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Chicago police officers initiated stop, question and frisk encounters at a much higher rate last summer than their New York City counterparts ever did, and just like with New York’s heavily criticized program, Chicago blacks and other racial minorities were disproportionately targeted, according to a civil liberties group. The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois released a report Monday saying it identified more than 250,000 Chicago stop-and-frisk encounters in which there were no arrests from May through August 2014. African-Americans accounted for nearly three-quarters of those stopped, even though they make up about a third of the city’s population. On...

The US must release photographs showing abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge has ruled in a long-running clash over letting the world see potentially disturbing images of how the military treated prisoners. US district judge Alvin Hellerstein’s ruling Friday gives the government, which has fought the case for over a decade, two months to decide whether to appeal before the photos could be released. The American Civil Liberties Union has been seeking to make them public in the name of holding government accountable.

Earlier today I noted that the American Civil Liberties Union—ostensibly a pro-First Amendment organiztion—had articulated a baffling position on the University of Oklahoma's expulsion of two students for racist behavior: namely, that said actions were the right ones. But the ACLU has walked back its earlier comments, and now recognizes that OU can't abridge its students' free speech rights, offensive though their conduct may be. "It is difficult to imagine a situation in which a court would side with the university on this matter," writes the ACLU: As a state-run institution of higher education, the University of Oklahoma must also...

New details tonight about a secret Pentagon database used to monitor anti-war protests and activists. Recently-disclosed documents reveal that some of the surveillance targets include an organization with ties to the Central Coast. Secret Pentagon documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union provide details of how the organization called "Veterans for Peace" was considered a threat. Every Sunday for the past three years, members of the Santa Barbara Chapter of Veterans for Peace place a cross in the sand near Stearns Wharf for every American soldier killed in Iraq. First started in Santa Barbara, the "Arlington West" display has...

ST. LOUIS — The US Court of Appeals has ruled that the House of Worship Protection Act, which bans anyone from intentionally disturbing the order or solemnity of a house of worship through profane discourse, rude, or indecent behavior, is a violation of the First Amendment. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the St. Louis-based court ruled against the state law Monday after the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri filed a lawsuit challenging the law in 2012. The lawsuit was on behalf of various groups, including the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The groups argued that the...

The American Civil Liberties Union is siding with the Washington Redskins in a court battle over the team’s name. The ACLU filed papers last week supporting the team’s position that canceling the Redskins trademark violates the team’s free-speech rights. […] On Monday, lawyers for the Native Americans who challenged the trademark said the ACLU should not be allowed to intervene in the case. …

The Washington Redskins’ have gained a new ally in their fight to defend their trademark against offended liberal activists: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).Last year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) ruled that the Redskins name is disparaging towards Native Americans, and as a result weakened the team’s trademark protections that allow it to keep individuals from selling unlicensed team gear. The Redskins have appealed the ruling, and in January also filed a new lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of such bans on disparaging trademarks. (RELATED: 12 Trademarks Less Offensive Than Redskins According To The PTO) The ACLU filed a...

A court ruling clears the way for hundreds and perhaps thousands of immigrants improperly expelled to Mexico from Southern California to be allowed to return to seek legal U.S. residency, an official with a civil rights group said on Saturday

President Barack Obama’s government is inviting many repatriated illegal immigrants back to work in the United States under a deal approved approved this week by a federal judge. The deal was finalized by Obama’s deputies and their ideological allies in the American Civil Liberties Union, via a courtroom negotiation under the supervision of an Obama-app0inted judge. The deal also provided $700,000 to the ACLU for the lawyers’ fees. The lawyers had claimed that illegals were unfairly and unlawfully pressured to sign so-called “voluntary return” documents as they were being deported. The illegals should have been invited to fight repatriation via the courts, said...

A Washington grandmother and florist of 40 years who refused to service gay weddings because of her faith will now be forced to arrange flowers for gay ceremonies, a judge ruled Wednesday. On top of that, the woman, Barronelle Stutzman, will have to pay the legal penalties imposed by the judge as well as attorney’s fees. Benton County Superior Court Judge Alex Ekstrom ruled in a summary judgement that Stutzman violated anti-discrimination and consumer protection laws. Ekstrom ruled that the gay couple could collect penalties not just from her business, but also from her personally, according to Alliance Defending Freedom,...

