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US Official: We Can Imprison Detainees without Charge or Trial
Justice Souter Ends a Distinguished Career as U.S. Supreme Court Concludes Term
PASS ID: Real ID by Another Name
Government Further Delays Release of Crucial CIA Report
DOJ Will Not Appeal Veteran’s Victory in Transgender Discrimination Case
After ACLU Inquiry, Alabama School District Agrees to End Illegal Sex Segregation
ACLU Seeks to End Bible Censorship at Virginia Jail
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After ACLU Inquiry, Alabama School District Agrees to End Illegal Sex Segregation
The Lawrence County School District in Alabama has agreed to end single-sex classes in public schools after being notified by the ACLU that sex segregated programs are illegal and discriminatory.
In an Open Records Act (ORA) request sent to the school board in December 2008, the ACLU asked the school district for information about its sex segregated programs because of concerns that the programs might be discriminatory. The ACLU informed the school district in a letter that mandatory sex segregation in public schools violates Title IX of the Education Amendments, the Equal Education Opportunities Act and the U.S. Constitution.
Through the ORA inquiry, the ACLU learned that students in East Lawrence Middle School were being assigned to single-sex courses. The school district's ORA response stated that teachers were encouraged to teach boys and girls differently. For example, according to the school district's response, "a writing prompt for a boy may be what place in the world he would most like to go hunting or drive on a race track where the girls may write about their dream wedding dress or their ideal birthday party."
Under the settlement agreement, the school district agreed to end the single-sex education program at East Lawrence Middle School. Beginning in the fall of 2009, all courses will be integrated in every school in the county, and no school will institute any sex segregated programs for the next three years. From fall 2012 through spring 2015, Lawrence County will not institute any sex segregated program without first notifying the ACLU.
"The very different gender-specific lessons encouraged at East Lawrence Middle School were not equal; they were creating and enforcing gender stereotypes," said Emily Martin, Deputy Director of the ACLU Women's Rights Project. "Unfortunately, we've seen time and time again that sex segregated classes are inherently unequal and diminish the diversity in public schools that best prepares students for life outside the classroom."
>> Learn more about the ACLU’s work on sex segregation.
ACLU Seeks to End Bible Censorship at Virginia Jail
Imagine being in jail, and you receive a letter from your mother. It says: "Dear Son…" It goes on for a paragraph, and then the rest of it is a big, gaping hole, where prison censors have cut -- with scissors -- biblical passages that your mom thought you might find comforting during your incarceration. The big hole is followed by: "Love, Mom."
This actually happened to an inmate in Virginia’s Rappahannock Regional Jail, where jail policy mandates that officials censor biblical passages from letters written to detainees. Yesterday, the ACLU sent a letter to Rappahannock’s superintendent, Joseph Higgs, Jr., asking him to end this policy, as it violates both detainees’ and letter-writers’ First Amendment rights.
"It is essential that jail officials abide by the law and the requirements of the U.S. Constitution,” Daniel Mach, Director of Litigation for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said. “People do not lose their right to religious worship simply because they are incarcerated."
>> Read the letter sent to the Rappahannock’s superintendent.
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July 10, 2009
US Official: We Can Imprison Detainees without Charge or Trial
A debate over indefinitely detaining individuals without charge or trial is going on in Washington. It is unbelievable that gutting the fundamental values of due process and the rule of law is even being discussed.
This principle is fundamental: In America, we do not imprison people indefinitely without charges or a trial.
Yet, on Wednesday in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about the Guantánamo military commissions, Defense Department official Jeh Johnson stated that the United States can continue to indefinitely hold detainees who have been acquitted of crimes.
Thousands of ACLU supporters helped sound the alarm last week in the face of mounting evidence that the Obama administration intends to seek the power to continue to indefinitely detain people without charges and without trial.
We can't afford to wait until a detailed indefinite detention proposal is in front of Congress. And we can’t count on the House and Senate to stand firm for civil liberties on this vitally important issue.
We must stop this before it goes any further. There is no such thing as a justifiable plan to imprison people for an unspecified amount of time without charge and without trial. It's a notion that goes against everything for which the American system of justice stands.
Take action today. President Obama needs to hear from you. Let him know that you are firmly opposed to indefinite detention.
Justice Souter Ends a Distinguished Career as U.S. Supreme Court Concludes Term
The Supreme Court concluded its 2008 Term last week, marking the end of Justice David Souter’s distinguished career on the Supreme Court. Despite the flurry of last minute decisions in the final week of the Court, there were fewer high profile cases than usual on the Court's docket this Term. In addition, some highly anticipated decisions either never materialized or turned out to be less significant than expected.
Justice Souter's final opinion for the Court, however, was a memorable one. In Safford Unified School District v. Redding, the Court ruled that school officials looking for ibuprofen pills violated the Constitution when they strip-searched a 13-year-old girl represented by the ACLU based on the uncorroborated tip of another teenager who was already in trouble for violating school rules. The 8-1 ruling in Redding was a rare and important victory for students' rights in the Supreme Court.
