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Although the numbers have improved significantly since the Rhode Island ACLU sued the Department of Human Services last July for failing to process food stamp applications in a timely manner, almost 3 out of 10 applicants eligible for expedited food stamps are still not being processed within seven days as required by federal law. Those are the results gleaned from reports prepared by DHS and provided to the ACLU as part of the settlement agreement entered in the lawsuit last October.

The Rhode Island ACLU on Tuesday will ask the FBI to turn over records related to the agency’s collection and use of race and ethnicity data in local communities. According to a 2008 FBI operations guide, FBI agents have the authority to collect information about and map so-called “ethnic-oriented” businesses, behaviors, lifestyle characteristics and cultural traditions in communities with concentrated ethnic populations. ACLU affiliate offices across the nation are filing coordinated Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on Tuesday to uncover records about this activity from their local FBI field offices.

The RI ACLU has sharply blasted a plan announced today by Providence Mayor David Cicilline to “institute random drug testing in the Police Department effective immediately.” The ACLU said the proposal was “clearly illegal” and called it “sadly ironic” for the Department, “in the name of rooting out illegal activity by officers,” to propose a policy that, if implemented, would itself be a crime.

The Rhode Island ACLU has today filed an appeal with the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education to contest the planned implementation of a mandatory school uniform policy in Woonsocket public schools. The complaint, filed by RI ACLU volunteer attorney John W. Dineen, is on behalf of four parents – Monique Richard, Lisa Desplaines, Angela Lemoine and Tiffany Johnson – and their children. Although the policy is effective September 1st, the ACLU has been advised by school officials that it will not be enforced for thirty days.