News & Commentary

In October, the Supreme Court heard its first trans civil rights case ever. The case was brought by our client Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job at a funeral home solely for being transgender. That’s sex discrimination and it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  We have yet to see whether the Supreme Cou

For 30 years, I have worked in reproductive health care. In my current role as Chief Operating Officer of carafem, a nonprofit with a national network of health centers, I know the difference compassionate and comprehensive reproductive health care makes in the lives of our clients. I have witnessed the personal impact when people who have the legal right to have a child or to have an abortion are denied those rights due to outrageous societal barriers. Abortion providers are used to opposition, but we’ve never experienced the kind of explicit targeting we received from politicians in the city of Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. It took the local politicians less than 48 hours after we opened our doors to try and shut us down, but after serving the community for the past nine months with services limited by politics, today, we’re fighting back in court.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is deploying secret teams that target, detain, and interrogate innocent travelers. We’re suing to expose their activities.

This year has been one filled with outrage over the appalling conditions that asylum seekers face while in the custody of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). We’ve read about children and teenagers dying, people being denied medication, and one hielera — or “icebox” due to its freezing temperatures — where some people were reportedly forced to drink out of a toilet.

An important fight is brewing over the nuts and bolts of the Internet that has significant implications for the privacy and security of all Internet users. The fight has already pitted Google and Cloudflare against American telecommunications companies, which are lobbying Congress to complain about the search giant. The fight is complicated, but at its core are questions about control over data, centralized power, and who should bear privacy risks. We believe that everyone deserves to be able to use the Internet without being subject to mass surveillance.

Around the country and the world, people are mobilizing for menstrual equity. Central to the policy agenda: accessible and affordable period products for everyone who needs them. As legislative interventions gain traction, advocates are also readying legal arguments to challenge unfair policies. Constitutional law scholar and dean of UC Berkeley Law Erwin Chemerinsky recently co-authored a Los Angeles Times op-ed proposing that the failure of states to exempt menstrual products from sales tax — the tampon tax — amounts to denial of equal protection under the Constitution.

Imagine you are one of the 4,000 people arrested every year in Canadian County, Oklahoma, a county with less than 200,000 people. Maybe the police find marijuana in your car during a traffic stop, maybe the police have mistaken you for someone else, or perhaps you can’t afford the $40 per month you owe the court from a different charge.

From the continued separation of families, to attacks on asylum-seekers, to the largest immigration raid ever in a state, to an unprecedented number of immigrants jailed by ICE, this year was filled with new lows for the Trump administration.

Back in 2016, then President of the United States, Barack Obama, called solitary confinement “an affront to our common humanity” and ordered the Justice Department to implement reforms to the practice in U.S. prisons. Although just three short years ago, in too many ways it seems a different age: We have seen a resurgence of the “tough on crime” rhetoric that favors harsh policies and approaches that we know don’t work. Despite these painful setbacks in other areas, the strength of grassroots movements, political leadership, and growing public awareness have created a robust and growing movement to end solitary conferment — known to those of us in the justice community as Stop Solitary — dedicated to ensuring that this torturous practice ends up in the dustbin of history where it belongs.