Free Republic

The ACLU lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Missouri NAACP and the district's black residents, according to an ACLU press release. The complaint charges that the at-large voting system violates the Voting Rights Act, as it “impermissibly denies African-American voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” While more than three-fourths of the district's students are black, the area's voting-age population is majority-white. The ACLU suit contends that the district's at-large system results in the black vote getting drowned out. It calls for a new system where the district is broken...

Nope. Not their war against Christmas; but their war against our military: The Obama administration is withholding hundreds, perhaps even thousands of photographs showing the U.S. government’s brutal treatment of detainees, meaning that revelations about detainee abuse could well continue, possibly compounding the outrage generated by the Senate “torture report” now in the public eye. Some photos show American troops posing with corpses; others depict U.S. forces holding guns to people’s heads or simulating forced sodomization. All of them could be released to the public, depending on how a federal judge in New York rules—and how hard the government fights...

The federal government and the Obama administration are under fire for a variety of unconstitutional programs aimed at both militarizing and controlling local police and law enforcement, including supplying a vast array of sophisticated U.S. Defense Department “weapons of war” to city and county governments. Billions of dollars in military equipment has already been handed to municipal police departments and county sheriffs’ offices nationwide under the rapidly expanding federal schemes, but concerns from across the political spectrum are growing quickly as well. This year alone, over 150 so-called “mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles,” or MRAPs, used by U.S. forces in Iraq, were...

The U.S. Army has agreed to “fully recognize” the new legal names of two transgender military veterans, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday. The group’s New Jersey chapter announced that the Army Board for Correction of Military Records recently notified the two veterans about its decision. The board initially recommended that the request be rejected, but the Army Review Boards’ deputy assistant secretary overrode the decision. …

Once the grand jury makes its decision on whether to charge Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, members will go back to their everyday lives. KMOX News wanted to know about the safety of those jurors given the high-profile case and the strong emotions surrounding it. Washington University law professor Peter Joy says despite safeguards, no system is 100 percent fool-proof.

The story vanished from the Washington Times website just hours after going online. For a few hours, it was big news. And then it vanished. On Monday morning, the American Civil Liberties Union and National Rifle Association published a joint op-ed in the Washington Times urging the Senate to pass legislation that would limit the government's domestic spying powers. It was a meaningful push from two powerful groups that—as the groups themselves noted—rarely agree on anything. And the support came just a day before the Senate is scheduled to take a key (and hotly contested) vote Tuesday on the measure,...

St. Louis — St. Louis County police said they have spent around $100,000 stocking up on riot gear and other items they may need if protests turn violent after prosecutors announce whether a Ferguson officer will face criminal charges in the shooting death of Michael Brown. And CNN reports that citizens are also preparing for the grand jury ruling: gun sales are up in St. Louis. A state grand jury has been meeting since shortly after Brown, who was 18 and black, was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson, who is white, on Aug. 9. Brown was unarmed and...

In covering the hearing of the nine bank chief executives on Capitol Hill, it didn’t take long for me to see that Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was having a hard time of it, valiant effort though he did make to defend his bank’s lending practices. Because to look inside Wells Fargo, you will find the worst of the mortgage lenders housed in this bank, Wachovia, which Wells Fargo bought last fall for $15.4 bn, and housed within Wachovia is Golden West Financial, which Wachovia bought for a stupefying $25 bn, Golden West, the purveyor of some of the worst...

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Friday challenging Iowa’s tough policies that bar felons from voting, seeking to restore the right to thousands of former offenders before the 2016 presidential election. The case aims to end confusion over rules that followed a 2011 policy change by Gov. Terry Branstad and a criminal investigation into people who improperly voted. Iowa is among three states where felons cannot vote after completing their sentences unless their rights are restored by the governor. “The widespread denial of voting rights on the basis of a felony conviction is the single biggest denial of...

Ebola health care worker Kaci Hickox, who was released from quarantine with the support of the White House, is a Centers For Disease Control and Prevention employee, records reveal. The lawyer who helped earn her release is a recent White House state dinner guest.Hickox was released from Ebola quarantine in Newark, N.J., Monday afternoon after the White House pressured New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to release the nurse that was working in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders. Hickox’s case for release was also bolstered by New York civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who took on Hickox’s case.“I feel like...

