In the past several weeks, as a nation, we’ve been hit by an endless barrage of commentary on the new rule requiring insurance companies to cover contraception with no co-pay. Who would have thought that in 2012, contraception — something 98 percent of women use at some point in their lives — could set off such a firestorm?

Last week, the Obama administration offered a solution that we hope calms the embers.

For all the excitement, you’d think that something dramatic had happened when the Health and Human Services Department earlier this year issued a rule to ensure that all new health insurance plans — except those held by churches and other houses of worship — would include coverage for birth control.

But there wasn’t actually a lot new there: 28 states already require insurance plans to include contraception, several with the same house-of-worship exception and several with no exception.

And when it came to the Constitution, there was nothing new at all. Nothing in the rule prevents anyone from espousing their beliefs about birth control or attempting to persuade others not to use it. The high courts of California and New York have rejected claims that requiring coverage of contraception somehow violates the First Amendment, and our courts have long held that institutions that operate in the public sphere are not above the law.

But as we all quickly discovered, none of that mattered to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and some other religious leaders. They pushed hard to expand the house-of-worship exemption to include institutions such as religiously affiliated hospitals and universities that hire and serve people of many faiths. They made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that they wanted these businesses — along with Taco Bell — to get a free pass to impose one set of religious beliefs on employees who might not share them. In essence, they pulled out all the lobbying and public relations stops and demanded a license to discriminate in the name of religious liberty.

While the Obama administration was on solid legal and popular ground with its initial rule, last week’s modification should have put to rest these complaints from the right.

Under the modification, women will continue to have access to the health insurance coverage they need, and employers with religious objections to contraception will be able to wash their hands of the whole affair. Religiously affiliated universities, hospitals and social service agencies will be able to opt out of paying for contraceptive coverage for their employees, and instead, insurance companies will be required to reach out to these employees and provide them full access.

The arrangement should ensure that a nurse who happens to work at St. Vincent’s will have access to the same health care coverage that her friend who works at a nearby community hospital has. That’s only fair: They both work for hospitals that have religiously diverse workforces and open their doors to the public. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could object to that.

But the bishops and their allies aren’t satisfied. They’re back on the attack, calling on the administration and Congress to abandon the entire birth control rule, so that no woman will have the benefit of this essential coverage with no co-pay, which is what this fight has been about the whole time: rolling back access to birth control under the name of religious liberty.

True religious freedom gives everyone the right to make personal decisions, including whether to use birth control, based on our own beliefs and according to what is best for our health and our families. It fiercely protects the rights of all of us to practice our faith. It does not, however, give anyone, including the bishops, the right to impose their beliefs on others.

It is time to put the vitriol of the past several weeks behind us and start focusing on ensuring that the full promise of the new health care law becomes a reality for those who need it most.

(Originally posted in Roll Call.)

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During Black History Month and throughout the year, we reflect on the achievements of Blacks in this country and the difficulties over which we have triumphed in our ongoing fight for equal rights and justice. As I consider our distinguished history, and the depths from which we've come, I am grateful to have the opportunity to work with colleagues at the ACLU, who have dedicated their lives to protecting the rights of all, regardless of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or political affiliation.

A poignant moment for me in Black history was the Dred Scott Decision. In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford, by a margin of 7 to 2, that Black people, whether free or enslaved, were "beings of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations." Indeed, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney famously insisted that Blacks are "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." But the Court went even further, warning that a ruling in Mr. Scott's favor would lead to unthinkable results—namely that the "negro race" would gain "the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ...to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased ...the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."

The Court's decision reflected the scourge of racism that so deeply infected American society at the time and, by many accounts, served to galvanize the abolitionist movement and accelerate this country's plunge into civil war four years later. While most now regard the Dred Scott Decision as an embarrassing taint on the Court's jurisprudence, it remains a frightening reminder of the depth of hatred and irrationality that once ruled the day. But Dred Scott and the legacy of slavery in this country, as well as the tremendous strides we have taken over the last 150 years, also point to what I believe to be a larger truth: it is much harder to hate and oppress a people when you recognize their humanity. (After all, it was Chief Justice Taney's belief in the inherent inferiority of people of African descent that allowed him to dismiss Mr. Scott's petition so brazenly and completely.) And not only does this recognition make hate more difficult to sustain, it also makes the denial of fairness, justice and common human decency that much harder to justify.

Notwithstanding the progress made since the Dred Scott case, one need only consider the devastating impact the criminal justice system has had on the Black community in recent decades, and the extent to which lawmakers and the public have been willing to compromise the rights of the poor and dispossessed whenever it is politically convenient, to realize that efforts to eviscerate the civil liberties of the most vulnerable members of our society have not yet disappeared. Indeed, the recent creation of the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project reflects a recognition of that sad reality. So while I celebrate our accomplishments and the profound struggles of those that paved the way for me — including Dred Scott — the battle is not yet over.

