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The ACLU has sent a letter to the RI Senate raising concerns about the apparent rush to hold a vote to seek Senator Nicholas Kettle’s expulsion following the filing of formal criminal charges against him.  A democratically elected Senator, Kettle has declined to resign his Senate seat while he contests the charges.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today wrote to officials at the R.I. Public Transportation Authority to raise concerns about an incident that occurred yesterday when the agency initially sought to ban local journalist Steve Ahlquist from video recording a RIPTA Board meeting.

The ACLU of Rhode Island today issued a critical analysis of the Attorney General’s (AG) response to State Representative Patricia Morgan’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA) request for documents pertaining to the AG’s expenditure of more than $50M in funds from the settlement of a recent Google lawsuit with the State. Representative Morgan has thus far been charged more than $3,700 for partial release of the records, some of which are heavily redacted. The ACLU’s analysis highlights “the clear need for legislation to strengthen the law.”

In anticipation of the national student walkout happening on March 14, 2018, the ACLU of Rhode Island has sent a letter to all school district superintendents in the State reminding them of students’ rights on the matter. Scheduled for 10am that day, the national student event is a planned protest of legislative inaction in addressing the problem of gun violence. The walkout will last for 17 minutes in honor of the 17 students killed in the Parkland, FL shooting a month earlier.

Despite legislation enacted in 2017 aimed at promoting criminal justice reform, the Rhode Island General Assembly’s 2018 session took significant steps back from a “smart justice” approach by adding more than a dozen new felonies to the books and increasing sentences for several other crimes.