News & Commentary

ACLU of RI executive director Steven Brown issued the following statement today in response to the grand jury finding that police officers and State troopers acted lawfully in the fatal shooting of Joseph Santos last November:

Here are a few absurd facts about RI criminal justice:

The ACLU of Rhode Island has called upon the East Greenwich Town Council to revisit an “Employee Social Media Policy” it adopted last week. In a letter to the Council, the ACLU raises concerns about the policy’s “breadth and its impact on Town employees’ First Amendment rights.” Excerpts from the ACLU’s letter appear below:

In Rhode Island, being a serial graffiti artist can get you a longer prison sentence than being a serial drunk driver; stealing fruit from a farm can get you a prison sentence five times longer than if you steal the same fruit from a supermarket; a felony drug conviction from your teenage past could prevent you from volunteering at your child’s school 20 years later; and you could face years in jail for advertising your drug store for a week without having a pharmacist available during business hours.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island and the R.I. Disability Law Center (RIDLC) have asked the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Rhode Island to address local law enforcement agencies’ lack of compliance with federal laws requiring them to provide effective communication with people who are deaf and hard of hearing.

Following a closed-chambers conference with U.S. District Judge William Smith today, the State has acknowledged that a new law which caps the occupancy of registered sex offenders at Harrington Hall homeless shelter in Cranston at 10%, will be on hold until the court reaches a final decision in the pending ACLU challenge to the law. In a letter that was sent today to Crossroads Rhode Island, the organization which oversees the Harrington Hall shelter, and submitted to the court, Michael Tondra, Chief of the state’s Office of Housing and Community Development, wrote that: “during the pendency of the lawsuit that there will be no adverse consequences to Crossroads Rhode Island by the State regarding the operation of Harrington Hall should the nightly occupancy exceed that set forth in [the statute] while the State, Crossroads and other stakeholders continue the ongoing work toward reaching the goals set for sex offenders in the statute.” As a result of the letter, it was agreed that the ACLU’s request for a temporary restraining order against enforcement of the law was no longer necessary.  ACLU of RI volunteer attorney Lynette Labinger said: “Our goal in seeking a restraining order was to ensure that anyone needing shelter at Harrington Hall would not be turned away. We are quite pleased that this goal has been voluntarily achieved by agreement of all the parties while the case proceeds.” A briefing schedule is expected to be set in the near future. The letter from the State can be found here. More information on the lawsuit can be found here.  

The ACLU of RI has a long history defending the rights of racial and ethnic minorities.  We’ve got a long way to go, but in the spirit of celebrating the progress we’ve made – thanks in no small part to visionaries like MLK – here’s a look at six cases from more than a decade ago in which we challenged laws and practices that harmed people of color in our state:

If we’ve learned anything over the years it should be that bills cobbled together and rushed through for passage NEVER seem to have anything good come of them.  But alas, this scenario played out yesterday when the House of Representatives voted – with bipartisan support no less, including Rhode Island’s own Congressman Jim Langevin – to potentially expand the government’s ability to spy on us. 

Imagine a school administrator telling a high school political science teacher that a whole range of timely topics – for example, medical marijuana, terrorism in the Middle East, gun control, or even politics in general – was off-limits for class discussion. The pedagogical absurdity of it – not to mention the upending of academic freedom it embodies – would seem obvious to most. In school districts across the country, however, a similar type of censorship takes place in the classroom every day, with little dissent.