American Civil Liberties Union

Tuesday, a Nebraska federal court rejected a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s rule requiring insurance plans to cover contraception. This was the first of two dozen challenges to be decided.   We applaud the court’s decision and hope that the judges in the other cases follow the Nebraska federal judge’s lead.

The House Judiciary Committee has held eight anti-abortion or anti-family planning votes or hearings so far this Congress.  This morning, they’re scheduled to make it nine.  The Committee will be considering the so-called “District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” which would ban abortion in the District of Columbia at 20 weeks.   

In June, Michigan vaulted to the top of the list of states with outrageous, regressive legislation on women's health, placing a monster omnibus package on the fast-track to becoming law. If successful, the bills would effectively make safe abortion services inaccessible in the state. One major part of the legislation, the War on Women Mega Bill, has already passed the State House and is pending in the Senate.

We first sounded the alarm bells when this dangerous legislation came before the Michigan House Health Policy Committee. The bills were quickly approved in committee leaving those waiting to be heard angry, and in some cases in tears.

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.