News & Commentary

The City of Providence has agreed to pay $75,000 to settle an ACLU lawsuit involving the violation of the free speech rights of a local resident three years ago when she was barred from peacefully leafleting in front of a building where then-Mayor David Cicilline was speaking.

In court papers filed today, the ACLU has asked for a prompt hearing on its request for a preliminary injunction against the R.I. Board of Education for violating open government laws in dealing with the its controversial “high stakes testing” mandate. The ACLU’s motion asks the Court to order the Board to reconsider in open session a secret discussion and vote it took two weeks ago, rejecting, by a vote of 6-5, a petition filed in June by seventeen organizations seeking a public hearing on repealing the Board’s “high stakes testing” graduation requirement.

For the third time in less than two months, the ACLU of Rhode Island has taken legal action against the R.I. Board of Education for violating open government laws in dealing with the Board’s controversial “high stakes testing” mandate. The ACLU called the Board’s lack of transparency on this divisive issue “a refutation of the openness in government that Governor Chafee has so often promoted.”

A coalition of 15 organizations representing youth, parents, the disability community, civil rights activists, college access organizations and other constituencies delivered a letter to Governor Chafee’s office this morning, urging the Governor to speak with members of the Board of Education prior to their meeting Monday, at which the Board will vote on whether to initiate a public rule-making process over a proposal to rescind Rhode Island’s controversial new high-stakes testing graduation requirement.

Four open government organizations have called on RI General Treasurer Gina Raimondo to more fully release documents about the state’s hedge fund investments that were recently provided in heavily redacted form to the Providence Journal. The organizations – the ACLU of RI, Common Cause RI, the RI Press Association, and the League of Women Voters of RI – sent a letter to Raimondo saying they were “troubled” by her office’s response to the Journal’s public records request for the “due diligence” reports prepared by the state’s hedge fund advisor Cliffwater, and for certain other hedge fund documents.

Finding that there would be “substantial and irreparable harm” if members of the public were prohibited from attending, R.I. Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini today issued an order barring the R.I. Board of Education from meeting in private at a retreat later this month to hear from invited “experts” on the issue of its “high stakes testing” requirement for high school seniors. In issuing a preliminary injunction against the planned private discussion of the issue, the judge agreed with the ACLU that allowing such a discussion to take place in private would significantly undermine the open meetings law’s purpose.

Read statements regarding the filing of an open meetings lawsuit against the R.I. Board of Education over its plans later this month to meet in a private retreat, closed to the public and the media, in order to hear from invited “experts” on the issue of its “high stakes testing” requirement for high school seniors:

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed an open meetings lawsuit against the R.I. Board of Education over its plans later this month to meet in a private retreat, closed to the public and the media, in order to hear from invited “experts” on the issue of its “high stakes testing” requirement for high school seniors. The ACLU argues that allowing such a private meeting would significantly undermine the open meetings law’s purpose.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has today filed a lawsuit in R.I. Superior Court over the R.I. Board of Education’s (BOE) failure to consider a petition filed last month by seventeen organizations to do away with the Board’s “high stakes testing” graduation requirement. The lawsuit, filed by ACLU volunteer attorneys Marc Gursky and Elizabeth Wiens, argues that the Board had an obligation under state law, which it ignored, to consider the proposal and either reject it or initiate a formal rule-making process to consider its adoption.