American Civil Liberties Union

Yesterday, we filed a lawsuit in Arkansas to challenge what was, for a short time, the most extreme abortion ban in the nation. Don't be mistaken though, the Arkansas law is still outrageous - banning most abortions just a few weeks after a woman finds out she is pregnant. By passing this law, politicians are preventing a woman and her family from being able to make the most personal decision they might ever make.

There are now close to 40 challenges to the federal birth control rule, which ensures that employees have insurance coverage for contraception.  Why so many lawsuits, you ask?  The answer is not entirely clear, but one thing is certain: each case repeats the same misguided argument that an employer’s religious beliefs can be used as a license to discriminate against its female employees.  As we have explained in greater detail their legal claims are unsupported by a long history of cases.  We’ve filed friend-of-the-court briefs in several contraception suits discussing those cases, all of which rejected other attempts to use religious beliefs as a basis for discrimination.  In the last week alone, we’ve filed three briefs: one in a case in Michigan with the ACLU of Michigan, and two others with the ACLU of Illinois.

It’s funny how unpredictable the course of technology is. A few weeks ago it was reported that a Texas school district plans to implant RFID chips in student IDs, and use them to track the whereabouts of students. RFID chips, of course, are what make all kinds of contactless technologies work, from toll booth speed passes to contactless transit passes and entry keys. We have seen attemtps to use RFID’s in schools before and have opposed such efforts, not only because we don’t want to see this kind of intrusive surveillance infrastructure gain inroads into our culture, and because we should not be teaching our children to accept such an intrusive surveillance technology, but also because RFIDs are a generally insecure technology not appropriate for use with children.

Access to birth control, forced ultrasounds – lately there’s been a lot of news about efforts to roll women’s rights back by decades. Less attention has been paid to the way in which pregnant women and nursing mothers have been stuck in the 1970s, or worse, when it comes to workplace equality.

Yesterday, the ACLU submitted comments to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – the body that enforces federal civil rights employment law – explaining how courts have been ignoring the basic premise of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and leaving women in the lurch.