News & Commentary

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 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.

The American Civil Liberties Union announced today that a landmark Rhode Island civil rights case over the rights of incarcerated youth has come to a close. At the behest of the ACLU and the state of Rhode Island, U.S. District Court Chief Judge William Smith dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit against the Rhode Island Training School for Youth in Cranston. The ACLU’s National Prison Project joined the suit in 2001, thirty years after it had been filed to challenge conditions at the facility. At the time the case was filed, teen prisoners did not receive adequate food, schooling, or medical care; the institution provided no mental health care or treatment. “I’m proud to say ‘Case closed,’” said Amy Fettig, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project and lead attorney in the case. “Instead of unconstitutional neglect and mistreatment, the Rhode Island Training School for Youth now follows the best practices for working with teens in detention.” In 1973, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit entered into a consent decree that addressed such critical problems as overcrowding; insufficient staffing; meager medical care; a deteriorated physical plant; inadequate meals; scant academic, vocational, and physical education programs; and a lack of mental health care and treatment. A special master was appointed to oversee compliance with the consent decree, and the decree has been amended several times over the years as the institution met some of the terms, most recently in 2014. In his order closing the case, Judge Smith found that the state has substantially complied with the only key elements of the decree that still remained: 1)   Construction of new facilities to meet national standards; 2)   Implementation of a revised policy and procedures manual; 3)   Implementation of a detailed and effective administrative grievance procedure to handle residents’ complaints; and 4)   Establishment of an independent audit and review process by a team of outside experts to ensure substantial compliance with the national best practice standards for juvenile justice created by the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. When the lawsuit was filed in 1971, the Rhode Island Training School for Youth was called the Boys’ Training School. Today it holds approximately 80 boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 18. ACLU of Rhode Island volunteer attorney John W. Dineen served as local counsel in the lawsuit, Inmates of the Rhode Island Training School for Youth v. Piccola. More information on the case is available here.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today announced the settlement of a federal lawsuit against Tiverton police and school officials over a 2014 incident in which an 8-year-old girl was removed by police from a school bus, taken alone to the police station without her parents’ knowledge, and then held and questioned at the station for several hours before being released. The seizure, detention and interrogation of the young child were based solely on unsubstantiated claims from another child that the girl was carrying “chemicals” in her backpack, and occurred even after the police found nothing in the backpack.

In the wake of the Trump Administration’s repeal of federal guidance addressing the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming students, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today released a report finding that only 60% of the state’s school districts currently have policies in place to protect the rights of transgender students. In light of that finding, the ACLU report is calling for the state Department of Education to require adoption and implementation of such policies by all local school districts.  Notably, the report highlights the multitude of issues facing transgender and gender non-conforming students, including privacy and confidentiality, the use of students’ preferred pronouns and participation in gender-segregated activities.

Raising alarm about the lack of privacy for students and their families, the ACLU of Rhode Island today released a report showing that many school districts in the state give themselves the right to remotely spy on students through the use of school-loaned laptop computers. Under so-called “1 to 1” programs, in which a majority of school districts in the state participate, a private vendor provides free laptops or tablet computers for the school year that students can use at home. With this program, however, the ACLU found, students and their families are often required to surrender basic privacy rights.

For a few years, members of the LGBTQ community and other allies have been pressing the General Assembly for passage of legislation that would ban mental health providers from engaging in “sexual orientation change efforts” (colloquially known as “conversion therapy”) with clients who are minors. While the ACLU of Rhode Island both appreciates and supports the intent behind this bill, and has been an active supporter of LGBTQ rights for decades, we have opposed the legislation, largely because of some of its potential unintended consequences. In this blog, we try to explain our position more thoroughly, especially since our opposition to the legislation does not mean we oppose other means of addressing therapists who engage in this questionable practice.

In the wake of the Trump Administration’s repeal of federal guidance that clarified the protections available to transgender students under federal law, fifteen organizations supporting the rights of LGBTQ students have sent a letter to all school district superintendents in the state asking them to “forcefully and publicly reaffirm” their school district’s commitment “to providing a safe, protective and non-discriminatory space” for those students. Saying that the repeal action sent a “troubling message” to transgender youth, the groups called it crucial for superintendents to “urgently counter” it.