News & Commentary

On Oct. 11, 2018, the state of Washington’s supreme court unanimously struck down the death penalty as unconstitutional, ruling the “death penalty is invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased matter” and because it fails to serve any legitimate penological goal.” The death penalty is a punishment that is as flawed as it is final, and as the Washington high court acknowledges, one plagued by racial bias and arbitrariness. The ruling came in response to an appeal in Allen Gregory’s case. Gregory argued that the entire death penalty schem

Shannon Andrews just helped bring comprehensive health care coverage to transgender state employees across Wisconsin. Even more reassuring, she proved that average Americans understand that discrimination against transgender people comes with a cost. Shannon supervises a cancer research lab at the University of Wisconsin. Like other state employees, she gets health care

The ACLU launched its Campaign for Smart Justice with a simple but daring goal: cut the incarceration rate in this country by 50 percent and reduce the racial disparities in our prisons and jails. But we can’t get there if elected officials stand in our way.Politicians created mass incarceration, and they can end mass incarceration. Most politicians, however, need public pressure to do the right thing, which is why voters have an opportunity to send a real message come Nov. 6.To arm voters with the information they need to make the right choice on Election Day, the ACLU launched Vote Smart Justice, a nonpartisan voter education drive to give Americans information about where candidates for state and federal office stand on key criminal justice reform issues, like bail reform, the war on drugs, and police accountability. At VoteSmartJustice.org, users can access information on candidates’ voting history and public statements on criminal justice reform in more than 1,000 federal, state, and local elections. To find out where the candidates in your district stand, all you have to do is go to VoteSmartJustice.org and enter your zip code.

In New Hampshire, police officers are given special protections: Their personnel files are deemed confidential by the government. At the same time, to ensure that criminal defendants can present a strong defense, both the New Hampshire and U.S. Constitutions require that defendants have access to evidence that might help their case, including exculpatory evidence in a police officer’s personnel file.  The state’s “Laurie List,” named after a 1995 New Hampshire

Last month, I walked across the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst to get to work. It was an ordinary stroll. But to a bystander, the sight of an educated Black professional going about his day was apparently cause for alarm. That bystander called the police. My workplace was shut down. I was, and remain, humiliated. Racial profiling at predominantly white instit

Voters should not have to risk their lives in order to register to vote. Yet, in Florida, that's exactly the position that the state has chosen to put tens of thousands of people in. Despite the state’s Oct. 9 deadline to register to vote arriving amidst a looming Category 4 hurricane, Florida has refused to grant an adequate extension for Floridians to register to vote.  Hurricane Michael threatens to lash Florida with a life-threatening storm surge,

President Trump has a record of attacking the rights of protesters, from suggesting that protest be illegal to praising dictators who crush any kind of dissent. Now, the Trump administration

On Monday, President Trump gave a speech to the nation’s police chiefs. Like so many of his “law and order” speeches, it was fueled by bravado and falsehoods.   In the speech, Trump defended stop-and-frisk policies that have been ruled

Imagine: You’ve never been charged with any crime, yet the government blacklists you as a terrorism threat and bans you from flying indefinitely. You’re separated from family members, can’t get to weddings or funerals or religious obligations, and lose jobs because you can’t travel or your employer finds out you’re blacklisted. You know what the government has done violates your constitutionally protecte