E-News for ACLU-AL Friends

National ACLU News

Roe v. Wade: 35 Years Later

Roe v. Wade turned 35 in January. With this anniversary we mark not only 35 years of the struggle for reproductive freedom, but 35 years of impressive gains in the fight for women’s equality. At the core of women’s equality is the ability to control whether and when to have a child. The legalization of contraception in the 1960s and abortion care in the 1970s helped foster women’s ability to make important life decisions about themselves and their families.

The ACLU has produced a wonderful short video, featuring interviews with ACLU staff from across the organization concerning the role of reproductive freedom in ensuring the full-range of civil liberties. Also available is a great article written by Louise Melling, Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, explaining the connection between reproductive rights and gender equality. As she states, “[i]t is time to step back and reexamine the role access to birth control and abortion plays not only in opening up the classrooms, boardrooms, and legislatures to women, but to ensuring women’s equality more broadly.”

Here’s to another 35 years of advancements in reproductive freedom!

ACLU Women’s Rights Project

As we celebrate Women’s History Month this March, the ACLU Women’s Rights Project (WRP), founded by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1972, will continue to push for change and systemic reform in those institutions that perpetuate gender discrimination.

The WRP’s annual report shows how the project continues to advocate for employment rights and economic opportunity; an end to discrimination against survivors of violence in the areas of housing, employment and governmental services; equal educational opportunity; and improvements in conditions of confinement for girls and women in prison.

To learn more about the ACLU’s work in this area, please visit www.aclu.org/womensrights/.

ACLU of Alabama News

Fighting sexual harassment of low-income women: Boswell v. GumBayTay

Too often landlords and rental agents try to exploit low-income women who have few affordable rental options by demanding sex as a condition of housing. The ACLU-AL, in conjunction with the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, Legal Services Alabama and the Central Alabama Fair Housing Center, brought suit under the federal Fair Housing Act to stop Montgomery rental agent Jamarlo GumBayTay from sexually harassing his tenant Yolanda Boswell and evicting her from her home, as had been alleged. Holding her housing over her head, Mr. GumBayTay had allegedly tried to coerce Ms. Boswell into having sex with him on repeated occasions with the threat of raising her rent or evicting her if she did not acquiesce. Ms. Boswell asserted that when she refused Mr. GumBayTay’s sexual advances, he unlawfully raised her rent. U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins has ordered GumBayTay to cease his harassment of Ms. Boswell and his threats to evict her. The case, Boswell v. GumBayTay, is scheduled for trial in October.

We hope that by exposing illegal sexual harassment in cases like this, more women will feel empowered to come forward and assert their rights, and landlords and agents will get the message that such exploitation is never acceptable.