American Civil Liberties Union

Ayman Latif is a disabled U.S. Marine veteran living in Egypt with his wife and two young children. Adama Bah is a 22-year-old caregiver living in New York with asylum status that protects her from the persecution she would face if she returned to her native Guinea.

Ayman and Adama are both on the U.S. government's "No-Fly List," barring them from flying into or from the United States or over U.S. airspace. Neither poses any security threat or has any idea why the government has put them on the list – or how to get off it. For Ayman, this means he has no way to get home to the United States where the rest of his family lives, and that his new daughter may never meet her grandparents. For Adama, this means never leaving New York on a plane, and the feeling of being trapped in the country where she was supposed to feel free.

Update! The judge in two movie industry lawsuits against BitTorrent users has ordered the plaintiffs to explain why they lumped thousands of users into only two lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the District of Columbia issued orders in each of the cases yesterday requiring the plaintiff to show in writing by June 21 why all of the defendants except one in each case (that's defendants 2 through 2,000 in one case, 2 through 4,577 in the other) shouldn't be dismissed under a federal rule governing when defendants can and can't be joined together in one lawsuit.

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

The Obama administration released its National Security Strategy (PDF) last week and, as you may have guessed, it covers several issues the ACLU cares about. Unfortunately, the strategy neglects to put forward any new ideas about how to protect civil liberties and human rights. In fact, much of the strategy seems to be recycled policy positions taken from a speech the president gave in May 2009 at the National Archives.

Yesterday, we posted about the Texas Textbook Takeover and what you can do to stop it. We hope you'll join us in taking action, and we wanted to tell you about a former ACLU scholarship winner who's also getting involved!

Matthew LaClair has been standing up for religious freedom since high school, when he fought back against the promotion of creationism and other religious beliefs in the classroom and helped form the Student Education Assembly on Religious Freedom. This Sunday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m. EDT on WBAI 99.5FM, Matthew will host a lively discussion with Dr. Don McLeroy, a member of the Texas State Board of Education, who is leading the board's movement to rewrite history. Tune in here, or if you miss the show, here.