Blog of Rights
Dena
Sher

Dena is legislative counsel at the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. Sher joined the ACLU in 2011, after four years as the the state legislative counsel with Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She worked with legislators, activists, and coalition partners on legislation, policy, and ballot initiatives that affected religious liberties, including school vouchers, healthcare refusals and religion in the workplace. She was also an Equal Justice Works fellow at Americans United. Her Equal Justice Works project investigated how programs funded under President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative were implemented. Sher also worked on many of the cases litigated by AU during her fellowship.

Sher is a graduate of George Washington University Law School and Georgetown University.

 

06/17/2011

Government-Funded Hiring Discrimination Is a Big Step in the Wrong Direction

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:54am

On Monday, we celebrated the 44th anniversary of an important civil rights milestone, the Supreme Court decision in the ACLU case Loving v. Virginia, which struck down state bans on interracial marriage. At an event at the Capitol, we screened The Loving Story (a terrific documentary) and hosted a panel discussion with the film's director and producer, Nancy Buirski, one of the Lovings' attorneys, Phil Hirschkop, and Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Bobby Scott (both of whom Laura Murphy—the director of ACLU's Washington Legislative Office and our moderator for the evening—rightly called our most stalwart defenders of the Constitution).

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05/20/2011

Waiting for the End of Taxpayer-Funded Hiring Discrimination

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:11pm

On July 1, 2008, on the campaign trail in Zanesville, Ohio, then-candidate Barack Obama promised to end hiring discrimination based on religion by organizations — such as the Salvation Army and World Vision — that receive government funding to provide social services. He declared, "If you get a federal grant, you can't...discriminate against...the people you hire...on the basis of their religion." In other words, no one should be disqualified from a taxpayer-funded job to help others because he or she doesn't pass a religious test.

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