News & Commentary

ACLU of RI executive director Steven Brown issued the following statement today in response to the inclusion of a question about citizenship status in the 2020 census:

The ACLU of RI today applauded the formal filing of regulations this week by the RI Department of Education (RIDE), requiring all public school districts to adopt a comprehensive policy outlining the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming students.  The regulations take effect on April 17, 2018, and all schools must have a compliant policy in place by July 1, 2018. “As the federal government continues to undermine the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming students, we applaud RIDE’s actions to mandate school districts to have clear and comprehensive policies in place to protect this group,” said Steven Brown, ACLU of RI executive director. The regulations are the result of an ongoing effort by local organizations, including the ACLU of RI, to protect this group of students, which faces unique discrimination in the school setting. The regulations emanate from a petition that the ACLU and nine other groups – including the RI State Council of Churches, GLAD, and the RI Commission for Human Rights – filed with RIDE last September seeking the adoption of statewide regulations on the subject. Specifically, the new regulations mandate districts have policies in place that are consistent with state and national best practices, and “address, at a minimum, such issues as confidentiality and privacy, discipline and exclusion, staff training, access to school facilities and participation in school programs, dress codes and official school records and use of preferred names and pronouns.” In 2016, RIDE released a detailed model policy that aimed to address the specific needs of trans students and ensure schools’ compliance with civil rights laws.  However, schools were not mandated to adopt the model policy, and research conducted last year by the ACLU revealed that many RI schools had no policy in place to protect the rights of this vulnerable group. The ACLU said it will be monitoring RI schools districts to ensure that those still without a compliant policy implement one by the July 1, 2018 deadline. By the ACLU’s last count, there were at least seven school districts across the state without adequate policies in place, including Chariho, Exeter-West Greenwich, Newport and Woonsocket. Click here for the RIDE regulations.

Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of calls about both red light cameras and speed cameras.*  One thing is clear: drivers are pretty angry. If you aren’t mad about them, you probably should be:

There's been a lot of talk about a bill introduced in the General Assembly that would “require Internet service providers to provide digital blocking of sexual content and patently offensive material . . . and allow consumers to deactivate digital block upon payment of a twenty dollar ($20.00) fee.”  This legislation is clearly unconstitutional, inevitably ineffective, and ultimately counter-productive.

In anticipation of the national student walkout happening on March 14, 2018, the ACLU of Rhode Island has sent a letter to all school district superintendents in the State reminding them of students’ rights on the matter. Scheduled for 10am that day, the national student event is a planned protest of legislative inaction in addressing the problem of gun violence. The walkout will last for 17 minutes in honor of the 17 students killed in the Parkland, FL shooting a month earlier.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today issued a fourteen-page analysis that expresses “great concern” about pending state legislation that would allow family members and law enforcement officers to petition a judge to issue an “extreme risk protective order” (ERPO) against an individual who legally owns firearms but who is alleged to pose a “significant danger of causing personal injury to self or others.” This so-called “red flag” legislation follows the tragic shooting of students at a Parkland, Florida high school last month.

Responding, in an ACLU lawsuit, to a federal judge’s order demanding answers as to why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials detained Lilian Calderon, a 30-year-old Rhode Island mother of two young children, for almost a month, an ICE official has cited three reasons: (1) it believed her 2002 order of removal—which she had been taking steps to address since 2016 under available regulations—rendered her a flight risk, (2) the “availability of bed space”; and (3) “lack of child care issues.” The official also acknowledged that Calderon could be subject to detention again after a three-month stay that ICE issued expires.

The ACLU has sent a letter to the RI Senate raising concerns about the apparent rush to hold a vote to seek Senator Nicholas Kettle’s expulsion following the filing of formal criminal charges against him.  A democratically elected Senator, Kettle has declined to resign his Senate seat while he contests the charges.

Following the release Tuesday of Rhode Island resident Lilian Calderon from an immigration detention facility after being detained by ICE for almost a month, a federal judge in Massachusetts is demanding answers from the federal agency in response to the ACLU lawsuit filed last week that challenged her detention and helped lead to her release.