News & Commentary

British citizen Kerim Yildiz, a leading London-based human rights advocate for the Kurdish people, has been waiting for more than a year and a half for a visa for travel to the United States to speak at Harvard, the ACLU, and two prominent foundations. Today, the ACLU, the American Association of University Professors, and the PEN America Center sent a letter to the Departments of State and Homeland Security protesting this extraordinarily long delay without explanation. (You can read the letter here.) This is the second such delay, and we worry that the government's actions relate to Yildiz's human rights advocacy.

We have written extensively about online data brokers and their penchant for mining public records and secretly following you around the web in order to create profiles based on personal information they glean. They then share that information with marketers, insurance companies, background check companies, and even law enforcement.

Last week, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington took an important step forward in the fight to ensure the rights of victims of domestic violence. The Court ruled unanimously in favor of the daughters of the late Baerbel Roznowski, Carola Washburn and Janet Loh, who had filed a lawsuit against the City of Federal Way for police negligence that led to their mother's death.

If it weren't for the serious life-altering implications of the anti-abortion bills passed this year all over the country, it would be downright comical. From legislators in North Carolina tacking abortion legislation onto a motorcycle safety bill, to politicians in Texas insisting that shutting down abortion clinics because of the size of their parking lots is really an attempt to protect women's health, the lengths politicians have gone to deny women their basic constitutional rights is nearly laughable. Politicians must think we're stupid.

Today the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that law enforcement agents must obtain a warrant based on probable cause to attach a GPS device to a car and track its movements. The case, United States v. Katzin, is the first in which a federal appeals court has explicitly held that a warrant is required for GPS tracking by police. The ACLU submitted an amicus brief in the case (joined by the ACLU of Pennsylvania, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers) and presented oral argument to the court in March.

After a mere seven days in solitary confinement, a person's brain activity slows significantly. Every study conducted on the effects of sixty days or more in solitary has found evidence of negative psychological effects. And according to Juan Mendez, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, solitary confinement for longer than 15 days can amount to torture.
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Now that the federal government is up and running again, President Obama has announced that immigration reform is his highest priority. The country's biggest for-profit prison companies already pull in hundreds of millions of dollars a year locking up immigrants in federal custody. They stand to pull in even more money if the new laws generate lots of new prisoners.
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Today same-sex couples start marrying in New Jersey, thanks to Lambda Legal's fabulous court victory. We're thrilled to see New Jersey become the 14th marriage state for same-sex couples!
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Our long national nightmare is over! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Congress pulled it together in the eleventh hour to end the government shutdown and avert economic disaster. Washington is a much happier city this week with all of its federal workers back on the job and our beloved panda cam streaming to the masses once again.