News & Commentary

The attorneys for the RI ACLU and the Cranston School Committee have today submitted a formal judgment in the lawsuit filed by the ACLU last year challenging the presence of a school prayer mural in Cranston High School West’s auditorium. The case will be officially concluded when the judgment is signed by U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux. The terms of the judgment are provided below:

RI ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown: “The latest statistics should serve as wake-up call to all parents and policy-makers.  Rhode Island is on the verge of creating a huge and permanent underclass of teenagers based solely on the arbitrary scores of a standardized test that national studies show serves no meaningful purpose when used for high stakes purposes.”

Few people are aware of the devastating consequences that will follow from the Department of Education’s planned implementation in 2014 of a flawed “high stakes testing” requirement. That was the message today from community and civil rights groups which examined in thorough detail the statistics from the latest standardized test results (known as the “NECAP tests”) for Rhode Island students. Charts and graphs presented by the groups at a news conference today showed that the testing requirement will have a “stunning and severe” adverse impact on every community in the state.  Among the findings the groups released today, based on the 11th Grade NECAP math scores released two weeks ago:

Although a new redistricting plan for the state House and Senate was signed into law two weeks ago, the public remains in the dark as to whether the lines that were drawn ensure fair representation for racial minorities. That is the gist of a detailed four-page letter sent by six community organizations to the state’s redistricting consultant, Kimball Brace, seeking an explanation for his failure to use or release any racial bloc voting analysis despite being required to do so under his contract with the state.

The RI ACLU reported today that, after six months, “an embarrassingly small number of couples” – only forty-six – have taken advantage of Rhode Island’s civil union law, which was enacted over the strong protests of the state’s gay and lesbian community. Those figures contrast sharply with newly-released data from Delaware and Hawaii, states with similar populations to Rhode Island, and which implemented their own civil union laws last month. In the first month of those laws, Hawaii reported the issuance of at least 106 civil union licenses, and Delaware reported more than 85. Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, only seven couples obtained civil union licenses in November and December, including just one for the entire month of December. Those numbers remain far behind any other state with civil union, marriage or domestic partnership laws.

The Rhode Island ACLU has filed a legal brief asking a federal court to reject arguments by the United States government that it be dismissed from the lawsuit on behalf of the family of a detainee who died while in the custody of immigration officials at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. 

The Rhode Island ACLU has today filed a “friend of the court” brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston, supporting Governor Lincoln Chafee’s legal efforts to prevent the surrender of murder suspect Jason Wayne Pleau to federal authorities to potentially face the death penalty. The brief was joined by the four other ACLU affiliates – from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Puerto Rico – that are in the appeals court’s jurisdiction.

The RI ACLU today announced the favorable settlement of a lawsuit against the Division of Motor Vehicles, which had refused to reinstate a person’s driver’s license based on a “policy” that appeared nowhere in the agency’s rules and regulations. The lawsuit, filed in R.I. Superior Court by ACLU volunteer attorneys Albin Moser and Melissa Braatz on behalf of Warwick resident Marc Lavik, had argued that the DMV’s actions violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), an important state law that requires agencies to provide advance notice and a comment period before adopting policies that affect members of the public.

Today, a dozen organizations that work closely with children and families who are poor, minority, non-English speaking, or who have disabilities or other barriers to learning, expressed their strong support for state legislation that would eliminate the drive to implement “high stakes testing” in Rhode Island. “High stake testing” refers to the use of state assessments to determine whether or not a student may graduate, and is currently scheduled to go into effect in 2014 under regulations adopted by the state Department of Education.