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Let's Do Some Math, Sheriff Joe(Also posted on Daily Kos.) Yesterday, I argued in Maricopa County Superior Court about whether Sheriff Joe Arpaio, "America's Toughest Sheriff," can block inmates' access to abortion. The specific issue is whether the sheriff can demand that inmates who seek abortion care prepay $300 a day in transportation and security costs. If an inmate can't come up with the money, she will be forced to carry the pregnancy to term. Of course, Sheriff Arpaio doesn't require inmates seeking other medical care to prepay for transport and security costs. We argued it is unconstitutional to make access to the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy conditional on the ability to pay hundreds of dollars. Fortunately, the judge agreed. Ruling immediately after the arguments, the court held that the defendants are prohibited from demanding prepayment for transport and security costs. The sheriff has an uphill battle given that just a couple of years ago the Arizona Court of Appeals held that his policy of demanding a court order from inmates seeking abortion was unconstitutional. As the judge yesterday recognized, the issue of prepayment for transport costs is only a "slight extension" of the court order issue, and demanding prepayment is possibly more onerous than requiring a court order. But the most telling part of yesterday's argument came when the judge asked us to do some math. He asked both parties how many hours since June each of us worked on the case - we agreed it was at least 40 hours each. He then assumed an hourly rate of $250 an hour and asked us to calculate the total. The answer? A lot of taxpayer money is being spent on a policy that may cost the Sheriff a few hundred dollars a year given how few women request abortion access. Then the judge asked the question that sums it all up - he asked the sheriff's attorney to explain "the real reason" behind the policy. Clearly, it can't be that the sheriff is really worried about $300 a year. The sheriff's attorney didn't really respond. I suppose it was a bit of a rhetorical question. Sheriff Arpaio has repeatedly acted on his animosity to abortion by denying inmates their constitutional rights. All told, he will spend thousands of taxpayer dollars fighting over $300 a year simply because he wants to impose his moral beliefs on others. The courts have repeatedly stopped these unconstitutional tactics. And we will be prepared to deal with whatever Sheriff Joe does next.
Mississippi Officials Need a Civics Lesson on Constitution DayIn my recent blog post about the ACLU’s lawsuit against the State of Mississippi for promoting religion in a state-sponsored and state-funded event, I pondered whether Mississippi thinks the Constitution doesn’t apply to them. Apparently, Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant doesn’t think it does. Early this week, the lieutenant governor commented on the ACLU’s case, saying: I was so disappointed that the ACLU has decided that we don’t need to tell young women in the state of Mississippi about our faith; we don’t need to explain to them that abstinence, we believe, is related to our faithful Christianity beliefs. If you are like me and cannot believe that a state official would basically admit to violating the Constitution, you can see for yourself by watching the lieutenant governor utter those words in an interview.
There are so many things wrong with his sentence, I don’t even know where to start. First, the lieutenant governor’s remarks show no respect for the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from supporting one religion or another. Mississippi clearly crossed the line when it featured Christian prayers, sermons, and performances in its 2009 abstinence-only summit. Second, it is revealing that the lieutenant governor believes that we need to tell “young women” that they should remain abstinent until marriage. This is the age-old — and sexist — double standard that dictates that women and girls must be the gatekeepers of sex, and are solely responsible for the consequences. Instead of reinforcing these outdated gender stereotypes, we should be providing all teens with the tools they need to make healthy and responsible decisions. Tomorrow, September 17, is Constitution Day — perhaps the lieutenant governor and other state officials should take a moment and study the First Amendment, so in the future they can ensure that they don’t promote government-sponsored, taxpayer-funded religious activities, and reinforce outmoded gender stereotypes in the process.