New York City, N.Y., Feb 13, 2015 / 04:02 am (CNA).- Questions are being raised over two U.S. foundations that have poured more than three million dollars into abortion rights, LGBT activist, and legal groups to push the message that exemptions based on religious beliefs are “un-American” and an abuse of liberty. The Arcus Foundation and the Ford Foundation have spent over $3 million in combined spending against religious liberty exemptions since 2013, according to a CNA review of tax forms and grant listings. John Lomperis of the Institute for Religion and Democracy – a D.C.-based ecumenical Christian think tank...

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Department of Defense for failing to disclose the admissions policies which result in an underrepresentation of women in military academies. Joined by the Service Women’s Action Network, the ACLU is looking to determine exactly why the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point admit women at a much lower rate than men, but the DOD has so far been uncooperative. The lawsuit states that the DOD has violated Freedom of Information Act deadlines by not releasing admission policy information.

NORFOLK A bill moving through the General Assembly could eliminate a legal process that brings in millions of dollars for law enforcement agencies, but which critics say allows the government to confiscate property unfairly. HB1287, sponsored by Del. Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania, would end civil asset forfeitures - state legal proceedings that allow police to keep property seized from criminal suspects. The process rankles civil liberties advocates because such seizures can occur without a criminal conviction. The proposal mirrors an order from Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month that drastically curtails the federal asset-forfeiture process. If Cole's bill passes, the...

On Tuesday, Barack Obama adamantly defended his policy of emptying the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, demanding that Congress get on board with it as well. As Jim Hoft noted at the time, the military leadership present at the State of the Union address didn’t appear too enthusiastic about it:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Perhaps the New York Times has an explanation for that stone-faced reaction. At the same time that Obama bragged about “turning the page” on war and the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, one of the men transferred from Gitmo worked to establish a...

Does America need a terrorist financier to secure its “freedom”? Sami al-Arian thinks so. His National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom poses as a watchdog for the Constitution, but he has focused his lobbying efforts on repealing anti-terrorist legislation. While Sami al-Arian himself has been arrested for being a prime financier for Palestinian Islamic Jihad (and likely one of its three founders), his political movement continues to threaten homeland security. Al-Arian founded the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF) in 1997 as a reaction to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996. The coalition’s stated goal “is to help change the...

Long War Journal reports that the Obama administration has released Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri from a U.S. prison – not from Gitmo, but from a civilian jail after a federal terrorism conviction. Al-Marri is an al-Qaeda operative who was planted as a “sleeper” in the United States by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed to await instructions on carrying out a second wave of attacks after the 9/11 atrocities – against water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange, U.S. military academies, and other targets. The Justice Department quietly sprung him on Friday so he could return to his native Qatar, a country the...

As President Obama frees droves of terrorists—including five Yemenis this week—from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo news reports confirm that a Gitmo alum who once led a Taliban unit has established the first Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) base in Afghanistan. His name is Mullah Abdul Rauf and international and domestic media reports say he’s operating in Helmand province, actively recruiting fighters for ISIS. Citing local sources, a British newspaper writes that Rauf set up a base and is offering good wages to anyone willing to fight for the Islamic State. Rauf was a corps commander during...

A grand juror is suing St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch in an effort to speak out on what happened in the Darren Wilson case. Under typical circumstances, grand jurors are prohibited by law from discussing cases they were involved in. The grand juror, referred to only as “Grand Juror Doe” in the lawsuit, takes issue with how McCulloch characterized the case. McCulloch released evidence presented to the grand jury and publicly discussed the case after the grand jury decided not to indict Wilson, then a Ferguson police officer, in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American. […]...

A member of the grand jury that declined to indict the Ferguson police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown asked a federal court Monday to remove a lifetime gag order preventing jurors from discussing the case. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of an unnamed juror who wants to speak about the investigation but would be in violation of Missouri law by doing so. The lawsuit also questions St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s characterization that “all grand jurors believed that there was no support for any charges.” The suit was filed against McCulloch, who...

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against a western Indiana school district seeking to force it to recognize a club for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students and those who support them. The lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Terre Haute contends the North Putnam Community School Corp. in Bainbridge, 35 miles west of Indianapolis, is violating the First Amendment rights of the Gay-Straight Alliance and the three students who are now members. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of those students at North Putnam High School — a senior,...