Welfare Reform Must Aim to Eliminate Poverty and Protect Civil Rights; Current Legislation Not Up to Task, ACLU Says

WASHINGTON – President Trump announced today that he will direct executive agencies to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under federal law, recognizing that marijuana has accepted medical uses and a lower potential for dependence. Marijuana is currently classified alongside substances such as heroin, and rescheduling would instead place it alongside medications like Tylenol with codeine. The announcement follows years of advocacy directed at many administrations, expanding scientific research, and widespread state-level reforms. “Today’s announcement is a significant step toward aligning federal marijuana policy with science, evidence, and the realities on the ground in states across the country,” said Nina Patel, senior policy counsel at the ACLU. “Congress must now pass the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act and the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (MORE Act) to ensure justice for the people and communities harmed by the war on drugs. These federal bills would remove federal criminal penalties for marijuana, provide criminal history record clearing, and necessary investments in communities disproportionately targeted for criminalization. The ACLU will continue the fight to end unjust and punitive drug polices for everyone and the creation of a more perfect union for all.”

OKLAHOMA CITY – The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Oklahoma, and Covington & Burling LLP announced a landmark agreement today with court leadership in Canadian County, Oklahoma that, if approved by the federal judge presiding over the case, would put an end to the unconstitutional practice of jailing people simply because they cannot afford bail. Under the agreement, judges in Canadian County must determine a person’s ability to pay before imposing cash bail. The agreement also prohibits conditioning release on paying cash bail unless the court finds that doing so is necessary because nonfinancial conditions will not adequately ensure future court appearance or protect the public. This marks a major step toward ending wealth-based detention in Oklahoma. “This agreement marks a major step toward ending a two-tiered justice system in Oklahoma where wealth determined who stayed in jail and who walked free,” said Brandon Buskey, director of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project. “For far too long, people who are presumed innocent have been languishing in jail when they could have otherwise been safely in their communities. The procedures we have implemented are critical to building a more just and equitable pretrial system for all.” If approved, the settlement would resolve a federal class action lawsuit, White v. Hesse, brought in 2019 on behalf of people detained pretrial in Canadian County. Plaintiffs challenged the unconstitutional use of a preprinted bail schedule and the policy and practice of imposing cash bail without individualized hearings or ability to pay assessments. As a result, people were routinely held in jail for weeks without receiving a meaningful hearing. “Spending even a few days in jail can upend a person’s entire life,” said Megan Lambert, legal director at the ACLU of Oklahoma. “People risk losing their jobs, their housing, and even custody of their children, making it more difficult to rebuild their lives upon release. Cash bail traps people in a cycle of discrimination, poverty, and incarceration. Today’s agreement interrupts that cycle to better ensure that no one is locked up simply because they cannot afford to pay for their freedom.” The full agreement is here: https://www.aclu.org/cases/white-et-al-v-hesse-et-al?document=Consent-Decree

WASHINGTON – President Trump signed two executive orders today attempting to end Washington, D.C.’s cash bail reforms and threatening to withhold federal funds from cities with similar policies. Below is a statement from Cynthia Roseberry, director of policy and government affairs with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Justice Division, in response to the orders: “To further his dangerous, performative abuse of power in D.C., President Trump today took another step to make people in our nation’s capital less safe by targeting common sense bail reforms. These executive orders are another blatant power grab by the Trump administration that will only serve to benefit the predatory bail industry. But the people who will be most impacted are those with the fewest resources. Whether we can afford to pay should never determine our freedom.” “The President’s attempt to end cash bail risks increasing pretrial detention, which is not a real solution to preventing crime in D.C. It can actually have a negative effect on public safety, by separating people from their support networks, jobs, and housing,” said Alicia Yass, supervisory policy counsel at ACLU of the District of Columbia. “Even short periods of unnecessary detention increase a person's risk of re-arrest, and cash bail has been associated with a 6 to 9 percent increase in reoffending or committing another crime. Cash bail has long punished people living below the poverty line — especially Black and Brown communities. It is our constitutional right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Pretrial detention does just the opposite — it treats certain people as guilty until proven innocent.”

As a result of Georgia Senate Bill 63, thousands of people are being kept in jail pre-trial because they can’t afford to post bail, even when a judge believes the person should have been released until trial with no risk to the public. The ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, along with ACLU-GA and the Southern Center for Human Rights, filed a class action lawsuit challenging SB63’s mandatory monetary bail provisions under the Georgia State Constitution.