Why was ACLU of Ohio client Zach bullied and beaten in school?

Which movie rental company will be able to share your video rental records perpetually if H.R. 2471 is passed?

Which government department has announced a new rule that will prevent discrimination against LGBT families in its programs?

Which laws will the execution of Edwin Hart Turner violate?

ACLU Sues U.S. for Information on Targeted Killing Program
This week we filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to demand that the government release basic — and accurate — information about the government’s targeted killing program.

The government’s deliberate and premeditated killing of American terrorism suspects raises profound questions that ought to be the subject of public debate. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has released very little information about the practice — its official position is that the targeted killing program is a state secret — and some of the information it has released has been misleading.

Victim of Brutal LGBT Bullying in Ohio School Tells His Story
This week, the ACLU released a new video that features Zach and his mom, Becky Collins. Last fall, the brutal, unprovoked beating of Zach, an openly gay student at Unioto High School in Chillicothe, Ohio, made national headlines when a video of the incident went viral online. Zach and Becky describe years of unending discrimination and harassment that Zach experienced at school based on his perceived sexual orientation. As the years went on, the abuse only escalated. Becky’s pleas to school officials to protect her son were ignored.

Please join the ACLU in urging Congress to pass the Student Non-Discrimination Act to make schools safe and fair for students like Zach.

Will Congress Take Privacy Out of Your Netflix Queue?
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing this week on a piece of legislation, H.R. 2471, that you likely haven’t heard of but will have a big impact on your privacy and your Netflix account. Yes,Netflix. Sometimes even called the Netflix bill (they have claimed responsibility for pushing it), it would letconsumers grant companies perpetual consent to share video rental records, rather than requiring consumers to decide if they want to share information every time they make a purchase.

New HUD Rule Delivers for LGBT Americans
This week, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)  Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that a proposed rule regarding equal access to HUD housing programs regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity will take effect next month. The rule bans inquiries aboutsexual orientation or gender identity, and prohibits using sexual orientation or gender identity as grounds for decision-making in Federal Housing Administration  programs. Additionally, the rule brings the definition of “eligible families” into the 21st century by including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. 

Too Crazy to Kill
Unless Edwin Hart Turner gets clemency from the governor or a last-minute stay, he will be executed on Feb. 8 by Mississippi.

Turner murdered two men in botched hold-ups. His attorneys do not claim he is innocent, and no one can diminish the tragic loss to two families. But executing Turner should be off the table: he is severely mentally ill, and it violates the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and international human rights law to execute the mentally ill. Virtually every mainstream organization representing mental health experts and families of the mentally ill says so, and the American Bar Association (which does not take a position on the death penalty itself) agrees.

This is your week in civil liberties. Let us know if this is useful or if you’d like to see changes. Share your thoughts: ideas@aclu.org

Learn more about your rights: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

Why was ACLU of Ohio client Zach bullied and beaten in school?

Which movie rental company will be able to share your video rental records perpetually if H.R. 2471 is passed?

Which government department has announced a new rule that will prevent discrimination against LGBT families in its programs?

Which laws will the execution of Edwin Hart Turner violate?

ACLU Sues U.S. for Information on Targeted Killing Program
This week we filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to demand that the government release basic — and accurate — information about the government’s targeted killing program.

The government’s deliberate and premeditated killing of American terrorism suspects raises profound questions that ought to be the subject of public debate. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has released very little information about the practice — its official position is that the targeted killing program is a state secret — and some of the information it has released has been misleading.

Victim of Brutal LGBT Bullying in Ohio School Tells His Story
This week, the ACLU released a new video that features Zach and his mom, Becky Collins. Last fall, the brutal, unprovoked beating of Zach, an openly gay student at Unioto High School in Chillicothe, Ohio, made national headlines when a video of the incident went viral online. Zach and Becky describe years of unending discrimination and harassment that Zach experienced at school based on his perceived sexual orientation. As the years went on, the abuse only escalated. Becky’s pleas to school officials to protect her son were ignored.

Please join the ACLU in urging Congress to pass the Student Non-Discrimination Act to make schools safe and fair for students like Zach.

Will Congress Take Privacy Out of Your Netflix Queue?
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing this week on a piece of legislation, H.R. 2471, that you likely haven’t heard of but will have a big impact on your privacy and your Netflix account. Yes,Netflix. Sometimes even called the Netflix bill (they have claimed responsibility for pushing it), it would letconsumers grant companies perpetual consent to share video rental records, rather than requiring consumers to decide if they want to share information every time they make a purchase.

New HUD Rule Delivers for LGBT Americans
This week, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)  Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that a proposed rule regarding equal access to HUD housing programs regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity will take effect next month. The rule bans inquiries aboutsexual orientation or gender identity, and prohibits using sexual orientation or gender identity as grounds for decision-making in Federal Housing Administration  programs. Additionally, the rule brings the definition of “eligible families” into the 21st century by including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. 

Too Crazy to Kill
Unless Edwin Hart Turner gets clemency from the governor or a last-minute stay, he will be executed on Feb. 8 by Mississippi.

Turner murdered two men in botched hold-ups. His attorneys do not claim he is innocent, and no one can diminish the tragic loss to two families. But executing Turner should be off the table: he is severely mentally ill, and it violates the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and international human rights law to execute the mentally ill. Virtually every mainstream organization representing mental health experts and families of the mentally ill says so, and the American Bar Association (which does not take a position on the death penalty itself) agrees.

