Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Suzanne Ito, ACLU
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Posts by Suzanne Ito, ACLU
On the Agenda: January 30 – February 3
05 days ago
This week, all eyes are on Florida for Tuesday’s GOP primary. As we pointed out last week, the right to vote in that state is threatened by a new law that makes it nearly impossible for organizations like the nonpartisan League of Women Voters to register voters. In this video, people who help register voters talk about how this new law will have crippling effects on voter participation in this year’s election.
Also, the first hearing under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act began today and is expected to run for a couple of weeks. The ACLU is part of a team of lawyers representing Marcus Robinson, a black defendant convicted in the death of a white person and who received a far harsher judgment than white defendants who committed comparable crimes from a jury that may have been tainted by a racially biased jury selection process.
Monday, January 30
Criminal Justice: Today, we will file a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Hill v. United States and Dorsey v. United States. Both cases concern the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the sentencing disparity between mandatory minimums for crack and cocaine offenses from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1. The Court will consider whether people whose offenses predate the enactment of the FSA, but who were sentenced afterwards, should be sentenced based on the old 100-to-1 ratio or the new, fairer 18-to-1 ratio. In our brief, we urge the Court to hold that Congress intended the FSA to apply in all sentencing proceedings that occur after its enactment.
Tuesday, January 31
National Security: On Tuesday at 10 a.m., the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will hold a hearing called “Worldwide Threats.” Witnesses will include FBI director Robert Mueller III, Defense Intelligence Agency director Ronald Burgess and National Counterterrorism Center director Matthew Olsen.
Privacy: The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law will hold a hearing titled "The Video Privacy Protection Act [PL 100-618]: Protecting Viewer Privacy in the 21st Century." The ACLU is submitting a statement.
Thursday, February 2
Women’s Rights: The Senate Committee on the Judiciary will hold a markup of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2011 (S. 1925).
National Security: The Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law will hold a discussion of the book by the American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice titled The Law of Counterterrorism.
Friday, February 3
Voting Rights: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will hold a hearing on enforcement of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act during the current redistricting cycle. ACLU Voting Rights Project (VRP) director Laughlin McDonald will testify at the hearing. The VRP and the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office will be submitting testimony for the record.
National Security: The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management will hold a hearing titled "Is DHS [Department of Homeland Security] Effectively Implementing a Strategy to Counter Emerging Threats?"
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On the Agenda: January 23 – 27, 2012
01 week ago
President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night is this week’s big event. Hopefully we’ll hear him address civil liberties issues.
Also this week, the Senate may introduce cybersecurity legislation that could affect all Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment rights online. This could include an Internet “kill switch,” which would give the president undefined authority to cut off or limit access to the Internet in case of national security threat or emergency, and more information sharing between private companies and the government.
Monday, January 23
On Monday, several nationally renowned forensic pathologists will file a friend-of-the-court brief in the Mississippi Supreme Court on behalf of ACLU client and death row inmate Leslie Galloway, supporting our claim that Galloway’s crime was rendered eligible for the death penalty based solely on scientifically invalid testimony by the prosecution’s expert.
Tuesday, January 24
Criminal Justice: The House Judiciary Committee will begin marking up H.R. 3796, the Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act, in order to provide funding for the sex offender registry, which was established under the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
Wednesday, January 25
LGBT Rights: Wednesday is National Gay-Straight Alliance Day. As part of National GSA Day, the ACLU will be promoting advocacy in support of the Student Non-Discrimination Act (S. 555) on Facebook and Twitter.
National Security: The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management will hold a hearing titled "Is DHS [Department of Homeland Security] Effectively Implementing a Strategy to Counter Emerging Threats?"
Racial Justice: The American Enterprise Institute will hold a panel discussion titled "The Muslim-American Muddle: Where Do Muslims Fit in American Society?”
Thursday, January 26
Women’s Rights: The Senate Committee on the Judiciary may hold a markup of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2011 (S. 1925) on January 26 at 10 a.m.
National Security: The Brookings Institution will hold an event titled “The Future of the National Security Industrial Base,” at which Representative Mac Thornberry will speak.