Jason Williamson is a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, focusing on Fourth Amendment, police practices and indigent defense reform litigation. Jason began his legal career with the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and later served as a defense attorney and founding member of Juvenile Regional Services in New Orleans. Jason received a B.A. from Harvard University and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

This blog post is one of several personal testimonials written by ACLU staff members to commemorate Black History Month.

Do you know who’s pictured in our Celebrate Black History logo? Clockwise from top right: Martin Luther King, Jr.; Malcolm X; Sojourner Truth and Rosa Parks.

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In the past 25 years, the number of women and girls caught up in the criminal justice system has skyrocketed. Many have been swept up in the War on Drugs and subject to punitive sentencing policies for nonviolent offenses.

In Pennsylvania, thousands of woman cycle through the county jail system every year. Unfortunately, the county prisons that house these women — 57 in total — have been slow to adapt to the changing demographics of their prisoners. As a result, the unique health care needs of women have been largely ignored, leaving the health of this vulnerable population at risk.

This week, the ACLU of Pennsylvania's Duvall Reproductive Freedom Project issued a new report, Reproductive Health Locked Up: An Examination of Pennsylvania Jail Policies, that exposes the failure of counties to put adequate health care policies in place. In many cases, current policies fail to address the most basic reproductive health services, such as pregnancy testing, prenatal care, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and access to abortion services.

Three-quarters of the women incarcerated in county jails are of reproductive age, and the majority are mothers and the sole caretakers of their children. Most are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, are undereducated, come from minority groups, and fall below the poverty line. Approximately 6 percent of all female inmates are pregnant upon admission to jail.

As the population of women in jail grows, counties will increasingly be vulnerable to lawsuits brought by prisoners whose medical treatment or lack of treatment has caused them harm or violated their constitutional rights. The public will be harmed as women leaving jail re-enter the community with unaddressed health needs. And finally, we as a society are harmed when we squander the opportunity to help the most vulnerable among us.

Over the next few days, The ACLU of Pennsylvania will be posting a series of blog posts highlighting some of the findings of the report and what needs to be done to fix these problems.

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It's tricky monitoring public information online, especially if you're the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Having the government turn a blind eye to information that anyone can read seems strange, yet the practice raises significant questions. Apparently the House Homeland Security Committee feels the same way — that's why it's holding a hearing tomorrow on the Department of Homeland Security's monitoring of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Here are some questions the committee should ask:

Does it work? A report by the National Academies Press on data mining and behavioral surveillance technologies found this kind of monitoring to be ineffective as a tool against terrorism. They explain that the amount of publicly available data is massive, leaving analysts searching for a "needle in the haystack." And they say that if terrorists were to communicate online they wouldn't do so blatantly and on publicly available platforms, but rather via encryption, code words and false identities.

The report concluded that "automated identification of terrorists through data mining (or any other known methodology) is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts."

What else is it being used for? When programs are ineffective for their stated purpose, agents often cast around for other ways to justify them. For example, a recent FOIA request revealed a DHS analyst handbook, which boasted that "capturing public reaction" was a good example of monitoring social networks for public sentiment about the possible transfer of Guantanamo detainees. Gathering public relations information for the federal government hardly seems like a good use of Homeland Security money.

Worse, these kind of programs sometimes result in law enforcement spying on First Amendment-protected activities. While DHS insists it is not collecting personally identifiable information (PII) or focusing on certain groups, it cannot protect against abuses like we have seen in the past. In 2009, the DHS Federal Protective Service collected and disseminated posts from an online activist message board about peaceful protests planned at an Armed Forces Recruitment Center in Maryland.

Another investigation found that in 2009 the FBI launched a program to monitor veteran groups for signs of "radicalization." The program — dubbed Vigilante Eagle — was created to "share information regarding Iraqi and Afghanistan war veterans whose involvement in white supremacy and/or militia sovereign citizen extremist groups poses a domestic terrorism threat." Hundreds of similar examples of law enforcement monitoring peaceful protest can be found on our Spy Files site.

Who is doing the actual monitoring? To help in this effort, DHS has hired a private company called General Dynamics. The company's contract says it will provide media and social media monitoring support on a "24/7/365 basis" and requires daily, weekly and monthly reports. This is an $11.3 million contract; if General Dynamics hasn't found anything concrete to put in these reports, it could feel pressure to come up with something to justify it and there's a good chance that innocent groups will be packaged and sent to law enforcement for evaluation.

DHS should use proven and effective tactics to battle the real threats this country faces. It doesn't seem like having defense contractors read Twitter feeds is one of those tactics. Until DHS can demonstrate otherwise, it should stop endangering Americans' privacy and monitoring First Amendment-protected activity.

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