News & Commentary

The ACLU of RI and Progreso Latino issued the following statements regarding yesterday’s unanimous vote by the Central Falls City Council to repeal the City’s unjust youth curfew ordinance: ACLU of RI: “The ACLU of RI applauds the Central Falls City Council for repealing this ineffective and counterproductive ordinance.  The evidence is clear that youth curfews don’t reduce crime, and may actually undermine public safety.  Furthermore, the ordinances make perfectly innocent activity – walking outside at night – illegal, and disproportionately affect youth of color.  We commend the Council for taking the evidence-based, principled approach here and finally repealing this ordinance.” Progreso Latino: “Progreso Latino would like to commend the Central Falls City Council for getting rid of the juvenile curfew that criminalized youth for being outside and further exposed them to possible police harassment.” In December 2018, the groups sent a letter to Central Falls Mayor, James Diossa, urging him to work with the City Council to repeal the City’s youth curfew law.  More information can be found here.

Settlement agreements have been filed in two cases brought last October by the ACLU of RI and RI Legal Services to protect the rights of special education students who were harmed by Providence’s three-week long school bus strike. Although some remedies have already been implemented by the Providence school district in response to the legal actions, the settlement agreements, filed with the R.I. Department of Education, establish additional enforceable school district educational and financial obligations to compensate the students and their families.

Leaders from ten religious and secular organizations today applauded R.I. Attorney General Peter Neronha’s decision to withdraw the State of Rhode Island’s name from a U.S. Supreme Court brief in a controversial church-state case. The brief supported a Maryland agency’s position that its sponsorship and funding of a 40-foot-tall Latin cross to memorialize WWI veterans did not violate the First Amendment. The decision in the case, scheduled to be argued before the Supreme Court later this month, could have profound implications for the First Amendment’s principle of separation of church and state, the legacy of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams.

In a letter sent today to Bristol-Warren School District officials, five organizations that advocate for the rights of students and children criticized the district’s decision to immediately bring a police officer into the school to tackle disciplinary problems, instead of quickly expanding resources that have been depleted over the years to address the social service needs of students. The organizations that signed the letter are the R.I. Disability Law Center, R.I. Legal Services, Providence Student Union, Parent Support Network of R.I., and the ACLU of R.I.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has sharply criticized Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements, Jr. for minimizing a court’s recent conclusion that police blatantly violated the constitutional rights of a criminal defendant. Even though the Court expressed “grave disapproval” over the police conduct in the case – knowingly continuing to interrogate a suspect after she had exercised her right to request to speak with a lawyer – Chief Clements was quoted last week as calling the constitutional violations “technical” and went on to praise the police who worked on the case.

After receiving numerous complaints from inmates at the ACI’s Intake Center, the ACLU of RI today filed a class-action lawsuit against the RI Department of Corrections (DOC) claiming that the facility has failed to provide adequate heat to at least two cell blocks for more than a month and a half.  The lawsuit, filed by ACLU of RI cooperating attorneys Sonja Deyoe and Lynette Labinger, argues that the facility’s failure to provide heat during the coldest months of the year has made cells “dangerously cold,” placing prisoners’ health and safety at risk, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Calling the controversy “one of the most significant challenges to the public’s right to know under the state’s Access to Public Records Act” since its enactment, the ACLU of Rhode Island today filed an appeal to the R.I. Supreme Court on behalf of former House Minority Leader and Gubernatorial candidate Patricia Morgan, whose access to documents pertaining to the Attorney General’s expenditure of more than $50M in funds from the “Google settlement” has been stymied by hundreds of questionable redactions.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today announced the settlement of a class-action lawsuit that was filed against the State last year, claiming that participants in a Medicaid program run by the state were not being given proper notice before being kicked off the program, leading to a loss of income that the suit says put low-income residents “at risk of losing their homes and their utilities and…funds needed for their daily living expenses, including food.” The suit tied the improper notice to the state’s infamous UHIP computer system, the subject of another pending ACLU suit regarding food stamp benefit delays.

While almost nobody was looking, the Office of the Attorney General (AG) has abruptly made secret literally tens of thousands of government records. It happened in the context of a dispute over the release of one of the most innocuous documents one could imagine: a memo seeking the purchase of ceremonial lapel pins for members of the Attorney General’s staff. Yet this dispute’s ramifications for open government are nothing short of monumental.