By Dennis Parker, Director, ACLU Racial Justice Program at 3:32pm
The announcement that the U.S. Justice Department has charged members of the East Haven, Connecticut Police Department with violating the civil rights of Latinos is both good news and deeply disturbing. The investigation of improper targeting by local law enforcement of Latinos in Connecticut, along with DOJ’s recent scathing report of the constitutional violations perpetrated against Latinos by Maricopa County, Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio, are welcome signs that the federal government is taking action to protect people of color from having their most basic rights compromised by racial profiling. Less welcome is the repeated appearance of this particular kind of discrimination in so many parts of the country. Incidents like these raise questions of whether we are dealing with isolated, events or facing examples of rapidly spreading problems that threaten to engulf our entire nation.
By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 5:24pm
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the groundbreaking federal law passed in 1972 to eliminate sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding. However, after four decades, its mandate continues to be ignored.
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard arguments in a case in which one university continues to employ some disingenuous, if rather creative, strategies to achieve compliance with Title IX. In March 2009, Quinnipiac, a private university in Connecticut, announced it was terminating its women’s volleyball program, despite the fact that it already failed to provide women with equal athletic opportunities. Eliminating the women’s volleyball team would put Quinnipiac even further out of compliance with Title IX.
Though it’s been 40 long years since Title IX was passed, discouraging stories continue to pop up all around the country that show that many people just don’t want to implement this groundbreaking law. In 2009, Quinnipiac University in Connecticut decided to cut funding for their Women’s Volleyball team. This put them in direct violation of Title IX, a federal law that requires educational institutions to provide equal opportunities to participate in activities, including sports, for female and male students, and the ACLU of Connecticut sued on behalf of the former coach and women’s volleyball players. But Quinnipiac claimed they weren’t restricting opportunities to women athletes. They claimed compliance with Title IX by triple-counting female cross country runners – who were also on the rosters of track and field teams – even if they didn’t actually compete. And to top it off, they claimed to have replaced volleyball with a suitable alternative: they installed a competitive cheerleading team in its place.
Two recent elections, a New York judge’s personal plea, a new state law and a new public opinion poll demonstrate that a seismic national shift has occurred in political attitudes toward medical marijuana. This cascade of developments dramatically illustrates just how far we’ve come since California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, and it indicates that our collective compassion is eroding the once-ironclad political will to deny an effective medicine to our sick fellow citizens.
By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 2:36pm
Connecticut has finally wiped its hands of that messy and sorrowful task of killing its own citizens. Today, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed legislation to repeal the death penalty that was passed by the state legislature earlier this month.
After a series of starts, stops, hurry up and wait, promises, threats, votes and vetoes over recent years, Connecticut stepped surely onto the abolition train and prospectively repealed the death penalty once and for all. The 11 men on death row before the bill's passage will remain there and continue to face execution, but thankfully no one else will. We applaud the brave legislators who heard the pleas of scores of Connecticut murder victim families who called for repeal and nonviolent healing, of law enforcement officials who recognize the death penalty is the least effective tool against violence, of conservatives and progressives alike who have concern about its discriminatory use and huge expense, and of religious leaders of all faiths who insist state-sponsored murder cannot be justified.
The passage late Wednesday by the Connecticut House of a bill to repeal the death penalty is the latest sign of growing momentum in favor of ending the use of executions nationwide.
By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 3:34pm
When I was a child, my cousin was brutally murdered. As far as our family knows, the police never found his killer.
A few years later, another cousin of mine was murdered in prison. His killers were in cahoots with his jailers, so none of them was ever prosecuted.
No one received the death penalty for these murders, and as a beloved family member of murder victims, I would never have supported pursuing capital punishment in either case.
As legislators in Connecticut grapple with a bill that would abolish the death penalty in the state, murder victims ' families are speaking loudly about their opposition to Connecticut's capital punishment system . There is a tension. On one hand, victims' family members need finality and an end to reliving their loved one's horrible death in the media and the courts. But that kind of finality is not immediate, because the Constitution requires due process, effective counsel, and protection against wrongful conviction for those sentenced to death. The years of legal appeals before an execution extend and exacerbate murder victims' families' suffering.
