Free Republic

I’ve been a florist in Richmond, Wash., for more than 30 years. In that time, I’ve developed close relationships with many of my clients. One of my favorites was Rob Ingersoll. Ingersoll came in often and we’d talk. Like me, he had an artistic eye. I’d try to create really special arrangements for him. I knew he was gay, but it didn’t matter — I enjoyed his company and his creativity. Then he asked me to create the floral arrangements for his wedding. I love Rob, and I’d always been happy to design for his special days. But there’s something...

The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho is warning that a south-central Idaho school district's dress code is unconstitutional and must be changed. The Cassia County School District is requiring all female students participating in the high school graduation to wear white or pastel dresses. Male graduating students must wear pants and a tie. ACLU Legal Director Richard Eppink says schools that make a distinction between boy and girl dress codes are enforcing gender-stereotyping policies, which violate the state and U.S. Constitution.

Education advocates on Monday called on Gov. Larry Hogan and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to increase funding for the city's schools, arguing the recent rioting in Baltimore shows the money is desperately needed. Without the funds, city schools will be forced to cut teachers, critical programs and student services, the advocates said. "Baltimore is not getting sufficient education funding to provide for all of our children's needs," said Bebe Verdery, education reform director at the ACLU of Maryland. The coalition includes the city's parent-teacher association and the city's charter schools organization, among other groups.

The Marxist-founded pressure group gears up to bring the Arab Spring to Baltimore — and the rest of America Cooling down the churning cauldron of mob violence that Baltimore has become is not on the agenda of the ACLU which is now preparing to turn up the heat in cities across America. Following the suspicious death in police custody of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man with a long rap sheet, angry mobs and radical agitators have turned Maryland’s largest city into a Hobbesian jungle. They were already angry at the endlessly sensationalized deaths in recent years of black males...

The Mobile Justice app is unique in the sense that it will allow videos captured by the app to be preserved in the case police seize or destroy the device.The ACLU of Northern California launched a free cell phone recording app Thursday which would allow people to record and send videos to their local ACLU affiliates when they feel their rights are being violated by police. The app comes as protests decrying police violence are taking over the country, most recently for the controversial death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old man who died after suffering a spinal cord injury...

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the federal government in an effort to force religious organizations to provide abortions and contraception to illegal immigrants. Fox News reports that the lawsuit seeks to obtain government records regarding the reproductive healthcare policies for illegal immigrant children that are currently in the care of federally funded Catholic groups. Depending on the content of those documents, the ACLU said it could take further legal action. “We have heard reports that Catholic bishops are prohibiting Catholic charities from allowing teens in their care to access critical services like contraception and abortion — even if...

The U.S. House of Representatives is working hard to legitimize discrimination against gay and transgender people and women. And it's using religious liberty as its smokescreen. That's why leaders in movements for LGBT equality, reproductive freedom, and freedom of religion and belief are standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a new effort to oppose any move, at the state or federal level, to use religion to discriminate, including a measure approved by a House committee last night. A committee of the US House of Representatives decided that employees in the District of Columbia could be fired for using in vitro fertilization to start...

A woman of Arab and Jewish descent who was strip-searched at a Detroit-area airport has reached a settlement in a lawsuit filed on her behalf, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday The federal government will give Shoshana Hebshi $40,000 as compensation for being humiliated on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks after armed agents forced her from a plane at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, made her undress during a search and held her for hours. American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday.

In its latest attack on religious liberty, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wants to force Roman Catholic organizations to provide contraception and abortions to unaccompanied immigrant children pouring over America’s southern border. The ACLU is suing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to obtain documents that it claims show that Catholic relief agencies are not providing abortions or referrals for abortion. It’s part of a national strategy to force faith-based facilities to perform abortions or face ruinous litigation and the loss of government contracts, and it comes despite the Supreme Court’s ruling last June against the ham-handed...

