News & Commentary

Hundreds of bills and countless hours later, late on September 19th the General Assembly’s Legislative Session for 2017 finally came to a close. While we usually see the end of the session come during the morning hours of June, this year, after an abrupt recess of the House due to budget disagreements between both chambers, the end of session came much later than anticipated.

Responding to President Trump’s decimation of the DACA program – the Obama program that provided legal status to young children brought to the country unlawfully by their parents – a diverse array of seventeen organizations that work with, or advocate for the rights of, immigrants in Rhode Island have sent letters to all state legislators and municipal leaders calling on them to help DACA recipients with the tools at their disposal. The organizations said in separate letters to state legislators and municipal leaders that they were “heartened by the many strong condemnations of the President’s actions” from state and local leaders, but that “the time has now come for action, not just words” to protect those victimized by Trump’s “inhumane action.” The letter to legislators noted that they had the opportunity to pass three bills pending in the General Assembly – and could do so as early as their upcoming special session this month – to provide protection to DACA students while the program remains in limbo:             *  H-6021, which would generally bar schools and other “sensitive locations” from allowing ICE agents access to their facilities without a warrant, passage of which would give DACA students “at least some limited protection from the roundups that have been happening elsewhere.”             * H–5237, which would treat DACA recipients as Rhode Island residents for purposes of qualifying for in-state tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities, allowing them to continue their education even as their legal status remains in limbo. The letter noted: “We can’t condemn President Trump for refusing to treat DACA recipients as Americans if we refuse to treat them as Rhode Islanders.”             * Passage of narrower versions of two bills, S-183 and H-5686, that would provide special driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. The groups urged that the bills be amended to specifically authorize licenses for DACA recipients, who currently qualify for driver’s licenses but will no longer be able to do so once their status expires under Trump’s DACA repeal.

In a brief filed today, the ACLU of Rhode Island has asked the Superior Court to reject a claim made by the R.I. Department of Corrections (DOC) that inmates serving life sentences at the ACI have no legal right to sue for any violation of their civil rights.  In a related letter sent today to Governor Gina Raimondo, the ACLU of RI also asked her to intervene and call upon the DOC to refrain from taking this position in future inmate civil rights lawsuits.

Citing the unique discrimination faced by transgender and gender non-conforming students and the failure of many Rhode Island school districts to have policies in place tackling the issue, ten organizations – including the ACLU of Rhode Island, the RI State Council of Churches, GLAD, and the RI Commission for Human Rights – have formally petitioned the state Council of Elementary and Secondary Education to adopt statewide regulations that address the specific needs of this vulnerable group.

The Trump administration today announced the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program. The DACA program has served as a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who were brought to this country as children and know the United States as home. The following is a statement from Steven Brown, ACLU of RI executive director, reacting to the White House announcement rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program:

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a federal lawsuit against the Town of Bristol over the police department’s refusal to return to its owners a firearm that the agency seized more than a year ago. The suit, filed by ACLU of RI cooperating attorneys Thomas Lyons and Rhiannon Huffman, is on behalf of two parents who are Bristol residents and inherited their son’s firearm collection after he tragically took his own life.  The suit argues that the Bristol Police Department violated the parents’ constitutional rights by refusing to return the firearm to them.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today announced the dismissal of charges against a group of Narragansett residents, landlords and businesses for violating a Town ordinance that bars more than four unrelated people from living together.  In a 23-page decision issued yesterday, Municipal Court Judge John DeCubellis, Jr. agreed that the ordinance violated plaintiffs’ due process and equal protection rights – as argued earlier this year by ACLU of RI cooperating attorney H. Jefferson Melish in a brief seeking dismissal of the charges.  The judge noted that in 1994, the R.I. Superior Court struck down as unconstitutional a nearly identical Narragansett ordinance and that efforts by the Town to distinguish it were unavailing.

In a case that led to a groundbreaking court decision limiting the power of immigration officials, the ACLU today announced the settlement of a lawsuit it filed in 2012 on behalf of Providence resident and United States citizen Ada Morales, who was twice unlawfully held at the ACI because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials erroneously deemed her to be a deportable “alien.”