News & Commentary

Yesterday, four servicewomen and the Service Women’s Action Network filed an updated complaint in their lawsuit against the Department of Defense for its ongoing policy and practice of banning women from thousands of jobs across the military, including entire military career fields that remain “men only.”  The ACLU and the ACLU of Northern California, along with our partners at the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, filed this lawsuit challenging the Pentagon’s so-called “combat exclusion policy” almost a year ago.  At that time, a 1994 directive signed by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin prohibited women from being assigned to most ground combat units and positions. We argued that this outdated policy didn’t match the reality of modern warfare, in which women have regularly gone into battle on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, unofficially or temporarily “attached” or “supporting” combat infantry units and Special Forces squads on their missions.

If you’re concerned about the dragnet nature of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, then you should also pay attention to what your local police department is doing. You may find that the dragnet surveillance happening there has a lot in common with the NSA’s mass collection of phone log data.

Matthew was seventeen. He’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has struggled with serious drug dependency and a difficult home life. He needed help. Instead, he got locked in “the box.”

Lucille MacBeth, mother of slain Florida teen Jordan Russell Davis, did all she could to keep from crying during her testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution earlier this week. After nearly five minutes of testimony, Lucille stopped speaking, looked down and then back up, this time with tears in her eyes: "I'll never get to see my son's prom photo. I never get to hear how much he enjoys his dad's chili. No one else will ever get to know him. He'll never get to join the Marines like he dreamed and all because of guns and the power of these laws. These laws embolden people with hate to take action with that hate."

Here in Pennsylvania, we have a full-time legislature, so as the lobbyist for the Pennsylvania affiliate of the ACLU, I have plenty of opportunities for face time with state legislators and staff. Since June, I've been hearing a similar refrain repeatedly: NSA surveillance is a major problem. We deal with a lot of state-level surveillance legislation, and I've joked with legislators and staff that Edward Snowden has made my job a lot easier.

It is every citizen's right to videotape police activity in public spaces so long as they do not interfere with law enforcement. When the police act unlawfully, one might even say capturing that behavior on film is every citizen's duty. Apparently the Memphis Police Department didn't get that memo.

Can the government force you to decrypt your hard drive? Do the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights protect us from being compelled to disclose or enter our encryption keys, and thereby potentially incriminate ourselves? The answer to these questions in Massachusetts hinges on the Supreme Judicial Court’s upcoming decision about whether decrypting a computer is like giving someone a key or a combination to a safe, or instead, if it’s like translating words from one language to another.

Here's the story: a pregnant woman is working, paying her bills, paying taxes, and taking care of her family. She's in the workforce, contributing to the economy, and trying to carve out a little piece of the American dream by doing what everybody says you're supposed to do: work hard, be productive.

Immigrant families in Alabama can finally breathe more freely thanks to a settlement reached Tuesday with Alabama over its draconian HB 56 anti-immigrant law, enacted in 2011. The settlement that we and our co-counsel reached permanently blocks key provisions of the law and significantly limits racial profiling resulting from its "show me your papers" provisions. The settlement is contingent on court approval.