News & Commentary

It’s heartening to see, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica revelations, growing skepticism about how Facebook handles data and data privacy. But we should take this opportunity to ask the bigger, harder questions, too — questions about discrimination and division, and whether we want to live in a society where our consumer data profile determines our reality. In the spring of 2016, a Facebook executive

When Bethany Webb’s sister, Laura, was killed in a mass shooting in 2011, she couldn’t imagine things getting worse. But then-District Attorney Tony Rackauckas of Orange County, California, took the case. In his zeal to impose the death penalty — over Webb’s objection — Rackauckas empl

On April 4, 1968, I was 11 and growing up in Memphis when the news came that Martin Luther King had been murdered. My parents couldn’t hide how bad it was – they were angry. They were afraid. And most memorably to my childhood self, they were crying. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I know now that I was afraid that killing the dreamer could kill the dream. Exactly one year earlier, in a speech at Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King said, “We are confro

When it was reported last week that the New York City Commission on Human Rights was investigating The Wing, the co-working space for women, over its women-only membership policy, its members and advocates rushed to the company’s defense. The inquiry has generated controversy given the heightened awareness, resulting from the #MeToo movement, that sexual harassment is still rampant in far too many workplaces. Judging by The Wing’s success as both a business venture and a place for wo

On March 27, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos appeared before the House Appropriations Committee to answer questions about the administration’s first year in office. While I had no shortage of questions for her, one of my top priorities was asking her about her department’s failure to protect the rights of transgender students. During the Obama administration, the Department of Education issued guidance to pu

On Friday, a federal judge ruled that our lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's policy of obstructing access to abortion for unaccompanied immigrant minors could move forward as a class action and that the government had to stop its cruel policy while the case proceeds.  The court’s decision is a huge relief.  It means that

On March 27, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that his office would not bring criminal charges against the two police officers who shot and killed Alton Sterling as he lay pinned by them to the ground in front of a convenience store in Baton Rouge. Attorney General Landry’s decision is two contradictory things: It is shocking, a

Update: On March 30, the Baton Rouge Police Department released disturbing body camera video of the police killing of Alton Sterling, and announced that Officer Blane Salamoni, who shot Sterling six times, would be fired. On March 27, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that his office would

After four separate courts blocked the Trump administration’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, the White House announced a new plan to carry out the ban on March 23. How is this possible? And what does this mean? We sat down with three lawyers from our LGBT & HIV Project — Josh Block, Cha