Blog of Rights
Suzanne
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06/03/2011

Gov. Bentley: Veto Racial Profiling Law, or We'll Sue

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:47pm

Last night, the Alabama legislature passed a racial profiling law inspired by—you have one guess—Arizona's S.B. 1070. We just filed a lawsuit challenging Georgia's S.B. 1070 copycat yesterday. We've also challenged similar bills in Utah and Indiana.

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06/02/2011
LGBT Bullying

San Francisco Giants Tell LGBT Youth: "It Gets Better"

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 1:27pm

Yesterday, World Series champions the San Francisco Giants became the first professional sports team to contribute to the "It Gets Better" video project.

Please note that by playing this clip You Tube and Google will place a long-term cookie on your computer. Please see You Tube's privacy statement on their website and Google's privacy statement on theirs to learn more. To view the ACLU's privacy statement, click here.
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06/01/2011
Rendition

This Torture Awareness Month, Honor Those Who Opposed Rendition and Torture

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 3:36pm

Last month, the Supreme Court announced it would not hear the case we brought against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan on behalf of five victims of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. Our lawsuit charged that the company knowingly provided direct logistical support to the aircraft and crews used by the CIA for the kidnapping and torture program.

We filed the lawsuit back in May 2007, and while the federal government wasn't named as a defendant in the suit, the government intervened in the case anyway to shield Jeppesen with the "state secrets" privilege, asserting that even allowing the case to be heard in a court of law would jeopardize national security. But as ACLU legal director Steve Shapiro said after the Supreme Court's refused to hear the case: "In a nation committed to the rule of law, unlawful activity should be exposed, not hidden behind a 'state secrets' designation."

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05/31/2011

ACLU Lens: Supreme Court Finds Ashcroft Cannot Be Held Responsible for Illegal Detention of U.S. Citizen

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 12:46pm

Today the Supreme Court ruled in Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd that former Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot be held responsible for the wrongful arrest and detention of U.S. citizen Abdullah al-Kidd under the material witness law. The ACLU represented al-Kidd before the Supreme Court in March 2011, charging that al-Kidd’s arrest was part of a pattern of pretextual material witness arrests that occurred after 9/11, pursuant to a nationwide policy instituted by Ashcroft.

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05/27/2011
This Week in Civil Liberties

This Week in Civil Liberties

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 9:00pm

TGIF, because it's been a busy week! We fought an authorization for war without end, advocated for an end to the ridiculous prohibition of abortion care for women in the military who have been raped, testified against a bill that proposes to lock up immigrants forever and fought the good fight for Patriot Act reform. And that was just in Congress.

Elsewhere, the Supreme Court handed down a game-changing win for prisoners' rights, and a national software company made good for LGBT students. And while some states are trying to restrict your right to vote, we're fighting to safeguard it.

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05/27/2011

ACLU Lens: Arizona Governor Challenges Her Own State's Medical Marijuana Law

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 8:56pm

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer can't decide if she likes federal laws, or doesn't.

When it comes to immigration, she doesn't. Finding federal immigration enforcement lacking, she signed into law last year S.B. 1070, legislation that requires police officers in Arizona to ask people for their papers based only on some undefined "reasonable suspicion" that they are in the country unlawfully.

But today, she does like federal laws. Specifically, federal drug laws. Today, she filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to invalidate Prop. 203, a law Arizona voters passed in 2010 that allows terminally and seriously ill patients to use medical marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. The ACLU is representing one of the defendants in Gov. Brewer's lawsuit, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Association (AzMMA).

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05/26/2011

ACLU Lens: Supreme Court Upholds Arizona's Employer Sanctions Law

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 3:13pm

A Supreme Court decision released this morning upheld Arizona's employer sanctions law. The law, which was enacted in 2007, imposes state licensing penalties for employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers, and requires all Arizona businesses to use the federal e-Verify system.  The case was brought by a broad coalition of civil rights and business groups including the ACLU, ACLU of Arizona, Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

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05/23/2011

Join Lili Taylor, Dahlia Lithwick and Jack Rice for "Reckoning with Torture" Tomorrow!

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:34pm

Over the last few weeks, some apologists for torture have argued that Navy Seals were able to locate Osama bin Laden only because of evidence obtained through torture. We think Sen. John McCain and CIA Director Leon Panetta effectively quashed that argument. There's no evidence that torture worked, and there's lots of evidence it didn't.

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05/20/2011

Software Company Removes "Booby Trap" from Internet Filtering Program

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:01pm

Earlier this week, we were thrilled to announce that California-based software company Lightspeed Systems agreed to remove a web filter that had been blocking public school students' access to LGBT information websites (like It Gets Better and Day of Silence). Lightspeed's web filters are used in more than 2,000 schools in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, covering more than 6 million students, so this is a big deal.

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05/13/2011

Listen to Sen. McCain: Torture Doesn't Work

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 4:18pm

Lots of people-including us-talk about torture. But few only people who have actually been tortured can speak authoritatively and publicly about exactly how it dehumanizes both victim and torturer — and why it doesn't work. Sen. John McCain, who was tortured during the Vietnam War, has been a pretty steadfast opponent of torture, and today, he added his voice to the debate about whether information gained through torturing detainees in U.S. custody contributed to finding Osama bin Laden. Sen. McCain wrote in Wednesday's Washington Post:

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