News & Commentary

Ruling in an ACLU lawsuit, U.S. District Judge William Smith has held that Providence police violated the free speech rights of a local resident when she was barred from peacefully leafleting on a public sidewalk in front of a building where then-Mayor David Cicilline was speaking. In a 35-page opinion, the judge left for further proceedings the question of whether the three named police defendants, including former police chief Dean Esserman, could be held individually liable for violating Ms. Reilly’s First Amendment rights, or whether only the City itself was liable.

The ACLU is troubled by the actions taken by Warwick school officials against students for tweets they sent to RIDE Commissioner Deborah Gist in response to the controversy surrounding RIDE’s high stakes testing requirement. Without in any way condoning the immature nature of some of the tweets, we believe Warwick school officials have intervened in this controversy in a manner much greater than is appropriate.

Below is a statement issued today by Common Cause/RI and the ACLU of Rhode Island regarding the controversy over the Governor’s refusal to publicly release a report he commissioned on Medicaid and food stamp fraud:

The websites of PBS Kids and National Stop Bullying Day, a video clip of the Nutcracker ballet, a website on global warming, and a popular book reading recommendation site are among the many online sites that students and teachers have been unable to access at public schools in Rhode Island due to the use of so-called Internet filtering software.

A federal judge yesterday refused to dismiss an ACLU lawsuit brought on behalf of an ACI inmate who was retaliated against by guards after he publicly criticized Department of Corrections’ mail policies and sought legal assistance from the ACLU (see the ruling and the report and recommendation). The pattern of harassment against inmate Jason Cook, which included strip searches, loss of his prison job, destruction of his personal property, and disciplinary time in segregation, began after Cook was quoted in a Providence Journal story criticizing a DOC policy limiting the written materials available to inmates. The policy was later rescinded.

The ACLU today joined with other education and civil rights advocates, parents and a former employee of Rhode Island Department of Education’s (RIDE) testing office to call attention to the dangerously low NECAP scores released by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) earlier this month. The statewide scores for the NECAP, a test that this year will become the determining factor for high school graduation for the class of 2014 and those to follow, showed 4,200, or two in five, Rhode Island 11th graders, are in jeopardy of not graduating from high school next year. These numbers include almost two in five students in the middle-class community of Warwick, providing evidence of the detrimental impact this poor public policy will have on all Rhode Island communities whether upper, middle or lower income.

Between 1999 and June 2012, the Attorney General’s office filed lawsuits against public bodies for violating the state’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA) on only six occasions, less than 4% of the time after finding that violations of the law had been committed. That is one of the findings of a report issued today by the ACLU of Rhode Island, which examines past enforcement of the open records law by the AG’s office and urges stronger enforcement in the future.

The RI ACLU testified yesterday before the House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare in opposition to a bill allowing school districts to charge students for participating in extracurricular activities.  The ACLU agrees with the the R.I. Commissioner of Education, who has consistently found "pay-to-play" to infringe upon the guarentee of a free public education, even when fee waivers are made available.  Read our written testimony for more information.

Last night, in an overflowing State House, the ACLU of Rhode Island delivered testimony in support of 13-H 5015, the same-sex marriage bill. This testimony asserted yet again that Rhode Island's civil union law never even purported to mirror the protections that are available to married couples. Civil unions create a separate and second class status, and an amendment that was attached to the 2011 legislation undermined rights same-sex couples already had under Rhode Island law and discriminated against same-sex couples in very real ways. History has taught us that "separate but equal" simply does not work. The ACLU of Rhode Island continues to urge the legislature to pass full marriage equality for all Rhode Islanders.