In another closely watched case decided on the last day of the Term, the Court held in Ricci v. DeStefano that the City of New Haven violated federal anti-discrimination law by refusing to certify the results of two promotional exams that had been given to firefighters, despite the fact that no African-Americans were eligible for promotion based on the test scores. While acknowledging that racially disparate impact, a closely divided Court concluded that New Haven had failed to demonstrate a "strong basis in evidence" for believing that its tests were flawed or that it could have identified qualified candidates for promotion through other, less discriminatory means.
In Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder, the Court left in place the preclearance requirements contained in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 requires changes to any voting practices in certain districts with a history of discrimination to be “precleared” by the department of justice. Many feared the Roberts Court was poised to declare Section 5 unconstitutional. That did not happen; the Court avoided the constitutional issue entirely, holding instead that the utility district that initiated the lawsuit had been improperly denied a chance to “bail out” from the preclearance requirements by proving that it had not engaged in any voting discrimination for the past 10 years.
While not a total victory, the Supreme Court has previously rejected every constitutional challenge to the Voting Rights Act. The “no decision” by the Court was generally greeted with relief by the civil rights community.
Finally, the Court passed up an opportunity to resolve a major constitutional dispute by dismissing the ACLU's appeal in al Marri v. Spagone, after initially deciding to hear the case. When the Court agreed to hear the case, al-Marri was the only person detained in the United States as an enemy combatant, and the case presented the important question of whether someone arrested in the U.S. could be held without charges in military custody.
Before the case was argued, however, the Obama administration transferred al-Marri back to civilian custody for trial in the criminal justice system. The Court then decided that the case was moot, even though the government never conceded that al-Marri's designation as an enemy combatant (by the Bush administration) was improper or renounced its authority to re-designate him in the future.
>>Read a summary of all of the Court's major civil liberties-related cases from this Term.
PASS ID: Real ID by Another Name
Real ID has reared its ugly head again, this time in the form of S.1261, Sen. Daniel Akaka's (D-Hawaii) PASS ID Act in the Senate. While this bill stems from a sincere attempt to fix the unworkable Real ID Act of 2005, PASS ID actually reinstitutes many of Real ID’s problems, and in some cases makes them even worse.
The Real ID Act mandated that states turn state driver’s licenses into a genuine national identity card, thereby imposing numerous new burdens on taxpayers, citizens, immigrants, and state governments -- while doing nothing to protect against terrorism. As a result, 24 states have enacted anti-Real ID bills or resolutions and the Department of Homeland Security has been forced to delay the act’s implementation.
Like Real ID, PASS ID will be a true national ID card with serious privacy and constitutional problems. The Akaka legislation will burden travelers by requiring a PASS ID-compliant license to board airplanes. It will burden certain religious minorities by requiring digital photographs on each license. The PASS ID Act will also facilitate identity theft by mandating that copies of all identity source documents be retained, creating an irresistible trove of personal information.
Real ID cannot be solved by tinkering around the edges of the act. Instead, the entire unworkable system must be scrapped and replaced with a system that does not endanger Americans’ privacy and civil liberties.
Take action today. Ask your senators to oppose PASS ID.
Government Further Delays Release of Crucial CIA Report
After agreeing three times to release an Office of the Inspector General report on the CIA's interrogation and detention program and then reneging, the government announced last week that it would like another extension and will not release a reprocessed version of the report before August 31. The ACLU has informed the court that it opposes this latest request for a two-month delay.
In May 2008, the CIA turned over a heavily redacted version of the report as part of an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for records related to the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, but a year later informed the court that it would review the same report with a view toward disclosing more information.
"It is apparent that the CIA report is not being delayed for legitimate reasons, but to cover up evidence of the agency's illegal and ineffective interrogation practices,” said Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU. “It is time for the president to hold true to his promise of transparency and once and for all quash the forces of secrecy within the agency. The American public has a right to know the full truth about the torture that was committed in its name."
>>Learn more about the ACLU’s torture FOIA request.
DOJ Will Not Appeal Veteran’s Victory in Transgender Discrimination Case
The Department of Justice will not seek an appeal in transgender veteran Diane Schroer’s victory against the Library of Congress, which means that our case against the Library of Congress is final and that the groundbreaking federal court decision ruling that transgender people are protected by Title VII will stand.
The Obama administration’s decision whether to appeal the final ruling in the case has been closely watched in part because the Bush administration defended the case so vigorously, arguing that transgender Americans are not protected by any existing federal laws. The decision not to appeal the verdict is consistent with the Obama administration’s campaign promises to protect transgender workers against discrimination and his administration’s recent order taking steps to bar gender identity discrimination in federal employment.
“I am grateful that the court took the time to examine the case in detail and come to a fair and unbiased decision. In that same light, I am gratified that the current administration saw this for what it was, a case of sex discrimination focused against transgender people, and recognized that it must end in this country,” said Schroer, an Army Special Forces veteran with 25 years service. “The important signal that the administration’s decision sends to all LGBT individuals gives me renewed hope and restores some of my shaken faith in what our country stands for.”
The ACLU filed the lawsuit against the Library of Congress in 2005, charging that the library unlawfully refused to hire Schroer in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. In an earlier ruling in this case, the court issued a groundbreaking opinion that discriminating against someone who transitions from one gender to another is sex discrimination under federal law. The court also ruled that the library was guilty of sex stereotyping against Schroer because of its view that she failed to live up to traditional notions of what is male or female.
>>Learn more about Diane’s story.
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