Mississippi's "No-No Square" Around the First AmendmentThough you wouldn’t know it from the state's recent activities, the Constitution does apply to Mississippi. This week, we filed a lawsuit against Mississippi for promoting religious messages in a state-sponsored and state-funded abstinence-only-until-marriage event. Each May, the Mississippi Department of Human Services hosts several abstinence-only events, including a big summit held at the Jackson Coliseum. The summit includes various speakers and performers, and thousands of teens and community members attend. For the past two years, the event has included significant religious proselytizing – a blatant violation of the Constitution’s protections that require the government to neither promote nor prohibit religious activities. After learning that the May 2008 event featured religious content, we sent a letter to the state asking for its assurance that the May 2009 event would be secular. Not only did we not get a response, but the constitutional violations at the May 2009 event were even more egregious. For example, this year the event started with a religious invocation, referencing Jesus Christ and the Lord; it continued with a ten minute sermon by a county judge about the Ten Commandments and God; and it wrapped up with a mime ministry that performed to Christian gospel songs. While all of these things would be fine at a private event, by individuals in their private capacity, the state cannot sponsor and fund these religious messages, nor can it express a preference for Christianity above all other religions. You don’t have to take my word for it – the event was videotaped, and you can see part of it here. Perhaps one of the most unique performances at this year’s summit was a cheerleading team – their cheer was selected by the state as the best abstinence-only cheer, and as a reward they were allowed to perform it at the summit. The cheer included the quite catchy phrase, “Stop! Don’t touch me there! This is my no-no square!” Perhaps Mississippi has decided to draw a “no-no square” around the First Amendment. If so, our lawsuit will remind them that they are not above the Constitution. Tags: rfp
The Games Sheriff Arpaio Continues to Play With Women's HealthIt was a classic bait and switch: agree to abide by the Constitution in one respect and then create a new constitutional violation. That is what recently happened in our case involving inmates' access to abortion care in Maricopa County, home of "America's Toughest Sheriff," Joseph Arapio. Five years ago, we brought suit against Arapio challenging his policy of requiring inmates to obtain a court order as a condition of being transported for abortion care. We won at every stage of the case: in the trial court, in the state court of appeals, and then the Arizona and U.S. Supreme Courts refused to hear the case, leaving our victories intact. But apparently, America's Toughest Sheriff also believes he's above the law, because Arpaio continued to demand a court order from inmates seeking abortion care, in violation of the court rulings. We asked the court to hold Arpaio in contempt for blatantly violating the courts' orders. Shortly thereafter, we began to try to find a settlement. Though Arpaio agreed to adopt a policy ensuring access to abortion without a court order, he decided to implement a new requirement: that inmates seeking abortion care must prepay up to $600 for transportation and security costs in order to be taken offsite to see a doctor. Imagine you are poor, in jail, pregnant, and in need of an abortion — how are you going to raise $600? Who will you tell about your pregnancy to try to get the money? What if you can't get the money? Arpaio provides transportation at no cost to inmates for all other medical care, court visits, and even visits to dying relatives or to attend a funeral. Arpaio singles out abortion care solely because of political opposition to abortion. Though it is a political game to Arpaio, these are real women with real medical needs, and this is a game he can't win. This new policy is just as unconstitutional as the last one, and we filed our brief yesterday asking the court to prevent Arpaio from demanding upfront payment from inmates who seek abortion care.
Oversight: Really?!? Seriously?!?Recently I had a "Really?!?" moment, just like Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers from Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) — the nonpartisan investigative wing of Congress — issued a report (PDF) uncovering Health and Human Services' (HHS's) mismanagement of a $150 million-a-year grant program called Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Initiative. This program was created by Congress in 2005 as part of the Deficit Reduction Act to support marriage and fatherhood promotion programs. The goal of this program is to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies and encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent households. In administering the grant, HHS determined that these funds could not be used to fund abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which are already funded at more than $170 million each year through other funding streams. Why, then, did HHS award or renew grants under the Healthy Marriage Program to organizations that explicitly asked for funds to provide abstinence-only programming? Before the release of the GAO report, the ACLU had sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to HHS to learn the details of the Healthy Marriage Grant awards because we were concerned about whether the money was being used for proper purposes. But we didn't know that HHS deemed abstinence-only programming an impermissible activity with these funds. Through the FOIA, we learned that a number of organizations asked HHS for funding for their abstinence-only programs. For example, a crisis pregnancy center called Elizabeth New Life Center in Dayton, Ohio, was awarded $1,754,872 in Fiscal Year 2006. Among its proposed activities, Elizabeth New Life Center indicated it would use some of the funds to teach the WAIT ("Why Am I Tempted") Training program. WAIT Training "teaches the psychological and physical benefits of sexual abstinence until marriage for youth." HHS renewed Elizabeth New Life Center's grant — without asking them to compete for it — for Fiscal Year 2007. The renewal application again indicated that they would teach WAIT Training in high schools. (Incidentally WAIT Training itself received more than a million dollars for fiscal years 2006 and 2007 from the Healthy Marriage Program, in part to teach its abstinence-only-until-marriage program.) Our findings are confirmed by the recent GAO report: during a site visit, for example, an unidentified Healthy Marriage grantee told the GAO that they used these grant funds to support their abstinence-only program, and abstinence-only was the sole focus of their work. How does this happen? The GAO report suggests that HHS fails to oversee these programs. That is an understatement. If an organization asks HHS for money to conduct abstinence-only programs, and HHS gives them money for such purposes, how is it a surprise or a mistake when that organization uses the money for abstinence-only programming? As Amy and Seth would say, "Seriously?!?" and "Really?!?" So we sent HHS a letter asking how this could happen, and asking them what they plan to do to ensure that Healthy Marriage grantees aren't spending these funds on abstinence-only programs. We'll keep you updated as the news develops. Goodnight and have a pleasant tomorrow.
