News & Commentary

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has adopted a new policy that will allow women Bar applicants who are breastfeeding to easily obtain accommodations when taking the Bar exam. The policy was adopted after a number of groups encouraged the Rhode Island Board of Bar Examiners to revise its policies that offered no accommodations to individuals who were breastfeeding, leaving them at a serious disadvantage during the test.

For the second time in three months, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has filed a complaint of sex discrimination against the Harmony Fire District for terminating a female employee who had raised concerns that male and female firefighters were being treated differently. The ACLU filed this latest charge with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Linda Ferragamo, an EMT/firefighter at the department for more than a decade.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has filed a charge of sex discrimination against the Harmony Fire District on behalf of a female EMT/firefighter who was terminated from her job after she and several others raised concerns that male and female firefighters were being treated differently. The charge, filed with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, is 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.

By Johanna Kaiser, Development and Communications Associate

By Johanna Kaiser, Development & Communications Associate You’ll often hear about our work in the courts when we file a lawsuit, settle a case, or receive an important ruling from the court. What you often don’t hear about everything that happens in between the filing of a lawsuit and its resolution. With that in mind, we wanted to offer an update on two of the lawsuits we filed this year. In our case Richer v. Parmelee, we've filed a brief asking for partial summary judgment in the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has raised deep concerns about the hiring practices of the City of East Providence and the East Providence School Department’s failure to address allegations of discrimination against minority employees and applicants.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a URI graduate student who was denied summer employment this year at a fabrics company because of her status as a registered medical marijuana user.