News & Commentary

Members of Congress last month introduced the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act.” The bill purports to address a real problem: According to the FBI, incidents of hate crimes motivated by anti-Jewish bias have significantly increased in recent years. But anti-Semitic harassment is already illegal under

Members of Congress last month introduced the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act.” The bill purports to address a real problem: According to the FBI, incidents of hate crimes motivated by anti-Jewish bias have significantly increased in recent years. But anti-Semitic harassment is already illegal under

UPDATE: After the Supreme Court ruling this morning, a federal appeals court on Monday night rejected the Trump administration's request to continue its policy of prohibiting immigrant minors from accessing abortion care while its appeal is pending. The text has been changed to reflect breaking news.  There has been a lot of confusion about Monday’s

In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled for a bakery that had refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. It did so on grounds that are specific to this particular case and will have little to no applicability to future cases. The opinion is full of reaffirmations of our country’s longstanding rule that states can bar businesses that are open to the public from turning customers away because of who they are.  The case involves Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig, a same-sex couple who went to the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver in s

Last week, the ACLU’s Border Litigation Project and University of Chicago Law’s International Human Rights Clinic published a report detailing child abuse by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The report, based on a portion of the more than 30,000 pages of government records we obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, identifies numerous cases of serious alleged misconduct by CBP officials between 2009 and 2014, focusing on the agency’s verbal, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of migrant children. CBP

Johnny Lee Gates, a Black man convicted in 1977 by an all-white jury of murdering a white woman in Muscogee County, Georgia, is currently fighting for his right to a retrial free from racial discrimination.  Despite strong evidence of racial bias in jury selection during the original trial, whethe

Oftentimes, when lawmakers don’t know how to make sense of something, or it scares them, they criminalize it. Exhibit A: sexting. Sexting is very common among teens, frequently referenced

The New York Police Department regularly faces criticism over the disproportionate number of Black and brown people who are arrested for marijuana possession. The department’s constant refrain has been that officers go where they are called. They respond to complaints to the city’s 311 assistance line or calls to 911. Arrests, they say, flow naturally from those calls to action. But a New York Times an

While the House was busy passing the divisive “empty gesture” known as the Protect and Serve Act during Police Week, the Senate took up a bill that Attorney General Jeff Sessions describes as “the centerpiece of our crime reduction strategy.” This bill, which the Senate unanimously passed and the House could take up in the next two weeks, authorizes the Project Safe Neighborhoods grant program. This program gives more federal dollars and resources for “a nationwide law enforcement program focused on the reduction of violent crime.”