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Following the passage three years ago of “Ban the Box” legislation that prohibited employers from asking about an applicant’s criminal record at the time of application, the General Assembly has nonetheless considered – and approved – broad background check requirements for a wide range of jobs.

According to a national report released by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, blacks in Rhode Island were arrested for drug possession at almost three times the rate of whites in 2014. That rate was higher than the national average, which shows blacks being arrested at about two-and-a-half times the rates of whites. This major disparity at both the state and national level exists even though national studies repeatedly show that blacks and whites generally use drugs at roughly similar rates.

Concluding that a 42-year old U.S. Supreme Court decision gave her “no authority to invalidate the Statute as unconstitutional,” U.S. District Judge Mary Lisi today upheld a 107-year-old Rhode Island law that declares inmates serving life sentences at the ACI to be “civilly dead.” The lawsuit, filed last year in U.S. District Court by ACLU volunteer attorney Sonja Deyoe, was on behalf of Woonsocket resident Shelby Ferreira and inmate Cody-Allen Zab, who had been barred from marrying because of the “civil death” law.

the ACLU testified in support of legislation to limit the practice of civil asset forfeiture by requiring an individual to be convicted of an offense before their assets can be relinquished, and ensuring that co-owners of assets are not unfairly punished.

Legislation sought to make Rhode Island the next state to adopt “death with dignity” legislation, allowing terminal patients to seek medication to end their lives.