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The Importance of Iowa and Vermont
Full ICRC Report Further Underscores Extent of Torture and Abuse by U.S. Officials
ACLU to DOJ: Enough is Enough, Release the Memos
Students Mobilize for Change During Sexual Assault Awareness Month
ACLU Sues Pennsylvania County D.A. For Threatening Teenage Girls with Child Pornography Charges
Lawsuit Filed Against Mississippi Police and School Officials Using Excessive Force Against Schoolchildren
Lawsuit Filed Against Mississippi Police and School Officials Using Excessive Force Against Schoolchildren
On Thursday, the ACLU filed a federal civil rights lawsuit charging Southaven, Mississippi, police and DeSoto County school officials with assaulting and racially discriminating against a group of schoolchildren after a violent and discriminatory incident on a school bus was caught on tape.
In an egregious example of excessive and unwarranted use of force by police against students in a school setting, Southaven Police Sergeant Tomas Aguilar and Officer Lee Holiday responded to an argument between three students on the bus by arresting a half-dozen black students, choking and tackling a black female student and threatening to shoot the 30 students on the bus between their eyes. The entire incident was captured on videotape by a surveillance camera on the front of the bus.
"This case is a vivid and disturbing illustration of the dangers of relying on police officers to maintain order in public schools," said Jamie Dycus, an attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. "No sensible person handles an argument on a school bus by having armed police officers threaten, arrest and assault schoolchildren. What happened here was not only unlawful, but unconscionable, and those responsible must be held to account."
>>Read more about the case.
>>Learn more about the ACLU's Racial Justice Program.
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| April 10, 2009
The Importance of Iowa and Vermont
by Matt Coles, Director, ACLU LGBT Project
Some week. The Vermont legislature voted to let same-sex couples marry, and the Iowa Supreme Court decided that it is unconstitutional not to let same-sex couples marry. Together, these two events are a much needed shot in the arm for marriage.
Iowa is the first win in a flat state without an ocean view. And the decision was unanimous. Vermont is the first time a state legislature has opened marriage, and it did it by a stunning veto override.
Iowa and Vermont don't entirely erase the damage from losing the Proposition 8 vote in California last November. They don't have either the cultural or economic influence that the Golden State has. Still, there's nothing like winning and winning big.
One of the nice things about Vermont is that it more or less puts an end to the idea that marriage is the creature of "unelected judges." This is two-thirds of the state legislature.
The Iowa Supreme Court decision is the third from a state high court to treat government discrimination against gay people generally as a serious constitutional problem (the other two are the California and Connecticut marriage cases). All three courts say that a long history of discrimination driven by prejudice should make courts suspicious anytime the government singles gay people out. We now have something we've been working toward for years; a body of case law we can use to attack discrimination.
What truly sets the Iowa decision apart is a passage in which the Court addresses head-on what it says is the "unspoken" reason why many support the exclusion: religious opposition.
The Court says that while many oppose marriage for religious reasons, religion cannot justify a law excluding gay people from marriage. "State government can have no religious views," the opinion says, "either directly or indirectly expressed through its legislation." "This proposition," the Court goes on to say, "is the essence of the separation of church and state."
That proposition ought to be obvious, but in the last 25 years, it seems almost to have disappeared from civic discourse in America. It took guts for the Iowa court to say what virtually no other government official has been willing to admit. By bluntly pointing out that religion has driven much of the debate and reminding other courts and legislatures of their obligation not to enshrine religion in law, the Court gave a deeply practical rationale for insisting that marriage exclusions either be based on rigorous logic and evidence or be struck down. And it is that down-to-earth honesty that will, I believe, make this a deeply influential opinion.
>> Read more about the importance of these events.
Full ICRC Report Further Underscores Extent of Torture and Abuse by U.S. Officials
Earlier this week, the International Committee of the Red Cross's (ICRC) full report on the treatment of the 14 so-called "high-value detainees" held at Guantánamo was released to the public. This stunning report was previously classified and further underscores the extent of the systemic and far-reaching use of torture by American personnel and provides further evidence of the need for accountability for government officials who broke the law.
Many of the report's findings aren't surprising: we've known for quite while -- through investigative reporting, Freedom of Information Act litigation, former detainee accounts and even admissions by the CIA -- that detainees were tortured with prolonged stress positions, forced nudity, and sleep deprivation, and at least three of them were waterboarded.
What's come through in more detail, however, is medical professionals' actual participation in the torture of prisoners.
