News & Commentary

The ACLU’s Voting Rights Project today amended our complaint in ACLU v. Donald Trump, our lawsuit against the White House’s voter suppression commission, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. In addition to the ACLU’s existing transparency and fair balance claims, the amended complaint charges that the commi

Two words stick in my mind when I think of the video of Daniel Shaver begging for his life before he was shot and killed by Officer Philip Brailsford of the Police Department in Mesa, Arizona. The two words were written on the dust cover of the AR-15 rifle Braisford used to kill Shaver: “You’re fucked.”

“Mass incarceration is a myth.” Racial bias in the criminal justice system “is the most ludicrous concept ever.” Data on sexual assault prosecutions should be kept secret because it might be “misinterpreted by the public.” These are all real quotes from elected prosecutors, the most powerful people in the crim

Whether or not you are in jail should not depend on your ability to pay for your freedom. Yet that’s the way our current money bail system works. It is one of the most corrupt and broken parts of our justice system.Close to half a million people are in jail today awaiting trial, many of them incarcerated because they are too poor to afford cash bail. The time has come to abolish this system. The ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice is launching a nationwide campaign today to end this injustice of wealth-based incarceration, deploying all of our tools from our nationwide state affiliate structure to our strategic litigation, communication, and legislative advocacy to support bail reform movements and our partners in states across the country. The original purpose of

The United Nations’ poverty expert will visit Puerto Rico today to survey the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and the structural issues it unveiled. The storm exposed the brutal and historic neglect of the island and its 3.5 million U.S. citizens. The ACLU and other organizations advocated for the U.N. to visit the island and

The ACLU on Thursday filed a challenge to an Arizona law that requires contractors doing business with the state to promise they won’t boycott Israel. This is the second such lawsuit the ACLU has filed in response to a wave of laws across the country designed to suppress constitutionally protected boycotts of Israel. Thursday’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of Mikkel Jordahl, an attorney who has contracted with the stat

On a May morning in 2015, Xiaoxing Xi, a physics professor at Temple University, woke up to violent banging on the door of his home in a quiet suburb of Philadelphia. He raced downstairs. When he opened the door, he was greeted by a group of armed federal agents. Within minutes, he was h

Police officer Michael Slager shot and killed an unarmed Black man, Walter Scott, in 2015, and it was all caught on video. Today he was sentenced by a federal judge to 20 years behind bars for violating Scott’s civil rights. While this instance of accountability in a police killing is heartening, the fact that it is a surprising result tells you what you really need to know about police reform. The accountability of police to the communities they serve is still elusive in many places, and nonexistent in some. Officer Slager was shown shooting Scott in the back while Scott ran away. Yet even with tha

As the Senate worked through the night last Friday on massive legislation that would overhaul the U.S. tax code, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas added an amendment that would effectively transform a college savings account into a school voucher for K-12 education. If the amendment survives, it would advance a type of policy that hurtsthe public school system and, as new evidence illustrates, hurts students with disabilities.The provision would expand 529 savings accounts, which offer tax benefits for saving for future college costs, to cover tuition and other expenses at elementary and secondary schools, including private and religious schools. Given that 80 percent of private schools in America are sectarian, incentivizing families to enroll their children in private schools means incentivizing them to enroll — or continue to enroll —their children in private religious schools. Additionally, the type of tax break proposed in this bill would increasingly exacerbate educational disparities by reducing available funding and resources for public schools. It would leave those remaining in public schools to be educated in an underfunded system of last resort. Public schools, which serve 90 percent of the country’s students, are obligated to serve all students equally. But the same cannot be said for private schools, which can, for instance, reject students because they have disabilities. Numerous studies already present plenty of evidence of the ways that vouchers do not advance educational equity. And last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) presented more in a