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This piece originally appeared at In Justice Today.

This article was originally published at Haaretz. The First Amendment squarely protects

If a U.S. Border Patrol agent uses excessive and unnecessary force to kill a noncitizen in a foreign country, are there consequences under the U.S. Constitution? The answer might seem to be obviously “yes” to most people. Unfortunately, our own government believes the answer is “no.” On October 10, 2012, José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, a 16-year old boy, was shot and killed on Calle

One night in February, when I had been working as a driver for Uber and Lyft almost a year, I got a call from a friend. He asked me to drive three hours from Los Angeles to a place near San Diego to pick up his uncle and cousin and drive them back to L.A., and said he would pay the going rate. I had no idea that picking up that fare would change my life. It turned out his relatives had just entered the country illegally — but I didn’t know that. I never even met th

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics concluded “the southwest land border is more difficult to illegally cross today than ever before.” Between 2000 and 2016, Border Patrol apprehensions declined by 72 percent. The decline has been so significant that the average border agent is catching about one migrant per month. Despite this, there are thousands more Border Patrol agents now than even 10 years ago, as the force more than doubled after 9/11 to over 21,000 authorized personnel today. The fact of the matter is that U.S. border security is more than adequate, unless you’re a

In April, President Trump had a message for the 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who were given permission to live in the U.S. under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program: “The dreamers,” he said, “should rest easy.” We now know that was a lie. In September, Trump announced h

Aimee Stephens knows first-hand how religiously-motivated discrimination can wreck your life. Aimee worked as a funeral director for a Michigan funeral home for six years. Aimee is a woman who is transgender, but for six years she went to work presenting as a man, while she struggled to be able to live her life as a woman. When she could hide no longer, she came out to her boss. Two weeks later, he fired her, saying “this is not going to work out.” The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued on Aimee’s b

For the past eight years, I have been a family medicine doctor in Kauai, Hawaii, providing a range of health services and delivering over 800 babies on the island. It is stunningly beautiful here, but what the honeymooners don’t see are the challenges faced by many who live on this remote island. Kauai has a high rate of poverty, domestic violence, food insecurity, and a shortage of doctors.And there is not a single abortion provider on the island. I am qualified and willing to change that. If I were allowed to write a prescription for Mifepr

The idea that the regulation of medical care must be based on scientific evidence is not controversial — unless the care in question is abortion. That is why, today, the ACLU and the ACLU of Hawaii h