Friday, January 27
Women’s Rights: In one of the first nationwide class action sex discrimination cases to be decided following the Supreme Court’s decision last June in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit will hear oral arguments on Friday in Davis v. Cintas, a case concerning sex discrimination in hiring. The case involves a system for hiring sales workers that the plaintiffs allege is subjective and standardless, and that the plaintiffs claim discriminates against women applicants. The court will decide whether a class can properly be certified. The case could significantly affect women’s ability to address broad patterns of discrimination in the workplace. The ACLU co-authored an amicus brief with the ACLU of Michigan and the Impact Fund.
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On the Agenda: January 17-20, 2012
02 weeks ago
It would be hard to find anything 84 percent of Americans could agree on. But a new poll released today, the first day of a new legislative session, finds 84 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job. Who says Congress is divisive?
Speaking of disapproval: the big news this week is the planned online blackout tomorrow to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Major players in online news, including Reddit, Raw Story, BoingBoing and Wikipedia will be down for most of the day to demonstrate how such sites could be shut down if these bills pass.
Also, this week we’ll announce the details of our settlement with South Carolina’s Chesterfield County School District. Last December, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of a district student and his father, both atheists, challenging the district’s pervasive practice of school-sponsored prayer, preaching and religious activities, as illustrated in this video.
Tuesday, January 17
Detention: The military commission hearing in the case of Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri beginning today will once again put on the world stage two of the worst U.S. ideas: Guantánamo and the death penalty. At issue in the pre-trial hearing is an indigent defendant’s right to receive funding for the necessary investigation and experts needed to defend against capital charges and the death sentence, and to ask for that funding outside the interested ears of the prosecution.
Wednesday, January 18
Online Piracy: It sounded like a good idea at first: SOPA was introduced in the House as an effort to reduce online copyright infringement by taking down sites that allow Internet users to acquire pirated versions of original artistic content online. But the proposed legislation’s vague definition of what constitutes copyright infringement could lead to the restriction of completely lawful non-infringing content, which is why the ACLU opposes SOPA. (PIPA, introduced in the Senate, is similar legislation.)
See the statement we submitted to the House Judiciary Committee on SOPA, and read our blog posts following the developments. And join us in urging Congress to oppose SOPA and craft a bill that more narrowly targets pirated material online.
Thursday, January 19
The American Constitution Society and the ACLU will host a panel discussion about the role the U.S. Sentencing Commission plays in sentencing guidelines after the 2010 passage of the Fair Sentencing Act.
Friday, January 20
ACLU Legislative Counsel Michelle Richardson will speak at American University’s Washington College of Law conference entitled “Transparency and the Obama Administration: A Third Year Assessment” about unnecessarily unclassified information.
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On the Agenda: January 9 – 13
03 weeks ago
This week, we reflect on 10 years since the first prisoners arrived at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. Later today, we’ll release a new infographic about detention at Gitmo. And later this week, we’ll have a podcast interview with Lakhdar Boumediene, who wrote about his 7 ½-year detention in The New York Times yesterday. Boumediene was also the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush, the landmark Supreme Court case that ruled prisoners like him must have a meaningful opportunity to challenge their confinement.
January 11
National Security: January 11 marks 10 years since the first prisoner arrived in Guantánamo Bay, making it the longest-standing war prison in U.S. history. Almost 800 men have passed through Guantanamo’s cells.Today, 171 men remain, 89 of whom security services and military have unanimously determined should be released.
Reproductive Rights: Oral argument at the Supreme Court in the Coleman v. Maryland case concerning the self-care provisions of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is coming up on January 11. The Court is going to decide whether state employees may sue their employers for violations of the FMLA’s self-care provision. If not, state workers who need to take time off for pregnancy and childbirth, as well as other medical conditions, may not be able to, setting women workers back many decades. The ACLU and the ACLU of Maryland signed on to an amicus brief by the National Partnership for Women and Families.
Criminal Law Reform: The ACLU and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities will release Improving Budget Analysis of State Criminal Justice Reforms: A Strategy for Better Outcomes and Saving Money. The report’s suggested improvements will help states better understand the fiscal savings of these reforms and enact new laws that will rely less on prisons, continue to protect public safety, and promote fairness.
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On the Agenda: January 3–6, 2012
01 month ago
While many Americans were getting ready for New Year’s Eve festivities Saturday, President Obama decided to ring in the new year by signing into law sweeping worldwide indefinite detention powers by signing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). President Obama did issue a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, but that statement only applies to how his administration would use it and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations.
