News & Commentary

During my week-long visit to Standing Rock in January 2017, I listened to many water protectors speak about the shady tactics used against them by private security contractors and local law enforcement to undermine their protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. I heard stories about DAPL security companies trying to infiltrate protest camps and instigate rifts be

On Wednesday, Vox published a draft interim rule to alter the rule that requires workplace insurance plans to include coverage of contraception without a co-pay. It’s a policy change promised in the administration’s so-called religious liberty executive order. And it will make your hair stand on end. The contraception rule was meant to further women’s health and equality. The draft from yesterday proves once again that t

Earlier in May, the Trump administration fired Amy Lopez, the first superintendent of the education system in the federal Bureau of Prisons, a position created by President Barack Obama. This decision signals a tragic departure from what had been a growing acknow

Last week, the Trump administration released its budget request to Congress and included a proposal for six weeks of paid family leave to new mothers and fathers, including adoptive parents. This paid leave plan is not as retrograde as the original plan, which, as we previously wrote, would have promoted sex stereotypes by limiting its benefits to married birth mothers. But the correction of that unacceptable error does not mean the replacement plan is satisfactory.The devil remains in the details. The most glaring of the many unknowns and flaws in the revised plan is the provis

“I don’t care if you have one, two, three, four, five, six, or seven kids.” This is what the judge told me when I tried to explain that I was a single mom with seven kids. I could not afford to pay $10

Jessica Colotl came to the United States from Mexico with her family when she was 11 and grew up undocumented in the U.S. She was arrested in 2010 for driving without a license on her college campus near Atlanta and threatened with deportation. But when the national media reported her story, she was freed from the immigration detention facility. Instantly, Jessica became the face for the movement for status for undocumented young people.In June 2012, President Obama created a new program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, to help young undocumented people like Jessica live and work in the U.S. She graduated from college and began work as a paralegal in an immigration law firm. Nothing about Jessica’s situation has changed, but the Trump administration just revoked her DACA. We are fighting for Jessica and the 750,000 young people living with DACA.

After her ex-boyfriend stalked and harassed her, Tanica Lewis obtained a personal protection order against him. She informed her Detroit landlord of the order, which required him to stay away from her apartment. In March 2006, while she was at work, he broke the windows of her home and kicked in the door.Ms. Lewis reported the incident to the police and the property manager. Despite the protective order, the landlord held her responsible for property damage resulting from the home invasion and issued her an eviction notice. Ms. Lewis was forced to move her family from the property to a more expensive apartment that was also located further from her job. At the time, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) — which prohibi

Last week, a school principal and security guard threatened a senior named Summer at Hickory Ridge High School in Harrisburg, North Carolina, with arrest for violating her school dress code because she was wearing a shirt that showed her collarbone and shoulders. Defiant, she spoke out — protesting the discipline and refusing to budge until the principal called her mom — though she did put on a jacket. After the school suspended her, threatened her with expulsion, and barred her from walking in graduation, many of her classmates protested her treatment on social media — and the case blew up in the press.Such nonsense isn’t confined to North Carolina.The same week, a Massachusetts' charter school made headlines for penalizing two African-American sisters for violating their school dress code by wearing their hair in braids with extensions. The state attorney general has ordered the school to modify its policy, and the ACLU, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights have jointly filed a complaint with the state education department on her behalf. And a similar case just arose in Florida, where a student, Jenesis Johnson, was told her Afro was “extreme and faddish and out of control” and told she could not return to school unless she changed her hairstyle. These cases are the latest examples of schools drawing mounting protest — and even legal action

The lawyers at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project recently found themselves in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice for doing something they’ve done for more than 30 years: helping immigrants who can’t afford a lawyer. In a letter to NWIRP, the DOJ attempted to require the group to either agree to provide fu