News & Commentary

The ACLU of Rhode Island is urging the Bristol Town Council to reject an ordinance that will impose unnecessary burdens on medical marijuana patients and caregivers and severely impact their privacy.

By Johanna Kaiser, Communications & Development Associate

Responding to the release of PARCC test results on Tuesday, a dozen organizations today called on the state Department of Education to immediately reverse its policies that allow school districts to use PARCC scores in a punitive manner against students as early as next year. The organizations called the reversal “a necessary step to promote a meaningful discussion of alternative graduation standards in the months ahead.”  The groups’ statement follows below:

The Rhode Island State Council of Churches, the RI Council for Muslim Advancement, the Board of Rabbis of Greater Rhode Island and the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today issued this open letter to Governor Gina Raimondo, following her comments yesterday that the controversy surrounding the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Rhode Island was “much ado about nothing”: today issued this open letter to Governor Gina Raimondo, following her comments yesterday that the controversy surrounding the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Rhode Island was “much ado about nothing”:

In the space of a dozen years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials issued to Rhode Island Department of Corrections’ (DOC) administrators 462 “immigration detainers” against individuals who are identified in the ACI’s computer system as U.S. citizens. That is one of the many facts disclosed in briefs (motion for summary judgment brief against the Federal Defendants, motion for summary judgment brief against Defendant Wall) filed on Friday by the ACLU in its lawsuit on behalf of Ada Morales, a North Providence resident who has twice been the target of baseless immigration detainers as a deportable “alien” even though she is a U.S. citizen. The lawsuit, filed in 2012, alleges ICE and Rhode Island officials often bypass Constitutional requirements and safeguards when they detain individuals on immigration grounds. As a result of these detainers, as happened in Ms. Morales’ case, individuals have been held at the ACI for no other reason than to allow ICE officials to investigate their immigration status.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today released the following statement:

Despite growing consensus that out-of-school suspensions should only be used as a discipline of last resort, Rhode Island school districts continued to overuse suspensions during the 2014-2015 school year, a report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has found. The report, Oversuspended and Underserved, a follow-up to previous ACLU reports on the use of suspensions in Rhode Island public schools, found that schools doled out 12,682 suspensions in the last school year, often for minor misconduct. As in previous years, students with disabilities and students of color served a disproportionate amount of these suspensions.

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.

Residency Restrictions Halted: Last week we filed a class action lawsuit to challenge the state’s new residency restrictions for sex offenders. This law isn’t just ineffective—it’s counter-productive and unconstitutional. With just days until many individuals would be uprooted from the residences and possibly made homeless, the ACLU obtained a 10-day temporary restraining order to stop the enforcement of the law. On Wednesday, that restraining order was extended through at least mid-January.