News & Commentary

More than 90 percent of Montanans with substance use disorders do not receive treatment. In fact, lack of treatment and services is a big reason that people on probation or parole return to jail instead of to their family, jobs, and communities. Providing access to treatment for mental health or a substance use disorder is less expensive than putting people in jail, reducing the burden on taxpayers while keeping our communities safe and healthy.  Since 2016, Medicaid expansion has helped almost 100,000 Montanans receive access to health care, including funding and increasing access to substance use disorder treatment in Montana. We do not support or oppose candidates, but we urge you to cast an informed vote.

As we approach the end of President Trump’s first term, it’s important to understand why and how he has inflicted such damage on our nation’s immigration system and advanced his anti-immigrant, racist agenda. Trump has been able to systematically undermine our immigration laws and principles of fundamental fairness because our immigration system is fundamentally broken. It has been for decades. 

The younger you are, the less likely you are to vote. At least, that’s been the enduring trend in American politics for decades. But that trend is beginning to shift — today’s young voters are more engaged than ever before, and if they turn out in 2020 like they did in 2018, they could significantly impact the outcome of the election. So what does it take to get younger voters to the polls?  We take on this question in the latest episode of At the Polls, alongside Michael McDonald, a voter turnout researcher at the University of Florida, and Harvard University student and youth activist David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland school shooting in 2018. 

The Cobb County Detention Center is in crisis. Fifty people have died in custody since 2003, and others have experienced deadly neglect, misconduct by deputies, inhumane conditions, extended lockdowns, and inadequate medical care. The sheriff’s office also works with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a program to detain immigrants who live in Cobb County, splitting apart families and promoting racial profiling. To make an informed decision, make sure you know where the candidates land on the issues.

Thousands of immigrant families who call Gwinnett County home have been split apart by the sheriff office’s participation in a program with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This program, know as 287(g), costs taxpayers millions of dollars every year, erodes community trust, promotes racial profiling, and redirects local resources to federal immigration enforcement. The election for Gwinnett County Sheriff on Nov. 3 will help determine the county’s future collaboration with ICE. To make an informed decision, make sure you know the candidates’ positions on key immigration issues.

This past June, many breathed a sigh of relief when the U.S. Supreme Court rose above partisanship in controversial cases involving abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, the rights of DREAMERS, and the president’s tax returns. In those cases, conservative justices relied on legal reasoning, rather than party loyalty, to guide their decisions. But lurking in the shadows is a concerning new trend in the Supreme Court to grant an unprecedented number of emergency orders with little transparency and no opportunity for recourse. These cases comprise the court’s aptly named “shadow docket.” And under the Trump administration, this shadow docket has grown exponentially, with the Supreme Court disproportionately ruling on the side of the administration. On the podcast this week, we’re joined by the ACLU’s legal director David Cole, who explains this trend and digs into why it’s so concerning. We spoke with David before Justice Ginsberg’s death, and before President announced Amy Coney Barrett as his pick to replace her.  It is safe to say that the trends we discussed with David are unlikely to shift course — and could even worsen in the wake of these events.

Last month, the Louisiana Supreme Court refused to review the life sentence of Fair Wayne Bryant, who was sentenced to life in prison for attempting to steal a pair of hedge clippers more than 20 years ago. Bryant’s sentence was the result of Louisiana’s extreme “habitual offender” law, which allows people to spend life in prison for minor offenses. While the court should have reviewed the sentence, the legislature should abolish this law, and until then, Orleans prosecutors should refuse to seek it. Habitual offender statutes, known in some states as “three strikes” laws, are a relic of failed “tough on crime” policies that have had devastating consequences for families and communities across the country. Both racist and punitive in their nature, these enhancements drive out of control prison populations in states that have some of the highest incarceration rates in the world, Oklahoma and Louisiana among them.  Under these statutes, a person who is convicted of more than one felony crime faces longer and longer sentences for each subsequent conviction — no matter how minor or how much time has passed since. Not only are these laws racist, they are also ineffective and unnecessary from a public safety perspective. The majority (64 percent) of people serving time in Louisiana prisons under the law are there for nonviolent crimes, and Black people represent nearly 80 percent of those convicted as habitual offenders. The sheer cruelty and unfairness of Mr. Bryant’s sentence is enraging and inexcusable, but it is no anomaly: It is part and parcel of a system designed to perpetuate racial injustice and white supremacy.  Louisiana’s extreme sentencing law has condemned thousands of Louisianans to life imprisonment for minor offenses, helping make Louisiana the world’s leading incarcerator. And its longevity is a prime example of how our legal system continues to oppress, brutalize, and imprison Black and Brown people. In a scathing dissent to the decision, Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Johnson traced the law to the Black codes and “Pig Laws” during the post-Civil War era, which attempted to re-enslave newly-freed Black people.  “These laws remained on the books of most Southern states for decades,” Justice Johnson wrote. “And this case demonstrates their modern manifestation: harsh habitual offender laws that permit a life sentence for a Black man convicted of property crimes.”  Bryant’s outrageous and unjust sentence is a reminder of the urgent need for state legislators to repeal this extreme sentencing law before it needlessly destroys more people’s lives. Ballot initiatives like Oklahoma’s Yes On 805 campaign seek to put an end to the destructive power of habitual sentencing enhancements through the electoral process. Fortunately for Louisiana, our district attorneys don’t have to wait.  Prosecutors — right now — have the discretion to stop seeking enhanced penalties under the habitual offender law, and all of us have a responsibility to hold them to it.  There are dozens of district attorneys on the ballot across Louisiana this year — including in Orleans Parish, where District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro is stepping down after 12 years of pushing ineffective “tough on crime” policies.  The ACLU of Louisiana is proud to be among more than 30 organizations in the People’s DA Coalition, which, among other reforms, is calling on Orleans Parish District Attorney candidates to commit to ending all use of the habitual offender law. Prosecutors have a vital role to play in helping ensure Louisiana finally sheds its title as the prison capital of the world, and declining to seek harsher sentences under this unjust law would be one important step in that direction. 