Liberal and conservative groups are mobilizing armies of poll watchers to battle over the enforcement of voter ID laws on Election Day. The Democratic Party has more to lose if turnout is low on Nov. 4. Liberals want to ensure that the young, black and Latino voters who form a key part of the party’s electoral base are not kept from the polls. Conservatives insist that they just want to uphold the integrity of the electoral process by making sure that all votes cast are legitimate. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has state directors stationed across the country for its...

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit that asks for a permanent injunction against a Miami-Dade ordinance that states that sex offenders are not allowed to live within approximately half a mile, or 2,500 feet, of a school. The suit was filed this week. The suit, Doe, et al. v. Miami-Dade County, et al., argues that the ordinance puts undue pressure on sex offenders and pedophiles, forcing them to likely become homeless because of the law. The lawsuit alleges that "The law prohibits former offenders from living 2,500 feet (almost half a mile) from any building the county labels a "school,"...

The federal government is opening new family detention centers for newly arrived immigrants in the hope it will speed the process of considering their claims for asylum, but civil rights advocates have challenged this practice of detaining mothers and children who are caught coming into this country illegally. Immigrant advocates are suing the government over changes to the way women with children caught crossing into the country illegally are being processed. Ten plaintiffs are suing the Department of Homeland Security over its policies and practices at the Artesia Family Residential Center, where 648 women and children are being held in...

An American Civil Liberties Union attorney was named Wednesday to be the acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Vanita Gupta, who has served for the past four years as deputy legal director of the ACLU and director of its Center for Justice, starts at the Justice Department next week. She previously worked as a lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. A person familiar with the process said President Barack Obama plans to nominate Gupta to serve in the job permanently. The person was not authorized to discuss the selection process by name and spoke on the...

The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked Wisconsin from enforcing its strict voter identification law in this year's election.. By a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal from civil rights lawyers who argued it was too late to put the rule into effect. Lawyers for the ACLU had noted the state had already sent out thousands of absentee ballots without mentioning the need for voters to return a copy of the photo identification. It would be "chaos," they said, for the state now to have to decide whether or not to count such ballots because the voters failed to...

The New York Times knows no boundaries in its quest to be the most anti-American outlet in an already very anti-American national media. This story sounds like something that came from The Onion, but sadly it is true. The New York Times has editorialized in favor of the Civil Rights of pedophiles – yes pedophiles! The Times wrings its dainty little hands and bemoans the nation’s “tough anti-pedophile laws” as “unfair to pedophiles.” A mouth breathing mutant named Margo Kaplan, of course a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, who is now an assistant professor at Rutgers University is quoted...

Blacks are more likely to be stopped and frisked by Hub cops in a “problematic pattern” that stops short of “widespread” racial profiling, according to the researcher whose findings the ACLU cited in an explosive report on Boston police tactics.

The case was brought by 10 same-sex couples who are represented by the ACLU. Missouri must recognize the marriages of same-sex couples that were granted elsewhere, state Judge Dale Youngs ruled on Friday. “[T]o the extent these laws prohibit plaintiffs’ legally contracted marriages from other states from being recognized here, they are wholly irrational, do not rest upon any reasonable basis, and are purely arbitrary,” Youngs wrote. The ruling followed a hearing in September on the case, which was brought by 10 same-sex couples represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. “Missouri has finally recognized our couples’ marriages as being...

On Monday, October 6, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a North Carolina case that asks whether a traffic stop based on a police officer’s mistaken understanding of traffic laws violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. A friend-of-the-court brief submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of North Carolina, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Cato Institute argues that a mistake of law can never supply the reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing that the Fourth Amendment requires in order to justify a traffic stop. "Ignorance of the law is not...

Opponents of Wisconsin's photo ID requirement for voters took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, seeking an emergency halt to the state's implementation of the law before the fast approaching Nov. 4 election. ~snip~ In their petition, voter ID opponents told the Supreme Court that there's not enough time to properly implement the law in the month remaining in the tight race between GOP Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Mary Burke. "Thousands of Wisconsin voters stand to be disenfranchised by this law going into effect so close to the election. Hundreds of absentee ballots have already...