To Prevent Abortion Access, Legislators are Risking Women’s Lives

The Supreme Court Leaves the Americans with Disabilities Act Intact

Teresa Sheehan has survived being shot by the police five times; she has survived the challenges of a psychiatric disability; and she has now survived a challenge at the Supreme Court.
In 2008, Teresa Sheehan was living in

By Rahul Bhagnari

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HIV Is Not a Crime

...except in at least 32 states, it can be.
When we were first confronted wi

By Marc Climaco

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Prosecutor Tells Pregnant Woman Punched in Stomach: “Assault on a Latino by a Latino” Deserves Less Protection

According to Locke Bell, the district attorney of Gaston County, North Carolina, the ethnicity of a domestic-violence survivor can disqualify that person from equal protection under the law. The Charlotte Observer reports that Bell refused to certify a domestic violence survivor’s visa application because he thinks the relevant law protecting crime victims “was never intended to protect Latinos from Latinos.”
The controversy surrounds Evelin, a do

By Marc Climaco

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If You’re Black or Brown and Ride a Bike in Tampa, Watch Out: Police Find That Suspicious

The Tampa Bay Times' recent disclosure that police are targeting Blacks who ride bicycles — including children as young as three years old — for dramatically high rates of stops and searches is the latest piece in the nationwide debate about racial profiling that has followed the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and countless others.
Communities across the country are con

By Rahul Bhagnari

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Matthew Shepard Was Brutally Murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998. Last Night, the City Passed the First LGBT Nondiscrimination Ordinance in the State.

On October 6, 1998, two young men in Laramie, Wyoming, tricked University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard into thinking they would give him a ride home from the bar. Eighteen hours later, a cyclist found the gay student tied to a fence, beaten, burned, and comatose with a fractured skull. He initially mistook Shepard's limp frame for a scarecrow.
I revisit what happened to Matthew She

By Rahul Bhagnari

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Cities and Towns in Arkansas Are Turning the Manure of an Anti-LGBT Law Into the Flowers of Equality

What a difference three months makes.
In February, the Arkansas legislature

By Rahul Bhagnari

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When Does Your Google Search Become a Crime?

Gilberto Valle typed many things into his Google search bar.
Where to buy the world's largest bakin

By Rahul Bhagnari

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Obama Apologized for the Drone Killings of Two Western Victims. What About Everyone Else?

President Obama's recent response to the tragic deaths of two civilians, U.S. citizen Warren Weinstein and Italian citizen Giovanni Lo Porto, in a January 2015 "targeted killing" strike in Pakistan, was remarkable and unprecedented — yet it should not have been.
The president publicly announced the m

By Rahul Bhagnari

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