Show Some Compassion(Originally posted on Daily Kos.) Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery. Every year, more than 14,000 individuals, predominantly women, are brought into the United States annually and exploited for their labor, including in the commercial sex industry. Many experience extreme violence and sexual assault at the hands of their traffickers. Some become pregnant as a result of rape; some contract sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. The lucky ones find their way to the many social service organizations that are committed to helping trafficking victims gain their freedom and lead healthy and safe lives. Unfortunately, for more than two years, the Bush administration has seriously compromised this safety net. Since April 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) grants ranging from $2.5 million to $3.5 million annually to support organizations that provide direct services to trafficking victims. But here's the catch: as part of its sub granting program, USCCB prohibits, based on its religious beliefs, grantees from using federal dollars to provide or refer for contraceptive or abortion services. Never mind that these organizations do not necessarily hold the same religious beliefs as USCCB and never mind the specific needs of the people they serve. We filed a lawsuit today, ACLU of Massachusetts v. Leavitt, to put an end to this compassionless and harmful policy and to ensure that our tax dollars are not being misused to promote one religious perspective at the expense of the health and safety of trafficking victims. In the coming week, we will post blog entries from a range of organizations that work with or on behalf of trafficking victims. Stay tuned as the story unfolds. Tags: leavitt
A New Year's Resolution for a New Sex Ed PolicyA new year is exciting because it provides an opportunity for reflection and holds the possibility of change and a fresh start for the coming year. We are at this exciting crossroads with many important civil liberties issues, and sexuality education is one of them. A recent study released in Pediatrics provides yet another opportunity to reflect on the abysmal failure of federally funded abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. The study looks specifically at virginity pledges, which are often a part of federally funded abstinence-only programs. These pledges are just what they sound like: teens pledge to refrain from sexual activity until marriage. Guess what? These pledges don't work, and can actually lead teens to make bad decisions. The study, conducted by Janet Elise Rosenbaum, Ph.D., a researcher at Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities compared virginity pledgers to nonpledgers with similar demographic characteristics and similar attitudes about sex and contraception. The study found that pledgers are not less sexually active than nonpledgers with similar characteristics. Moreover, the study found that five years after taking a pledge, 82 percent of pledgers deny having ever taken a virginity pledge. Though the pledgers may have forgotten they took a pledge to remain virgins, they did not forgot the message in abstinence-only programs that tell students that contraceptives and condoms don't work: the study found — quite frighteningly — that the pledgers were less likely to use condoms and birth control than their nonpledging peers. Rosenbaum suggests that this may be true because pledgers have been subjected to abstinence-only programs, and as a result have developed negative attitudes about the effectiveness of condoms and contraceptives. Indeed, federally funded abstinence-only programs cannot mention contraceptives except to discuss their failure rates, and many programs use shame and fear to communicate this information. This new study, while interesting and important, is simply one more in a long line of studies that show that our government's abstinence-only policy is a failure. The federal government has wasted more than $1.5 billion on these programs, despite study after study showing that these programs don't work. For years our government has allowed politics and religion to trump science. But this is a new year and a new federal government. As the new administration and Congress settle in we should insist that they put an end to the abstinence-only-until-marriage debacle, and instead focus on giving our teens what they need: tools to help them make healthy and responsible decisions.
We Sure Could Use that $1.5 Billon...Our federal government recently announced that it would review abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that receive federal funds under the Community-Based Abstinence Education (“CBAE”) program. CBAE is one of three dedicated federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funding streams. Over the last several years, the federal government has spent more than $1.5 billion on these programs, even though we’ve known for awhile that they simply don’t work. Yesterday, we sent comments, expressing our frustration, to the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), the federal agency proposing to evaluate CBAE programs. Our basic concerns: researchers have already concluded that these programs do not have any measurable effect; moreover, by definition, these programs exclude and stigmatize a large number of students. The federal statutory definition of abstinence requires these programs to teach that a “mutually faithful monogamous relationship in [the] context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.” Similarly, these programs must teach that there will be “harmful consequences” for children, families, and society if a child has parents who are not in a heterosexual marriage. In a society that generally prohibits gays and lesbians from marrying, such a message rejects the idea of sexual intimacy and healthy families for lesbians and gays, and ignores their need for critical information about protecting themselves from STDs in same-sex relationships. Recognizing this, a federal court in Florida recently found that federally funded abstinence-only-until marriage programs provide no information that is useful for lesbian and gay students. Moreover, the messages about heterosexual marriage and the harmful consequences of “out-of-wedlock” children stigmatize those families that aren’t headed by married heterosexual parents, including those in single-parent homes. Our comments also highlight other problems with abstinence-only programs, for example, some programs continue to promote medically inaccurate information, and some teach harmful gender stereotypes. Ultimately, these programs are so flawed, they should be eliminated. We should instead focus on giving teens the tools they need to make healthy and responsible decisions. In these difficult economic times, it sure would be nice to get that $1.5 billion back, but since that isn’t possible at least we can do the next best thing – stop the funding going forward.