The Bush administration made similar claims of worldwide detention authority to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again.
Thankfully we have three branches of government, and the final word belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the scope of detention authority. The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.
Tuesday, January 3
Today the ACLU Project for Religion and Belief and the ACLU of Eastern Missouri filed a lawsuit charging the Salem Public Library and its board of trustees with unconstitutionally blocking access to websites discussing minority religions by improperly classifying them as “occult” or “criminal.” Sites blocked by the library’s Netsweeper software include the official webpage of the Wiccan church, the Wikipedia entry pertaining to Wicca, Astrology.com and the Encyclopedia on Death and Dying, which contains viewpoint-neutral discussions of various cultures’ and religions’ ideas of death and death rituals.
And Happy New Year!
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On the Agenda: December 12–16, 2011
01 month ago
Today we’re debuting a new feature on the blog that tells you what’s coming up in civil liberties this week. We’ll include legislative action our Washington Legislative Office (WLO) is keeping an eye on, activity in our litigation and other noteworthy events.
On the Hill, Congress is busy trying to jam through bad bills while they hope no one is looking. One in particular we’re watching very closely: the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012, which could be reported out of conference this week and could be on the floor in both houses of Congress for final passage. Read our blog post about the NDAA and be sure to watch our new video, in which Sen. Lindsay Graham tells Americans: “Shut up! You don’t get a lawyer!”
Also this week, the House Homeland Security Committee is expected to introduce new cybersecurity legislation this week.
Monday, December 12
LGBT Rights: Today we’re filing a motion in our military separation pay case, Collins v. U.S. This is a class action lawsuit challenging the Defense Department’s discriminatory practice of giving military personnel discharged for “homosexuality” only half of the separation pay they are entitled to after an honorable discharge. Tellingly the government is too embarrassed to actually defend the constitutionality of the policy in open court, so they filed an Answer that refused to give a response to our allegations. We are asking the court for them to file a proper answer that actually requires them to admit or deny our allegations about the policy.
Medical Marijuana: The Criminal Law Reform Project will be in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona defending the right of thousands of sick Arizonans to access important medicine by arguing for the dismissal of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s lawsuit challenging her own state’s medical marijuana law. We represent the Arizona Medical Marijuana Association (AzMMA).
Tuesday, December 13
Voting Rights: Attorney General Holder will deliver a speech on voting rights titled “Protecting our Democracy, Protecting the Right to Vote” at the LBJ Presidential Library & Museum in Austin, Texas. WLO Director Laura W. Murphy and Senior Legislative Counsel Deborah J. Vagins will attend. Laura will blog her thoughts on the speech Wednesday.
Criminal Code Overhaul: Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee (Chairman Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.) of House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Criminal Code Modernization and Simplification Act of 2011 (H.R. 1823).
Wednesday, December 14
FBI Oversight: The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold an oversight hearing on the FBI. FBI Director Robert Mueller is expected to testify.
Foreign Law/Religious Law Bans: The House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution will hold a hearing titled “Judicial Reliance on Foreign Law.”
Refusals/Trafficking: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing entitled, “HHS and the Catholic Church: Examining the Politicization of Grants (minority day of hearing)” at 1:30 pm.
Thursday, December 15
First Amendment: A markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261), a bill intended to protect copyrighted material online, is tentatively scheduled for today. While the ACLU believes it’s important to protect copyrighted material online, the narrowly tailored language of SOPA is severely flawed and will lead to the takedown of lawful content. Urge your members of Congress to oppose SOPA.
Also, tonight, GOP presidential candidates will debate in Sioux City, Iowa.
We hope you find “On the Agenda” helpful, and if you have any comments/suggestions, let us know at ideas@aclu.org.
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ACLU Lens: Alabama in Chaos as Residents Flee After Immigration Law Takes Effect
03 months ago
Alabama has been in a state of utter chaos following a federal judge’s Sept. 28 ruling upholding some of the worst provisions of H.B. 56, the state’s draconian anti-immigrant law. The ACLU and ACLU of Alabama, along with a coalition of civil rights groups, are working to protect the rights of all Alabamians by ensuring that the community has accurate information about the law. We are meeting with members of the community across the state, informing them of their rights and helping maintain a hotline for people to call for information, or report problems related to the law.
