News & Commentary

Incarcerated people do not lose their First Amendment rights while locked up. Yet correctional facilities across the country routinely restrict materials that prisoners can access using unconstitutional, arbitrary rules governing everything from the item’s construction to its content. We’ve fought this fight before and will continue to do so. The latest case concerns Edward Lee Jones, Jr., a Black Muslim man denied access to the religious texts and music he has requested behind bars. 

We have witnessed the death and devastation that COVID-19 has brought to millions of people across the country this past year. The pandemic revealed the flaws and cracks in our social safety net and the gaps in law and policy that left too many of us unprotected. At the same time, the pandemic has exposed, more clearly than ever, the racial inequities and disparities that exist at every level of our society. COVID’s disproportionate impact on Black and Brown people — especially women of color — has shocked our national conscience, as it should. But it should come as no surprise that our current reality is a symptom of the deeply rooted systemic racism we know has long existed but have not fully confronted. The ACLU has prioritized systemic equity, and the COVID relief bill is certainly a vehicle for advancing these goals. 

Face recognition and other forms of biometric identification technologies are a threat to core constitutional rights and have a disturbing record of racial bias and inaccuracy that endangers people of color and other marginalized groups. In keeping with President Biden’s commitment to racial equity and civil liberties for all, he must take immediate action to halt the use and funding of these dangerous technologies by the federal government. 

The Trump Department of Justice spent its final days putting thousands of people at greater risk of catching COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic. On Jan. 15, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo arguing the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) will be legally obligated to return thousands of people released on home confinement back to federal prisons while the pandemic still ravages correctional facilities. With the memo’s March return date growing closer — and public health officials indicating that we will not be out of the pandemic woods by then — the Biden administration must take swift action. Not only must the administration ensure that those who have been released can stay out of these deadly facilities, they must also expand the program by increasing the number of people released to home confinement, the use of clemency, and the commutation of sentences. W

The riot on the Capitol building in the last days of Trump’s presidency was a powerful inflection point in an era of racial reckoning. In its wake, many pundits and politicians declared that “this is not America.” Our guest on At Liberty this week, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jeff Robinson, would disagree. The image of a Confederate flag paraded through the halls of the Capitol or cries to disavow an election with high Black voter turnout is America; it’s just not the one we like to talk about. 

The Federal Aviation Administration recently took a major step toward expanding the prevalence of aerial drones in American life by creating a system for identifying and tracking them. The new system is part of a steady march by the FAA to build a legal and technological infrastructure that allows for much greater freedom for drone flights. S

President Biden’s 100-day deportation moratorium, announced late last month, was a monumental achievement for immigrant justice activists and immigrant communities. Less visible but potentially groundbreaking: The Department of Homeland Security’s promise to conduct a top-to-bottom review of programs and policies governing the arrests and deportations of immigrants in the United States. 

Over the past four years, we grew accustomed to a regular barrage of blatant, segregationist-style racism from the White House. Donald Trump tweeted that “the Squad,” four Democratic Congresswomen who are Black, Latinx, and South Asian, should “go back” to the “corrupt” countries they came from; that same year, he called Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” mocking her belief that she might be descended from Native American ancestors. But as outrageous as the racist comments Trump regularly spewed were, the racially unjust governmental actions his administration took and, in the case of COVID-19, didn’t take, impacted millions more — especially Black and Brown people.  

Recently I joined as an expert in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU to challenge two laws that block the rights of women on Guam to abortion access. As a Chamoru, community activist and independent scholar who specializes in Guam history and the teaching of the language of its indigenous people, the Chamorus, I see helping ensure that Chamoru and other women today on Guam are empowered to make decisions about their bodies, their futures as part of our process of decolonization. T