Alone, Vulnerable, and Without Access to Vital Reproductive Health CareEach year, thousands of young people come to the United States without their families; they are fleeing war, violence, and abuse, including sexual abuse. Some have been trafficked for labor or prostitution, and some have been sexually assaulted during their journey here. Once they make it to our shores, they need our compassion and care. It is our government's legal and moral obligation to care for them by providing shelter, food, and medical treatment. But when it comes to reproductive health services, such as abortion and contraceptives, our government is putting up roadblocks rather than helping these teens. Yesterday, we asked a court to step in. We waited nearly three months for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to respond to our request for information about U.S. policy related to providing time-sensitive reproductive health care to undocumented and refugee teens. We could wait no longer. We sued under the Freedom of Information Act and are asking the judge to order the federal government to provide us with this crucial information. Even absent a response from ACF, we already know enough to make us deeply concerned. This past summer, the media reported that four employees of Catholic Charities in Virginia, one of the government subcontractors that receive taxpayer dollars to care for these young people, were fired after helping a teen obtain an abortion and contraception. After the incident, we learned that ACF issued a policy that limited access to abortion. The incident also prompted Catholic Charities — which cares for these teens around the country — to reiterate their policy that prohibits their employees from providing or referring for abortion and contraception. In practice, this means that these teens will not have access to reproductive health care. By virtue of who they are and where they find themselves, these teens are wholly dependent upon the federal government and its contractors: they don't speak English; they have no other means of support — financial or otherwise; and their mobility may be severely restricted by the government. Without our government's and its contractors' assistance, these teens must forego vital reproductive health care. Effectively prohibiting access to such care may further traumatize these vulnerable teens, and it also violates their legal rights. Our government must ensure that these teens are being provided access to reproductive health care and must ensure that its contractors do the same. We hope the case moves quickly so we can assess the extent of the violations and determine what further steps are needed to guarantee that unaccompanied refugee and undocumented teens can get the services they need.
When Will We Learn? The Many Failings of Abstinence-Only Programming(Originally posted at ACSBlog.) In Lesson One: Your Gender is Your Destiny, Bonnie Scott Jones and Michelle Movahed offer creative and insightful analysis on the constitutionality of teaching gender stereotypes in federally funded abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.As the authors of the Issue Brief recently released by ACS note, the gender stereotypes found in many of these programs indoctrinate students with a retrograde vision of relationships between males and females and teach students that their abilities and aspirations are circumscribed by their gender. In addition to being vulnerable to attack under the federal Equal Protection Clause, as the authors meticulously detail, these programs are also subject to challenge under state constitutions and state anti-discrimination statutes.For example, some state constitutions contain explicit equal rights amendments that require state courts to engage in a higher scrutiny of sex-based classifications than what is demanded under the federal Constitution.Moreover, many states prohibit sex discrimination in schools under either a statute that applies specifically to the public school setting, or under a statute that prohibits discrimination in public accommodations. This gender discrimination is part and parcel of an overall discriminatory scheme:by definition abstinence-only-until-marriage programs exclude lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth because the federal definition of marriage is limited to a man and a woman. A federal district court judge in Florida recently acknowledged that fact in a case involving a challenge to a school district’s refusal to allow a gay-straight alliance (GSA) student organization.The court held that prohibiting the GSA to meet after school violated the federal Equal Access Act, which requires schools to allow student groups to meet on an equal basis.In reaching that holding, the court dismissed the school district’s nonsensical argument that recognizing a GSA would conflict with the well-being of students because it conflicts with the school’s abstinence-only program. In fact, the court found that it is the abstinence-only programs that ignore students’ well-being.For example, the court noted that abstinence-only-until marriage programs “do not provide information of a kind usable by non-heterosexuals to prevent disease.”The court also recognized that though LGBT individuals have a right to form intimate relationships and raise children, abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that teach the benefits of marriage and the benefits that accrue to children of married parents are of “little use” to these students who “may aspire to parenting but lack the prospect of a legally sanctioned marriage.”The court concluded by saying that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs are therefore of “limited utility to . . . non-heterosexual students, the well-being of whom must also be considered.” Beyond perpetuating harmful stereotypes and fostering discrimination, these programs are ineffective and dangerously inaccurate. Teens who participate in these programs initiate sex at the same mean age and have the same number of sexual partners as teens who do not participate (PDF). Moreover, these programs are rife with misinformation about such important topics as condoms and sexually transmitted infections (PDF).We need to not only eliminate these programs through legislation, organizing, and litigation, but we also need to replace them with what students need: comprehensive, medically accurate, age-appropriate, sexuality education that will give young people the information and skills they need to make healthy and responsible decisions throughout their lives.
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