Alabama

02/28/2012
H.B. 56

The Verdict is Out: Why States Are Already Shifting Away from Alabama and Arizona's Failed Anti-Immigrant Experiment

By Jonathan Blazer, ACLU at 5:43pm

In state after state, legislatures that had vowed to adopt sweeping new immigration restrictions are now taking pause. What happened?

Read More»
11/14/2011
H.B. 56

For a Pioneering Jurist, Alabama Anti-Immigrant Law Is Spark for a New Civil Rights Struggle

By Vesna Jaksic, ACLU at 5:35pm

Retired federal judge U. W. Clemon has seen great advancement of civil rights in Alabama, but is very concerned about their present state.

Read More»
11/08/2011
H.B. 56

For One Family, Alabama Anti-Immigrant Law a Fate Worse than Possible Death

By Vesna Jaksic, ACLU at 5:10pm

Last month, Luis Robledo accompanied a Spanish-speaking woman and her young son to a medical appointment in Birmingham. Both are HIV-positive and had to go in for a regular check-up. But she is an undocumented immigrant, and had become increasingly concerned about Alabama’s harsh anti-immigrant law. A couple of weeks ago, she took her child — a U.S. citizen — and moved back to Guatemala.

Read More»
11/04/2011
H.B. 56

Help Wanted: Farmers' Plight Proves Alabama's H.B. 56 Was Never About Creating Jobs

By Sandhya Bathija, Washington Legislative Office at 3:17pm

Since Alabama’s draconian racial profiling law went into effect, farmers have been crying out for help.

Read More»
09/17/2012
HIV/AIDS Discrimination in Prisons

Fear and Loathing Over HIV Must End in Alabama Prisons

By Amanda Goad, LGBT Project at 11:00am

You can’t catch HIV from a toilet seat.

You can’t catch HIV from kitchen utensils.

You can’t catch HIV from everyday contact with the people around you. 

Old news, right? In fact, all of those points were made in Understanding AIDS, the health information pamphlet mailed to every American household by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in 1988. But apparently the message was lost on folks at the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC). 

Read More»
05/18/2012
Anti-Immigrant Laws

ACLU Lens: Alabama Governor Signs New Anti-Immigrant Measure into Law

By Steve Gosset, ACLU at 11:08pm

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley late Friday signed a measure that makes small changes to the state’s anti-immigrant law. The move came a day after he signaled he might veto the measure because he found two key parts unacceptable, including a "scarlet letter" provision that would have branded many law-abiding immigrants as criminals.

Despite his reservations, Bentley said he signed the measure to “remove the distraction of immigration” from a special session of the Legislature he called this week, and allow what he called “progress made in the legislation to move forward.”

Read More»
03/15/2012
Juvenile Life Without Parole

Throwaway Kids?

By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 1:41pm

Next week the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in two historic cases. Incredibly, the cases — from Alabama, Miller v. Alabama, and Arkansas, Jackson v. Hobbs — concern the practice, unique to the United States, of imprisoning teenagers for the rest of their natural lives for crimes committed while they were still developing into adulthood. The U.S. stands utterly alone on this one — no other country in the world locks up its children for crimes committed before they could legally drive, join the military, vote or sometimes even get married.

Read More»
03/09/2012
H.B. 56

Victory! Appeals Court Blocks Additional Provisions of H.B. 56, Alabama's Anti-Immigrant Law

By Cecillia Wang, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project at 12:47pm

These provisions were intended "to attack every aspect" of Alabamians' lives and to expel them from the state.

Read More»
01/17/2012
H.B. 56

ACLU Client Scott Douglas on The Colbert Report

By Elizabeth Beresford, ACLU at 5:21pm

Last night on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert interviewed Scott Douglas III, executive director of the Greater Birmingham Ministries. Douglas is a plaintiff in the ACLU and a coalition of civil rights groups’ lawsuit challenging H.B. 56, Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law.

In this video, Douglas talks about why he’s a plaintiff in our case:

Read More»
12/19/2011
Alabama

Stopping South Carolina from Sharing Alabama's Fate

By Cecillia Wang, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project at 7:37pm

The fate of civil liberties in South Carolina will be decided by year’s end. Today, a coalition of South Carolinians and civil rights organizations went to federal district court in Charleston to stop the last anti-immigrant law passed this year.

Like its shameful predecessors, Arizona’s SB 1070 and Alabama’s HB 56, South Carolina’s law would turn police officers and sheriff’s deputies into roving immigration agents who are authorized to demand papers from anyone they suspect of being an undocumented immigrant.

Read More»
Statistics image