News & Commentary

Until last year, Surjit Singh’s beard had never been trimmed or cut. A devout Sikh, Mr. Singh believes that hair is a divine gift and removing it from the body dishonors God. But in a shocking incident last August, correctional officers processing Mr. Singh’s intake at an Arizona prison restrained him and shaved off his beard entirely despite his protests that it would violate his deeply held religious beliefs and despite the fact that federal law protects incarcerated individuals’ ability to exercise their faith. Today, along with the ACLU of Arizona, the Sikh Coalition, and the law firm WilmerHale, we filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, urging the department to investigate the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) for its egregious infringement of Mr. Singh’s religious freedom rights. W

Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Hesiler should still be alive today. I

Three million Americans currently suffer from Opioid Use Disorder, or an addiction to opioids. Today, adults between the ages of 25 and 44 are more than twice as likely to die from opioid overdose than from COVID-19. When we zoom in on the prison population, the numbers are even more jarring: 85 percent of people in prison or jail have some kind of substance use disorder, compared with 9 percent of the general population. Yet people who are incarcerated are less likely to get access to the care they need to treat their addiction. M

For more than 30 years, Grand Rapids, Michigan police have engaged in the egregious, unconstitutional practice of detaining people on the street and then fingerprinting and photographing anyone who isn’t carrying an ID, all without a warrant. In the process, they have disproportionately targeted Black people, young people, and lower-income people. The Michigan Supreme Court will soon hear an ACLU case challenging the practice, and the court’s decision will have a lasting impact on police practices and the right to privacy in Michigan and across the nation. T

Kimberly Vazquez and Yashira “Yoshi” Valenzuela are two Baltimore high school students who live in households that experience frequent power cuts, particularly when too many electronics are plugged in at once. When their classes went virtual last year, it didn’t take long to realize they had a serious problem. Participating in class required connectivity to high-speed, broadband internet, and the low-cost plans their families could afford did not cut it. Together, they lead the student-led advocacy group Students Organizing a Multicultural and Open Society (SOMOS), and have organized student boycotts and letter writing campaigns, testified in front of the Baltimore City Council and State Assembly, and ultimately pressured Comcast to agree to raise the minimum speeds on its low-cost plan. W

After years of advocacy, grassroots organizing, and on the cusp of the one-year anniversary of when hundreds of thousands of people joined in solidarity with Black organizers by marching to support Black lives and to divest from racist policing, we’ve reached a major milestone: Amazon has announced it will stop selling face recognition technology to police — indefinitely. A

Friday, May 21, 11 am CT – 1 pm CT A dangerous bill that will ban Tennessee students from learning about America's complex and painful history of racism and oppression is on its way t

There’s been a lot of