By Cecillia Wang, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project at 4:59pm
Ultimately, it's not only up to the Supreme Court to decide if S.B. 1070 will stand. The American people must decide whether we will tolerate a nation with such invidious laws.
By Chris Rickerd, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:24pm
At the end of today's Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee hearing on state and local immigration enforcement (ACLU statement here), former Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce tried to explain why Arizona's racial profiling law, S.B. 1070, makes sense. He proposed a logical two-step (watch from 120:45 here): First, he asserted that 90 percent of those who violate our immigration laws "come across that Southern border," and are "Hispanic." (In fact, 77 percent of the undocumented population is Latino.)
By Laura W. Murphy, Director, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:19pm
Today we let federal lawmakers know that Arizona’s racial profiling law, S.B. 1070, is about much more than just the state of Arizona and its immigrants. It’s about how we see ourselves as a nation.
We used to like to go fishing, camping, go on drives. Since the [S.B. 1070 copycat law passed], we don't do that anymore. We're afraid of getting pulled over because of the way we look.
A class action lawsuit filed today by the ACLU, along with the Prison Law Office, the Arizona Center for Disability Law, and the law firms Jones Day and Perkins Coie, alleges that the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) houses thousands of prisoners in solitary confinement conditions so harsh they violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. While other states also use solitary confinement, Arizona has added features that seem designed to gratuitously increase suffering. The cells in that state's supermax Special Management Units (SMUs) were deliberately constructed with no windows to the outside, so prisoners — many of whom have no means of telling the time — become disoriented and confused, not knowing the whether it is day or night. The cells are often illuminated 24 hours a day, making sleep difficult and further contributing to prisoners' disorientation and mental deterioration.
An employee at a religiously affiliated nonprofit writes about the struggle to get her employer to cover contraception prescribed for conditions like polycystic fibrosis and dysmenorrhea.
By David Shapiro, ACLU National Prison Project at 2:24pm
In December, we asked you to pick among three candidates for the worst prison idea of 2011: denying prisoners lunch, charging families to visit prisoners or a pilot program in South Korea involving robotic correctional officers. You cast your votes, and the results are in!
Coming in at first place for worst prison idea of 2011, with 45% of your votes, is Gouging Families: A new law in Arizona allows the Department of Corrections to charge family members and other visitors who want to see prisoners a $25 fee. Visiting loved ones is hard enough without the new charge because, as the New York Times reports, family members “in many cases already shoulder the expense of traveling long distances to the remote areas where many prisons are located.” New fees just make it harder.
A federal judge granted the ACLU's request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer seeking to strike down her own state's voter-approved medical marijuana law.
