News & Commentary

President of the American Civil Liberties Union Susan Herman will be in Rhode Island Wednesday to discuss urban policing with local officials and experts.

This week, we had the pleasure of working with some of the state’s top advocates to discuss women’s issues and gender equality here in Rhode Island. We also had another busy week at the State House where we testified on bills that would protect youth from certain life sentences and would limit out-of-school suspensions. We also have more to share about the ACLU’s work to address mass incarceration and other criminal justice issues.

Over the past few months, we've shared quite a bit of data about the school-to-prison pipeline and its disproportionate impact on Rhode Island's communities of color. We recently sat down with Jordan Seaberry, of the Univocal Legislative Minority Advisory Committee and Jim Vincent, president of the NAACP-Providence Branch to discuss the far reaching impact of these racial disparities and how the state must act to improve the lives of all Rhode Islanders.

By Megan Khatchadourian, assistant to the director

It can be hard to keep up on the all the latest issues during the workweek, but don’t worry, we’ve collected some of the civil liberties news stories you may have missed this week.

On this page, you’ll soon find posts from all our staff members discussing some of the most important civil liberties issues in the state. Whether we’re exploring the unintended consequences of a proposed law, discussing how a policy can be improved, highlighting old cases that are still relevant today, or commenting on recent articles that are worth the read, our goal is to provide new insight and keep you informed.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has requested the “gag order” issued for the settlement discussions in the pension case be lifted now that plaintiffs are voting on a possible settlement agreement. In a letter delivered Friday to R.I. Superior Court Judge Sarah Taft-Carter, the ACLU said that since the “broadly written” gag order was issued to protect the confidentiality of the mediation process, it is “counter-productive and unduly intrusive on basic First Amendment values to allow it to remain in effect” now that that task is completed. In the letter, ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown noted that, as plaintiffs began an expedited process of considering and voting on a settlement agreement, various explanations of the agreement have circulated with no public details coming from those who know what it contains.