News & Commentary

Congress and President Biden have a mandate from the American people to fix our broken immigration system: It’s time to pass legislation that provides a pathway to citizenship and legal residency for the millions of people in this country who are our neighbors, co-workers, friends and loved ones — yet are denied the ability to live freely as citizens and legal residents. The American people soundly rejected the hateful and divisive anti-immigrant policies pursued by the Trump administration. Now it’s imperative for Biden and Congress to seize on this momentum to finally get citizenship legislation done. 

Transgender athletes want to participate in school sports for the same reason as anybody else: to find a sense of belonging and social engagement, to be a part of a team, and to challenge themselves. But states and schools across the country are trying to exclude trans people from enjoying the benefits of sports on equal terms with their cisgender peers. Not only do these proposed laws discriminate against trans youth in ways that compromise their health, social and emotional development, and safety, they also raise a host of privacy concerns. T

Over 150,000 Black and Brown children, disproportionately children with disabilities, are handcuffed, restrained, referred to law enforcement, and arrested in schools across the nation each year. Placing police in our schools perpetuates a chilling pattern of racial and disability discrimination that endangers and traumatizes our children and funnels them into the school to prison pipeline. School policing is a threat to our students’ civil rights and to their right to learn in safe and supportive school environments. This is why we’re calling on President Biden to stop policing our students by ending federal funding of police in schools. T

This month, the ACLU launched its Systemic Equality agenda — an initiative designed to center equity and attack our country’s legacy of systemic racism by addressing the imbalance of political power, challenging policies that ravage Black communities, and furthering efforts to advance our racial justice work. As a part of this ambitious effort, the ACLU is making an unprecedented investment in the people and region where vulnerable communities are most affected by local and national regressive policies: the South. F

Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently deported a survivor of the 2019 Walmart massacre in El Paso, Texas, Rosa,* who was slated to testify at the suspect’s trial. S

This op-ed was originally published by TIME Magazine and can be read in full here. O

I have never had an ID that accurately reflects my gender. The closest I have come to achieving this was when I received my New York City municipal ID (IDNYC). Unlike my state ID, my city ID does not have any gender listed. When applying for my city ID there were four options: M, F, X, and not designated. I was given the autonomy to choose the gender marker that was best for me, and I did not have to provide a reason or any medical documentation for my choice. As a non-binary person, being able to remove gender entirely from an ID gave me a sense of safety and comfort that I hadn’t previously experienced with other identification documents. I felt relief that when showing my city ID, it wouldn’t “confirm” anyone’s assumptions or prompt any questions about my gender.

Imagine you’ve forgotten once again the difference between a gorilla and a chimpanzee, so you do a quick Google image search of “gorilla.” But instead of finding images of adorable animals, photos of a Black couple pop up. I

When President Biden’s nominee for U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland begins his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, the U.S. government will reach a critical inflection point. Following four years of failed policies at the Department of Justice under the leadership of Jeff Sessions and William Barr, Garland has the opportunity — and the mandate — to restore civil rights and civil liberties left in tatters by the Trump administration.