In its latest attack on religious liberty, the American Civil Liberties Union, wants to force Roman Catholic organizations to provide contraception and abortions to unaccompanied immigrant children pouring over America’s southern border.The ACLU is suing the Department of Health and Human Services to obtain documents that it claims show that Catholic relief agencies are not providing abortions or referrals for abortion.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on Apr. 6 against the federal government to obtain “documents related to how groups that are awarded government funding contracts are restricting refugee and undocumented immigrant teenagers’ access to reproductive health services, including contraception and abortion.” The lawsuit is seeking the release of documents from the Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families about contracts awarded to religious groups that are helping unaccompanied minors, many of whom have crossed into the United States from Mexico. Brigitte Amiri, an ACLU senior staff attorney, said that...

Religious groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) are the target of an imminent ACLU lawsuit that hopes to order the federal government to release information about how the groups are awarded government funding contracts to assist illegal unaccompanied minors, yet refuse to allow the minors access to contraception and abortion. According to a press release, the ACLU states, “The U.S. government has committed to providing services to meet the basic needs of these teens. Reports indicate that between 60 and 80 percent of women and girls who cross the border are sexually active.”“Some of these organizations...

The pro-abortion American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing the Obama administration for documents it says will show that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is restricting access to abortions for unaccompanied immigrant children.In February 2014, the USCCB objected to a new regulation proposed by the Obama administration that would require contractors to provide access to contraception and abortion for unaccompanied immigrant children who have been raped.  In an official letter, the USCCB as well as World Relief, the National Association of Evangelicals and Catholic Relief Services, explained that the new regulation violates religious liberty, specifically the federal...

One of the numerous hostels provided by the Catholic Church for illegal immigrants. This one is in Los Angeles (CNS) Charities providing help to immigrant children must provide contraception to youngsters, according to government regulationsThe American Civil Liberties Union is taking the US federal government to court to find out whether Catholic Charities are providing abortions to illegal immigrants.According to Vox, the ACLU is filing the unusual lawsuit to find out whether illegal unaccompanied migrants have access to contraception and abortion while being cared for by Catholic charities.The Catholic Church works as a federal contractor in its work housing...

The American Civil Liberties Union wants religious organizations to provide abortions to illegal immigrant children. The ACLU is petitioning for a court order that would force the U.S. government to release documents related to their dealings with religious organizations that assist illegals. “Many unaccompanied teenagers come into the U.S. fleeing abuse and torture in their home countries. Many have been sexually abused or assaulted or forced into prostitution,” Brigitte Amiri, an attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said. “We believe deeply in religious freedom. But religious freedom does not include the right to take a government contract that requires...

The American Civil Liberties Union, theoretically a non-ideological defender of the Constitution but in practice increasingly hard left, is running into financial difficulties and just announced (memo to staffers here) layoffs for 7 percent of its lawyers. Why the difficulties? It’s a little unclear, but Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit writes, “What I hear is that they’ve moved too far left, too fast, and it’s hurt their donations.”

The American Civil Liberties Union this week laid off 23 employees, about 7 percent of the organization’s national staff. The cuts affected employees in New York, D.C., California and Wyoming. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero announced the impending reductions internally in a March 26 email to employees, and the affected staffers were notified Monday. In the email, which was obtained by The Washington Post, Romero cited the need for the ACLU to cut costs. In addition to the layoffs, the organization during the fiscal year ending March 31, eliminated ten national staff positions, postponed its nationwide staff conference to 2016...

Two black women who said their hairstyles made them targets for airport security pat-downs said on Thursday the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had agreed to stop singling out women for screening based solely on their "sisterlocks." Malaika Singleton, a neuroscientist based in Sacramento, said she was on her way to London last year for an academic conference on dementia when a TSA agent at Los Angeles International Airport began pulling and squeezing her hair. "I was going through the screening procedures like we all do, and after I stepped out of the full body scanner, the agent said, 'OK, now...

The Justice Department is seeking an amendment proposal that will give the federal government express power to locate and hack into the computers of anyone suspected of criminal activity. However, many organizations, including Google and the American Civil Liberties Union, are concerned that the broad language of the proposal leaves potential for Fourth Amendment violations.Federal Prosecutors claim that this revision to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure  has become necessary now that crime can be committed and concealed on the internet under a veil of anonymity and masked location. But in a memo responding to the concerns civil libertarians have...

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...