashion” when they were terminated.

The ACLU has filed a “friend of the court” brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston in support of a legal challenge brought by the cities of Providence and Central Falls to a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) policy conditioning the receipt of federal law enforcement funds on municipal collaboration with immigration officials.

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).

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.