News & Commentary

Responding to a complaint filed by the Rhode Island ACLU last September, the Rhode Island Department of Education has issued an advisory to all school districts, instructing them to stop using a federally-funded abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum in the public schools that the ACLU argued raised serious privacy and discrimination concerns.

As part of a national campaign aimed at combating questionable federally-funded abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula in the public schools, the ACLU of Rhode Island has called on the state Department of Education to review one such program in the state. The ACLU said that the curriculum, called “Right Time, Right Place,” raises serious privacy and discrimination concerns.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has settled a discrimination complaint against the Town of North Smithfield on behalf of Thomas Bourgeois, who was denied appointment as a school coach last year solely because of his gender.

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of a landmark Rhode Island court decision on women’s rights, which held that married women have the legal right to use their birth name on their driver’s license, the ACLU of Rhode Island charged today that the Division of Motor Vehicles continues to provide misinformation to individuals about this basic right.

Ruling from the bench today, U.S. District Judge William Smith issued a favorable decision in the ACLU’s discrimination lawsuit against the Town of North Smithfield and its plans to hire en masse 21 white males for the Town’s new fire department. Last August, Judge Smith issued a temporary restraining order barring the hiring from taking place. The ACLU’s lawsuit, handled by volunteer attorneys Lynette Labinger and John Dineen, is on behalf of Christine Melendez, who had been prevented from applying for a firefighter position because of the Town’s plans.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of an unprecedented state law passed by the General Assembly last month that gave the Town of North Smithfield a one-time exemption from the state’s major law banning employment discrimination. The suit was filed on behalf of an Hispanic female applicant, Christine Melendez, who is barred from obtaining any position with the newly-created North Smithfield Fire Department because of the law. Instead, the town has voted to hire 21 white males who currently work for the town’s private fire and rescue service. Last week, the Town, which has no fire department of its own, took formal action to acquire the private fire and rescue service that has been serving North Smithfield. In doing so, the Town voted to hire en masse the service’s all white and all male firefighting force. Before taking this action, the Town sought and obtained an exemption from the state’s Fair Employment Practices Act (FEPA), the state law prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of race, gender and age. The exemption, granted by the General Assembly, bars any individual from filing an employment discrimination claim under FEPA for the Town’s mass hiring. However, the law did not – and legally could not – exempt the Town from federal anti-discrimination statutes.