The report also mentions two still-confidential previous ICRC reports on "undisclosed detention" from 2004 and 2006 which were ignored by the Bush administration and contained the names of 42 and 59 people, respectively, "allegedly held in undisclosed detention by the U.S. authorities." Sadly, "in both cases, the list included two children."
The release of this report, which calls on the U.S. government to "investigate and punish perpetrators," should put to rest any doubt that an independent prosecutor is needed to investigate and prosecute torture and other criminal acts.
>> Take action now by signing the ACLU's petition to Attorney General Eric Holder asking to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the roots of the Bush administration's torture policies.
>> Read the ICRC report. (will take you offsite)
ACLU to DOJ: Enough is Enough, Release the Memos
For five long years, the ACLU has been fighting to unearth government documents that would show the origins and scope of the Bush administration's torture program.
And as a result of a critical ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Justice Department agreed last Thursday to consider an April 16th public release of key memos that authorized the CIA to torture detainees, including the infamous Bybee and Bradbury memos.
The first, written in August 2002 by the head of the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), Jay S. Bybee, was the cornerstone of the CIA torture program.
The second set of memos, written by OLC lawyer Steven Bradbury in May of 2005, authorized the CIA to subject prisoners to torture methods including waterboarding. They were written in anticipation of Congress's decision to reaffirm that laws against cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment applied to the CIA.
Collectively, these memos supplied the framework for an interrogation program that permitted the most barbaric forms of abuse, violated domestic and international law, alienated America's allies and yielded information that was both unreliable and unusable in court.
>>Learn about how the ACLU is using FOIA to unveil the truth about torture.
Students Mobilize for Change During Sexual Assault Awareness Month
| | April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and schools and colleges around the country are waking up to the power of Title IX -- the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally-funded education programs -- to combat sexual violence on campus.
In the past year, the Supreme Court ruled that victims of sexual harassment can bring both Title IX claims and constitutional claims against schools that deliberately ignored harassment that they knew was going on at the school. And well-known universities continue to be forced to reform ineffective sexual assault prevention and response programs.
In order to encourage students to capitalize on recent Title IX cases involving sexual violence and harassment, the ACLU Women's Rights Project has collaborated with Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER) to bring students the information and resources they need to use Title IX to prevent sexual violence in schools.
>>Learn more at www.aclu.org/sexualassault
ACLU Sues Pennsylvania County D.A. For Threatening Teenage Girls with Child Pornography Charges
The ACLU filed a lawsuit late last month against the Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, district attorney for threatening three high school girls with child pornography charges over digital photos in which they appear topless or in their underwear -- otherwise called "sexting."
"Sexting," the practice of sending nude or semi-nude photos of oneself via cell phones or posting them on the Internet, has become increasingly widespread among teenagers. A recent survey found that approximately 20% of all teenagers have sent or posted nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves. (Sex and Tech: Results from a Survey of Teens and Young Adults, National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, December 2008.)
The district attorney has asserted that the girls were accomplices to the production of child pornography because they allowed themselves to be photographed. The district attorney has not, however, threatened to charge the individuals who distributed the photos.
In February 2009, the district attorney sent a letter to the parents of approximately 20 Tunkhannock students, including the ACLU's clients, threatening the students with criminal felony charges if they did not agree to be placed on probation and participate in a counseling program he devised. A course outline indicates that the program will help the girls "[g]ain an understanding of how [their] actions were wrong," "gain an understanding of what it means to be a girl in today's society," and "[i]dentify non-traditional societal and job roles."
The letter apparently was sent only to those who were discovered with the photos on their cell phones and the girls shown in the photos — not the students responsible for distributing the photos. The district attorney told a group of parents and students in February that he has the authority to prosecute girls photographed in underwear, like the ACLU's clients, or even in a bikini on the beach, because the photos are "provocative."
The ACLU charges in its lawsuit that the D.A. is misusing his authority by threatening to bring baseless child-pornography charges in order to coerce parents into sending their children to the re-education program and putting them on probation. The lawsuit claims this is a form of unconstitutional retaliation against the parents and children who assert their right not to be bullied into participation. The ACLU is asking the federal court to issue an order prohibiting the district attorney from filing criminal charges against the girls.
"Kids should be taught that sharing digitized images of themselves in embarrassing or compromised positions can have bad consequences, but prosecutors should not be using heavy artillery like child-pornography charges to teach them that lesson," said Witold Walczak, Legal Director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania. "These are just kids being irresponsible and careless; they are not criminals and they certainly haven't committed child pornography."
>>Learn more information about the case. |
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