News & Commentary

Tonya Lee* and her two children had been living in their Maryland apartment complex for five years when her boyfriend became enraged during an argument and stabbed her and her older son. After the police arrested him, her landlord sent her a notice: They were evicting her because of the violence. Her lease included a standard provision authorizing eviction of tenants when there is criminal activity in their homes.  Domestic violence survivors shouldn’t face eviction just because the crime takes place in their home. The ACLU has been ad

In the United States, people have the right to protest, and the press has the right to write about it. But over the past month, multiple journalists, documentary filmmakers, and activists have been arrested in three different states for engaging in and reporting on protests against fossil fuel infrastructure projects. While the arrests are concerning, many of the charges leveled at members of the press, particularly the documentarians, are excessive and clearly designed to send a message to other activists and members of the independent media who might cover the protests: Want to join them? Earlier this month, Amy Goodman with Democracy Now! was charged with

Norma (not her real name) was the wife of a police officer in El Salvador. She lived in a neighborhood where gang members waged frequent gunfights, committed murders, and forced her to pay extortion fees. In late 2014, four gang members abducted Norma and took her to a cemetery, where three of them tied her hands, stuffed her mouth closed, and raped her. Even after she fled to another town, the groups continued to threaten Norma and her children. When she finally escaped to the United States to seek asylum, federal authorities locked her in a detention center. The mass detention of asylum-seekers like Norma is a major reason why The Wall Street Journal recen

The New York Times is publishing a devastating exposé series on the lasting psychological effects of U.S. government torture on men who once were held in CIA-run secret overseas prisons or at Guantanamo Bay. Two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were independent contractors for the CIA and designed an

Back in the day, a student who broke school rules or otherwise misbehaved would be reprimanded by a teacher or sent to the principal’s office. But today, school administrators are increasingly relying on law enforcement to keep students in line, and the results can be dire. Take the case of Michael Davis, a five-year-old student with disabilities in the Stockton Unified School District.  

There are still many questions to be answered about Yahoo’s secret scanning of all of its customers’ incoming emails under a mysterious government order. Anonymous officials have

The most recent numbers showing lead levels in the water of Flint’s public schools continue to hit with spine-chilling impact. Thirty months after an appointed emergency manager made the ill-fated decision to begin using the dangerously corrosive F

Recently leaked documents published by The Intercept show that the FBI and Customs and Border Protection have been using CBP’s authority to search travelers at the border — along with the troves of information collected as a result — to troll for potential sources and pressure people into becoming informants. We’ve gone through the documents, and they heighten our concerns that these agencies are exceeding their authority, targeting minority communities and vulnerable people, and trying to evade accountability for doing so. These documents also highlight a broader problem with the government’s

After unlawfully imprisoning our client Mohamedou Ould Slahi at Guantánamo for 14 years without charge or trial, the U.S. government has finally released him. He is now home in his native Mauritania. We are overjoyed for Mohamedou and his loving family, wh