Blog of Rights
Vivek
Malhotra
09/07/2011
Voter ID

Core Civil Liberties Threatened in State Legislatures: Three Trends to Watch

By Nicole Kief, ACLU & Nicole Kief, Elissa Berger & Vivek Malhotra, ACLU at 3:32pm

State legislatures are ground zero in the fight for civil liberties. Although they may not attract as much attention as debates in Congress or arguments in the Supreme Court, they are the source of unprecedented assaults on our most fundamental rights.

Three troubling trends of the 2011 state legislative session were:

  1. restrictions on accessing abortion;
  2. racial profiling bills targeting Latinos and immigrants; and
  3. measures suppressing the right to vote.

Did your state see a battle on one of these issues? Check out this map to learn more.

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04/28/2010

A Police State

By Vivek Malhotra, ACLU at 4:44pm

(Originally posted on the New York Times' s Room for Debate blog.)

Arizona's new law is a watershed moment for its blatant disregard of America's most fundamental values of fairness and equality. While there's been no shortage of discriminatory anti-immigrant laws across the country in recent years, this one is in a league of its own.

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06/11/2008

Government Abuses in Immigration Enforcement: Is this the America We Want to Live In?

By Vivek Malhotra, ACLU at 8:12pm

Yesterday at the membership conference, the ACLU of Texas, ACLU of New Mexico, and ACLU of Massachusetts kicked off the morning with a deeply affecting plenary discussion about the real-life human impact of the government’s abuse of core constitutional principles in the name of immigration enforcement. ACLU clients, primarily young folks from Texas and New Mexico border towns, talked about the assumptions made about them and the law enforcement challenges they face simply because they are brown.

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