Florida

02/02/2012
Voter Suppression

"If You Get It Young, You'll Vote Your Whole Life"

By Dawn Quarles, Dawn Quarles at 12:12pm

A Florida high school teacher talks about how Florida's new law restricting third parties from registering voters suppresses registration among young people.

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01/27/2012
Florida

Let People Vote

By Matt Coles, Center for Equality at 3:19pm

The right to vote is what makes a country a true democracy. Limit the right to only some of the people and you don't really have self-government anymore.

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11/16/2012
LGBT Parenting

Celebrating Forever Families on National Adoption Day

By Nikki Fisher, ACLU of Florida at 5:56pm

Thanksgiving and the year-end holiday season are right around the corner. During this time of year, families gather to eat together, laugh together and generally celebrate being together.  In the past two years in Florida, those families have included gay men and lesbians who have adopted children and given them loving homes. But it hasn’t always been that way.

For 33 years, Florida law categorically banned gays and lesbians from becoming adoptive parents. As a result, many children who could have been placed in a loving, permanent home were denied that opportunity, spending years in the foster care system and in many cases, aging out without ever being adopted.

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06/08/2012
Voter Suppression

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Florida’s Latest Attempt to Purge Voters from the Rolls

By Katie O'Connor, Voting Rights Project at 5:20pm

The ACLU and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights filed suit today in federal district court in Florida challenging the state’s latest attack on voting rights: purging voters from voter registration rolls.

In May of this year, Secretary of State Ken Detzer distributed nearly 2,700 names for removal from the voter registration rolls, claiming that those voters on the list were not U.S. citizens. The list is fraught with inaccuracies and false positives. In Florida’s most populous county, Miami-Dade, where about 1,600 of the 2,700 ”ineligible” voters are registered, nearly 500 of the targeted voters have already proven to be lawfully registered U.S. citizens. That’s more than a 30 percent error rate. 

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02/10/2012
Sentencing Reform

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

By Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice at 12:40pm

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

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03/21/2012
Trayvon Martin

Justice for Trayvon

By Joyce Hamilton Henry, ACLU of Florida at 2:42pm

Last night the author attended a gathering at the Allen Chapel AME Church in Sanford, Fla. The following is an excerpt of her remarks:

As we learn more about the tragic shooting death of Trayvon Martin, concerns are being raised about the manner, thoroughness and neutrality of the investigation by the police in Sanford, Fla.

The concern is justified.

To understand it, it helps to know how we got here. Not the events of Feb. 26, which ended in Trayvon's death, but a sad history in Florida where justice for all has been illusive — and justice for some impossible.  Too often, crimes with clear, undeniable racial motives were swept under the rug or overlooked while families and communities waited in vain for justice.

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05/07/2012
Voter Suppression

Let Andre Vote

By Eunice Hyon Min Rho, ACLU at 4:37pm

President Barack Obama kicked off his reelection campaign last week in Columbus, Ohio. Governor Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, will be in Cleveland today.

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