This is your week in civil liberties. Let us know if this is useful or if you’d like to see changes. Share your thoughts: ideas@aclu.org

Learn more about your rights: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

For decades, mandatory sentencing guidelines forced judges to hand down harsh and unfair sentences that did not always fit the offender and unnecessarily flooded our prisons. This included the mandatory sentencing scheme that unequally punished comparable offenses involving crack and powder cocaine at a ratio of 100:1 and resulted in racially biased sentencing.

But in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Booker that the sentencing guidelines were advisory, not mandatory. While judges were required to consult the guidelines, they had flexibility to take into account other factors and ensure that sentences were not greater than necessary. The ACLU applauded this decision as a step toward fairness and more sensible sentencing.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which developed the original mandatory guidelines, continues to play a critical role in shaping sentencing guidelines. Last year, the commission recommended that the new, fairer sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses established by the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) should be applied retroactively to people sentenced before the FSA was passed. The FSA reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses — two forms of the same drug — from 100:1 to 18:1 (an improvement, although the fairest guidelines would be 1:1).

Despite the fact that FSA retroactivity brought desperately needed improvements to federal sentences, the commission’s decision wasn’t well-received by all. In October, in response to the decision, the House Judiciary Committee held an ironic hearing: whether the fairer sentencing system is fair and what role the commission should play in it.

Some legislators now falsely argue that the post-Booker scheme has led to more unwarranted disparity in sentencing, and called for a return to mandatory sentencing guidelines. Some called for an end to the commission all together.

The ACLU submitted a statement at the October hearing arguing that the current system and the commission have resulted in and continue to encourage more fairness in sentencing. In fact, the Booker decision still requires judges to use the guidelines as a starting point, and judges have handed out within-guidelines sentences in the majority of cases since Booker.

To continue the discussion on the issue, in late January, the ACLU and the American Constitution Society held a panel that can be watched in full here. “The Relevancy and Reach of the U.S. Sentencing Commission” was moderated by Jesselyn McCurdy, ACLU senior legislative counsel, and the panelists included the Honorable Patti B. Saris, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and Chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission; Amy Baron-Evans, Sentencing Resource Counsel, Federal Public and Community Defenders; Douglas A. Berman, law professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law; and Michael Volkov, partner at the law firm Mayer Brown.

In recent years, we have finally gotten closer to finding the right balance between the concepts of consistency and fairness in sentencing. Both the advisory guidelines and the U.S. Sentencing Commission have been responsible for achieving this balance.

The commission serves a vital role in improving federal sentencing laws to make individual sentences fair and works to educate judges and practitioners on improved sentencing practices. Returning to mandatory guidelines and abolishing the commission would be a disastrous step backward and would only lead to America maintaining its position as the world’s largest incarcerator.

Learn more about sentencing law: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

For decades, mandatory sentencing guidelines forced judges to hand down harsh and unfair sentences that did not always fit the offender and unnecessarily flooded our prisons. This included the mandatory sentencing scheme that unequally punished comparable offenses involving crack and powder cocaine at a ratio of 100:1 and resulted in racially biased sentencing.

But in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Booker that the sentencing guidelines were advisory, not mandatory. While judges were required to consult the guidelines, they had flexibility to take into account other factors and ensure that sentences were not greater than necessary. The ACLU applauded this decision as a step toward fairness and more sensible sentencing.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which developed the original mandatory guidelines, continues to play a critical role in shaping sentencing guidelines. Last year, the commission recommended that the new, fairer sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses established by the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) should be applied retroactively to people sentenced before the FSA was passed. The FSA reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses — two forms of the same drug — from 100:1 to 18:1 (an improvement, although the fairest guidelines would be 1:1).

Despite the fact that FSA retroactivity brought desperately needed improvements to federal sentences, the commission’s decision wasn’t well-received by all. In October, in response to the decision, the House Judiciary Committee held an ironic hearing: whether the fairer sentencing system is fair and what role the commission should play in it.

Some legislators now falsely argue that the post-Booker scheme has led to more unwarranted disparity in sentencing, and called for a return to mandatory sentencing guidelines. Some called for an end to the commission all together.

The ACLU submitted a statement at the October hearing arguing that the current system and the commission have resulted in and continue to encourage more fairness in sentencing. In fact, the Booker decision still requires judges to use the guidelines as a starting point, and judges have handed out within-guidelines sentences in the majority of cases since Booker.

To continue the discussion on the issue, in late January, the ACLU and the American Constitution Society held a panel that can be watched in full here. “The Relevancy and Reach of the U.S. Sentencing Commission” was moderated by Jesselyn McCurdy, ACLU senior legislative counsel, and the panelists included the Honorable Patti B. Saris, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and Chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission; Amy Baron-Evans, Sentencing Resource Counsel, Federal Public and Community Defenders; Douglas A. Berman, law professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law; and Michael Volkov, partner at the law firm Mayer Brown.

In recent years, we have finally gotten closer to finding the right balance between the concepts of consistency and fairness in sentencing. Both the advisory guidelines and the U.S. Sentencing Commission have been responsible for achieving this balance.

The commission serves a vital role in improving federal sentencing laws to make individual sentences fair and works to educate judges and practitioners on improved sentencing practices. Returning to mandatory guidelines and abolishing the commission would be a disastrous step backward and would only lead to America maintaining its position as the world’s largest incarcerator.

Learn more about sentencing law: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.