Millions of people are planning to vote by mail in this election, and for most, it will be the first time. COVID-19 has made voting by mail more popular than ever because it’s the safest way for many to cast a ballot. But some voters still have questions about the safety and security of this method, and whether their mail-in ballot will be counted. Contradictory messages from President Trump add to the confusion — even though the president, and many of his cabinet members, vote by mail themselves.  All voters are able to make an informed decision on how to cast a ballot — and that means cutting through the confusion to debunk common misperceptions about vote by mail.

Rita, a single mother, was desperate to find an affordable home in Palm Beach County, Florida, after suffering a foreclosure a few years earlier. After searching for some time, she finally found an apartment within her price range but there was one huge problem: Soon after she moved in, the property manager began to sexually harass her.   He took advantage of Rita’s financial circumstances — and his position of power over her — to extort sexual acts from her in exchange for reduced rent. The harassment escalated, as he tracked her whereabouts, monitored her guests, and installed surveillance cameras facing her home. After Rita refused to continue with the “quid pro quo” arrangement, the property manager retaliated. He served her with fraudulent violation and eviction notices, filed an eviction action against her even though she owed no rent, and asked the police to arrest her for trespassing.  Rita filed a lawsuit against the property manager, arguing that his harassment of her and retaliatory acts once she rejected his sexual behavior violated the federal Fair Housing Act, which protects people from discrimination based on sex, including sexual harassment. In a shocking decision, the trial court dismissed her case at the earliest stage, concluding that even if she could prove all of her allegations, the property manager’s conduct would not qualify as either harassment or retaliation.  Yesterday, the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, along with the National Fair Housing Alliance, National Women’s Law Center, Relman Colfax PLLC, and other groups, filed an amicus brief in support of Rita’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The brief lays out the consistent case law that shows sexual harassment in housing violates civil rights guarantees. It also underscores the inherent power imbalance between a housing provider and a tenant, arguing that an owner or property manager violates the Fair Housing Act when he conditions a tenant’s rental payment on her submission to sexual acts as well as when he retaliates against her when she refuses. Unfortunately, Rita’s experience is far from anomalous. Sexual harassment in housing remains a widespread and insidious issue for women and LGBTQ tenants across the country. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only made tenants more vulnerable to harassment and abuse by landlords and property managers who abuse tenants’ financial insecurity and shelter-in-place orders. Sexual harassment in the home in uniquely violative and threatening, as the home is supposed to be one’s place of refuge. Victims of sexual harassment have reported severe and often immobilizing emotional and physiological consequences, including shame, depression, sleeplessness, headaches, and anxiety. In many cases, individuals are forced to move out of their homes to escape the abuse. But such displacement is expensive and often results in financial hardship due to steep moving costs, loss of security deposits, and even job loss. Critically, women of color are especially vulnerable to sexual harassment and its lasting consequences due to the intersecting experiences of racism and sexism. The testimony of Black women, Indigenous women, and other women of color often reveals that they have been sexually harassed or targeted precisely because of their race and stereotypes about women of color. Moreover, the harmful impact of sexual harassment is magnified for women and gender-nonconforming tenants who hold other marginalized identities. Women with disabilities, for example, face higher rates of sexual harassment and violence than those without disabilities. Transgender women and other LGBTQ-plus tenants also experience significant barriers to housing access due to harassment and abuse based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Yet despite the devastating consequences of discrimination on tenants, landlords lag far behind employers and schools in ensuring that they and their staff are held accountable when they perpetrate sexual harassment, or when they know of harassment committed by other tenants. Courts should hold landlords accountable when they fail to address harassment, including sexual harassment, committed by tenants — just as employers are responsible for responding to sexual harassment at the workplace, and schools are responsible for responding to complaints by students. We recently filed an amicus brief in Francis v. Kings Manor Park — a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit — arguing that a housing provider should be held liable under the Fair Housing Act for refusing to respond to discriminatory tenant-on-tenant harassment. Enforcing the Fair Housing Act’s protections against sexual harassment — whether by landlords, property managers, or other tenants — is a crucial step. It has been established time and again that this nation’s civil rights statutes broadly protect against sexual harassment in every major facet of one’s life. The courts must apply the Fair Housing Act’s protections to ensure equal housing opportunity for women and all marginalized communities.