If you’re in Alabama and need to speak to someone about the law and your rights, call 1-800-982-1620.
ACLU staffers on the ground report that masses of families are fleeing the state in fear. There is a drastic increase in law enforcement checkpoints; as a result, many people have stopped driving altogether. Afraid to drive, parents are pulling their children out of school, and have stopped going to work. Farmers’ migrant workforces have fled the state, leaving crops to rot.
On the legal front, on Friday, the ACLU and other advocacy groups filed an emergency request with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to block the law. The Department of Justice also filed this request Friday.
We’ll have photos and video from Alabama all this week — stay tuned.
In the News:
- Washington Post: Alabama Immigration Law Sends Hispanic Families Fleeing
- Latino USA: Interview with ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project attorney Andre Segura
- NPR: A Rush to Calm Alabama’s Frightened Families
- Atlanta-Journal Constitution: Immigrants fearing deportation make plans for kids
- Los Angeles Times: Alabama’s immigration law prompts alarm
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After Al-Aulaqi’s Killing, Why Due Process Matters
04 months ago
In "Crime or War: Execution or Assassination?" David Shipler of The Shipler Report writes about why due process — even for terrorism suspects who have admitted to plotting against the U.S. — is important:
So, why bother to bring the guilty man in for a fair trial? For thorough truth-finding, one could say, or to uphold the pageantry of constitutional justice, which is a crown jewel of our democracy. To lend unquestioned legitimacy to the ultimate sentence, even if it is death, so the world does not look upon America with repugnance. To keep the trappings of civilized order so that we do not become a vigilante state. To stop ourselves from taking a step down a long slope whose ends might be oppression very different from anything we can now imagine…
Shipler also calls for the Obama administration to reveal the standards under which Americans are placed on the CIA’s "kill lists," information we seek in our Predator Drone Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit. But the government has mostly stonewalled our attempts to uncover basic information about targeted killings. The CIA refuses to confirm or deny whether it has any records at all relating to targeted killings using drones, even though the CIA’s involvement in the drone program is widely acknowledged. And other government agencies flatly refuse to release documents explaining the government’s asserted legal basis for conducting targeted killings — including against U.S. citizens — using drones.
This morning, Glenn Greenwald noted in Salon that ABC News’ Jake Tapper asked White House spokesman Jay Carney if the Obama administration will release the evidence that justified the assassination of al-Aulaqi, who was a U.S. citizen.
You have to see the video to believe it, but in a word, the answer is: "No."
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State Department Says that Kerim Yildiz to Get a Visa!
04 months ago
Great news! This morning, the State Department notified U.K. national Kerim Yildiz, the executive director of the Kurdish Human Rights Project, that it would issue him a visa to travel to the U.S. We’re hoping that the visa will be issued quickly so that Mr. Yildiz will be able to collect the Gruber Justice Prize later this week.
We blogged about Yildiz’s problem getting a visa on last month; the New York Times ran a story about Yildiz on Friday.
“We’re very pleased that the State Department is taking this step,” said Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU. “Mr. Yildiz is a respected human rights advocate and the United States should be supporting his work, not inhibiting it.”
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Why Deny Kerim Yildiz a Visa?
04 months ago
Today’s New York Times story put a spotlight on that question. In "Advocate’s Visa Delay Stirs Questions," Kirk Semple writes of the case of Kerim Yildiz, who we blogged about earlier this month.
Semple writes:
Kerim Yildiz, a leading human rights advocate for the Kurdish people, was for two decades a frequent visitor to the United States. A British citizen living in London, he regularly lectured at American universities, caucused with other human rights advocates and briefed government officials in Washington.
But something changed. Where before he was admitted to the country without a problem, he has now waited nearly a year for the Obama administration to approve a visa. Officials have not explained the delay to him.
In letters we sent last month to the Departments of State and Homeland Security asking them to grant Yildiz a visa, we note the government practice known as ideological exclusion, in which foreign nationals are denied entry to the United States because our government does not agree with their political views. Ideological exclusion violates Americans’ First Amendment right to hear constitutionally protected speech by denying foreign scholars, artists, politicians and others entry to the U.S.
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