American Civil Liberties Union

Imagine if you had agreed to host Thanksgiving dinner — but your relatives weren’t allowed to come to your house, or anywhere near it. This is the situation faced by many families living in public housing, including the plaintiffs in an ACLU and ACLU of Maryland lawsuit who challenged the Housing Authority of the City of Annapolis’s (HACA) policy of “banning” people it deems undesirable. Under the policy, anyone the housing authority designated as "detrimental to the overall quality of life for public housing residents" could be banned from HACA property for three years to life, with little to no recourse for being removed from the list.

While Muslim men have been vilified and targeted as terrorists in the current national security frenzy, Muslim women who wear religious headcoverings face unique exposure to prejudice because of their visibility. Their outward self-identification makes them vulnerable to both anti-Muslim bias and gender-based discrimination.

Jameelah Medina experi

It may seem obvious that all workers are entitled to a work environment free from sex discrimination and to the wages guaranteed to them by law. But for laborers who come to this country to work temporarily under the H-2B visa program, the ability to enforce these basic rights is often out of reach.

This was the case for three of our clients who came to North Carolina from Mexico to work in the seafood processing industry. According to allegations they made in charges of discrimination and a class action lawsuit, they were limited by their employer to picking crab meat, while men were given a range of other work, and were given much more work than the women. In addition, our lawsuit claimed that their employer paid both men and women H-2B workers less than the wages promised to them, and failed to reimburse them for the travel and visa expenses they incurred, as the H-2B program requires.