The Supreme Court recently dealt a blow to federal police accountability in Egbert v. Boule. The case, in which the ACLU filed an amicus brief, centers on Robert Boule, who runs a bed-and-breakfast on the U.S.-Canada border. Boule sued Border Patrol agent …
In 2018, Congress passed a law that aimed to address sex trafficking on online platforms. That’s a laudable goal, but the way Congress went about it has led to dangerous and disproportionate online censorship — particularly of the communities the law was …
As classroom censorship bills sweep state legislatures, schools are removing books by and about LGBTQ people, BIPOC, and other marginalized groups from curriculums and libraries at an unprecedented rate. This year, more than 111 bills aiming to limit …
The Supreme Court’s ruling today, which overturned Roe v. Wade, is nothing less than a shameful, sweeping, politically-driven decision that will have life-altering, and indeed, life-threatening consequences for women and other people who can become …
For more than half a century, nearly every American with a television has been able to recite the words that, under the Constitution, protect their right not to incriminate themselves under government interrogation. “You have the right to remain silent. …
In January 2022, Gabino Medina, who was held at an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Seneca County, Ohio, tried to reach me and his immigration attorney several times, but his calls wouldn’t go through. Gabino informed …
When Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said he would be taking time off from his cabinet position to spend time with his husband Chasten and his two new children, he was roundly mocked in both homophobic and misogynistic terms. The criticism came …
When my first born started kindergarten, I learned American enslavement was on the curriculum that year. Before he took that first step into the classroom, I made sure he knew the truth of his ancestors’ resistance to enslavement, including the specific …
Like 4.5 million other TikTok users, I’ve recently become enamored with Dylan Mulvaney, a spritely Los Angeles-based performer who came out earlier this year as a transgender woman. In her “Days of Girlhood” video series, Dylan charts her own gender …
The government has long infringed on Americans’ fundamental rights and liberties under the guise of national security. From the FBI’s surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the round-up of innocent people simply because they were perceived to be …
Our nation incarcerates more than 1.2 million people in state and federal prisons, and two out of three of these incarcerated people are also workers. In most instances, the jobs these nearly 800,000 incarcerated workers have look similar to those of …
It has been 157 years since the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, yet hundreds of thousands of people are still living in involuntary servitude — legally — due to loopholes in the law allowing states to extract free labor from prisons instead. Today, over …
Today is the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. The ACLU represented Aimee Stephens and Don Zarda in their lawsuits, which were joined on appeal with Gerald Bostock’s, and we argued Bostock on their …
On an idle Tuesday afternoon, I received the call I had always feared most: My brother had been picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The tactic the officers used was not new. My brother’s probation officer had shared his meeting time …
“This guy is pretty much scalped over here. This guy, he’s breathing but I couldn’t get a pulse on him. I think he’s going,” a Border Patrol agent is heard saying on New Mexico State Police body cam footage from August 3, 2021. Early that morning, Border …
Throughout the U.S., judges, prosecutors, and parole boards are given algorithms to guide life-altering decisions about the liberty of the people before them, based mainly on perceived risks to “public safety.” At the same time, people accused and …
On June 8, the State of Arizona is scheduled to execute Frank Atwood. Atwood, whose mother escaped Nazi persecution in Vienna, faces a perverse choice: suffer execution by lethal injection, or by hydrogen cyanide gas, a version of which was used by the …
This article was published in partnership with the Center for American Progress. Last week, the Biden administration signed an executive order on police reform. The order comes two years after George Floyd was murdered at the hands of police in Minneapolis …
More than 75 years after the systematic incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, the U.S. Justice Department launched the “China Initiative,” inciting widespread fear of racial profiling for Asian Americans across the country. This year, as …
In states and counties across the country, sheriffs and other local law enforcement are partnering with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain and deport immigrants from their own communities. 287(g) agreements turn police and sheriffs’ …
