News & Commentary

Citizens for Responsible Government, a diverse and growing coalition of Rhode Island individuals and organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, has launched its campaign to defeat a Constitutional Convention. At a press conference in April, the coalition cited a number of reasons why they are opposed to a Constitutional Convention.

In an important victory for open government, a judge ruled today that the RI Board of Education violated the open meetings law when it held a secret meeting last September to discuss whether to reexamine the Board’s controversial “high stakes testing” graduation requirement. The Board held the secret meeting in response to a formal petition filed by the ACLU of Rhode Island and numerous other organizations for reconsideration of the testing mandate.

In a step forward for patients’ privacy rights, the ACLU today announced the favorable settlement of a lawsuit it had filed against the RI Department of Health in 2010, challenging the adequacy of rules the agency had adopted to implement a centralized database of patient health care records. The Health Information Exchange (HIE), authorized by the General Assembly in 2008, allows medical personnel to routinely access a patient’s entire medical file, including mental health records and other sensitive medical information.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a federal lawsuit to prevent the Smithfield Police Department from continuing to enforce an overly broad state law that makes it a crime to circulate anonymous political literature, including unsigned newspaper editorials. The statute, which carries a potential one-year prison sentence, unconstitutionally bars the distribution of any anonymous political literature that relates to ballot questions or that criticizes a political candidate’s “personal character or political action.”

Following a ten-year U.S. Department of Justice investigation prompted by an ACLU of Rhode Island complaint, the state judiciary has adopted a plan to ensure adequate language interpreter services are available to all clients in the state’s courts.

With the first round of voting in the controversial pension reform settlement set to conclude tomorrow, the ACLU of Rhode Island has announced plans to submit testimony at an anticipated “fairness hearing,” if one occurs, in order to raise concerns about the settlement’s opt-out voting process.

A report issued by the ACLU of Rhode Island today shows that Rhode Island’s public schools last year disproportionately suspended black students at the highest rates in nine years, while white students were suspended at record low rates. Like black children, Hispanic students remained severely over-suspended, with these disparities reaching all the way to the lowest grades. In addition, students generally – including elementary school children – were given out-of-school suspensions at alarming rates for minor disciplinary infractions.

National education experts are submitting written testimony today to express support for legislation that would delay or halt the RI Department of Education’s “high stakes testing” requirement for high school seniors. According to the latest RIDE statistics, almost 1,600 seniors remain at risk of not getting a diploma because of the testing requirement. The bills are being heard this afternoon by the House Health, Education and Welfare Committee.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has today filed an open records lawsuit on behalf of the Olneyville Neighborhood Association (ONA) in an effort to obtain documents that the group wants to share with the community relating to the state’s cooperation with federal immigration officials. The lawsuit, against the RI Department of Corrections and the RI State Police, seeks a court order waiving the significant fees the agencies want to charge ONA before turning over the requested records.