News & Commentary

Today the House of Representatives passed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019 (H.R. 1585). This VAWA bill authorizes programs and funding that support survivors of gender-based violence. But it also does more: It tackles some of the laws and institutions that perpetuate domestic violence and sexual assault across the country. Dismantling these structural causes of gender-based violence is essential to ensuring the security and dignity of survivors, their families, and communities. Protecting the Right to Seek Emergency and Police Assis

A trove of photographs depicting brutalized and murdered prisoners in Alabama’s St. Clair Correctional Facility has thrust the treatment of our nation’s 2.3 million incarcerated people into public view. The first horror is what these people have endured in prison. The second horror is that while shocking, it is not a surprise.  As a lawyer who has represented prisoners for more than two decades, I

Powerful new technologies make mass surveillance easier than ever for law enforcement. One such technology, automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), capture location data that can reveal people’s religious, political, sexual, medical, and social activities. For years, law enforcement agencies across the country have collected and stored this data with very little oversight and few legal constraints. For the ACLU of Virginia, taking on this major privacy issue has been a four-year fight that began with efforts in 2015 to work across both a

The Arizona Supreme Court will soon consider the misconduct of one of Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s top prosecutors: Juan Martinez. Martinez gained national notoriety when he prosecuted Jodi Arias for murder in 2008, but his aggressive and often unethical conduct was well-known in Arizona well before then. It’s time he’s held accountable. The ACLU of Arizona and the ACLU Capital Punishment Project yesterday filed an

Minnesota is one of more than 40 states across the country that suspends people’s driver’s licenses for outstanding tickets and fees, a practice that disproportionately harms low-income people. But the Minnesota Legislature may act to end this wealth-based penalty through legislation introduced in both chambers. If it becomes law, more than 50,000 Minnesotans will have their licenses restored. The bill would repeal the provision of Minnesota law that allows

Every year, millions of people are arrested, required to pay money bail they cannot afford, separated from their families and loved ones, or subjected to long periods of incarceration based on the mere accusation of a crime. This all occurs while people are presumed innocent under the law. Black and brown people, their loved ones, and those without the economic resources to thrive suffer the worst harms. Yet while there is broad consensus that our money

Individuals don’t lose their First Amendment rights by entering into government service. By now, that is black letter law. You wouldn’t know this, though, from the system of lifelong censorship that the government imposes on former intelligence agency employees and military personnel. Under this system, known as “prepublication review,” millions of former public servants must submit their writing to the government for

The government of South Dakota has made it very clear that it does not like people who protest the Keystone XL pipeline. The state’s governor has dismissed them as “out-of-staters who come in to disrupt.” And other officials have similarly leveraged long-debunked and harmful tropes, mischaracterizing those speaking out as “paid protesters.” In this atmosphere, South Dakota enacted a new law last week, the

Jose Ivan Parga is a member of a multi-status, Mexican-immigrant family in Minnesota. Even though he is a citizen, every day he witnesses the fear and uncertainty that his extended family has because of their immigration status. For decades they have worked, worshiped, and raised families in the state. Yet at any moment, immigration agents could — and have — detained a member of his family without warning or cause, despite their deep roots in the community. With no clear path to citizenship, Jose Ivan’s family is forced to live in the shadows of a broken immigration system. Jamie Miller is a survivor of sexual assault. As a teen, she was assaulted at a party by a boy from another school who didn’t even k