News & Commentary

By a 3-2 vote, the Rhode Island Supreme Court has rejected a petition filed by the RI ACLU that sought an order requiring the state Board of Elections to conduct a manual recount of contested ballots cast in the Representative District 58 Democratic Primary. RI ACLU executive director Steven Brown called the court decision “a great loss for fairness and transparency in the election process.”

Dozens of parents, students, educators and community groups, including the ACLU, attended a meeting of the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education yesterday to call for an end to the Board’s “high stakes testing” graduation requirement, scheduled to first affect the Class of 2014. Speakers pointed out the devastating impact the requirement would have on disadvantaged populations – including students with disabilities, racial minorities, the poor, and English Language Learners – by denying them diplomas on the basis of a standardized test that was never designed for that purpose. In addition, groups pointed out that neither the standardized test being used now, nor the one scheduled to be used beginning in 2015, is an appropriate test to determine a student’s qualifications for a diploma.

In a petition filed today in the state Supreme Court, RI ACLU volunteer attorney Armando Batastini has asked the Court to order the state Board of Elections to conduct a manual recount of all precinct, mail and provisional ballots cast in the Representative District 58 Democratic Primary. The petition is on behalf of candidate Carlos Tobon, whose purported one-vote loss to incumbent William San Bento has been mired in controversy and confusion since election night. The ACLU’s petition also asks for an audit of all mail and provisional ballots in that election to determine the qualification of each voter submitting those ballots.

The RI ACLU today announced it has agreed to file a petition in the Rhode Island Supreme Court on behalf of state Representative candidate Carlos Tobon, whose purported one vote loss to incumbent William San Bento has been mired in controversy and confusion since election night. The petition will seek a review of the election results in light of multiple errors that have come to light about the conduct of that election.

The Rhode Island ACLU has today filed a “friend of the court” brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, supporting Governor Lincoln Chafee’s legal appeal seeking to prevent the surrender of murder suspect Jason Wayne Pleau to federal authorities to face a potential death penalty.

The following statement was issued today by the ACLU of RI in response to the Cranston sex discrimination controversy. The issue arose when a local parent-teacher organization, with initial support from the school, organized a “father-daughter dance” for girls attending the school, and a “mother-son” outing to a Pawtucket Red Sox baseball game for the boys:

The Narragansett Town Council has tentatively agreed to resolve a lawsuit filed by the ACLU in April on behalf of three URI pharmacy graduate students who received tickets for parking their cars overnight on their street even though they had a permit to do so.

With numerous amendments to the state’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA) taking effect on September 1st, the Rhode Island ACLU today has published a brochure advising people of their rights under the statute. The brochure is posted on the Affiliate’s website, along with information explaining in detail how people can go about requesting records from public bodies under the revised law.

Reviewing a year’s worth of data, the Rhode Island ACLU reported today that gay and lesbian couples have emphatically said “I Don’t!” to the state’s civil union law. According to statistics obtained from the RI Department of Health, a total of only 68 couples obtained civil union licenses in the first year of the law, which took effect July 1, 2011. By contrast, when civil union laws took effect earlier this year in two states with similar populations to Rhode Island, Hawaii reported the issuance of at least 106 civil union licenses, and Delaware reported more than 85, in the first month alone.