News & Commentary

Today is the 12th day of the 2019 legislative season and the session is in full swing. Last week, HB314, passed the House health committee with a favorable report and it now heads to the House floor for debate. The ACLU of Alabama has been out front in opposition to this bill and in last Wednesday’s public hearing Executive Director, Randall Marshall, testified in opposition to HB314 and stated that Alabamians are paying a significant price (millions!) for the state to defend unconstitutional legislation like this bill.

For years, Gavin McInnes has spewed bigoted views on everything from race and religion to gender and immigration. He has described a transgender person as “[a] hideous man who thinks he’s a woman;” claimed that “Muslims can rape children with reckless abandon;” and argued that a Black man who is “mistaken for a homeless man,” should be “mad” not at the person who mischaracterizes him, but “at all the homeless black men who . . . created this stereotype in the first place.” As a result, McInnes has made quite a name for himself.

Today is the 10th day of the 2019 legislative season and we are preparing for a major week of legislative action on critical issues such as marijuana and criminal justice reform.

After the gas tax special session and the legislative spring break, the 2019 Legislative Session is halfway through. Still, there’s no shortage of bills moving through the legislature with important civil liberties implications.

A trove of photographs depicting brutalized and murdered prisoners in Alabama’s St. Clair Correctional Facility has thrust the treatment of our nation’s 2.3 million incarcerated people into public view. The first horror is what these people have endured in prison. The second horror is that while shocking, it is not a surprise. 

March is Women’s History Month, a month aimed to honor the struggles of women in the past, to celebrate their current achievements, and to inspire women across the globe to continue to fight for a more fair and inclusive future. First celebrated as a single week in March, Women’s History Month became a month-long United States holiday in 1987.

Last Thursday, a bill passed out of the Alabama Senate that would provide Alabamians with the option to contribute their state refund to the “We Build the Wall” organization. They added an amendment that if the funds have not been used within three years, they must be returned to the General Fund.

Now that special session is over with the gas tax increase passing and being signed into law last week, the legislature will begin holding regular committee meetings and discussing bills.

On the first day of session, Governor Kay Ivey called a special session to focus on raising the gas tax to fund infrastructure spending on roads and bridges. A special session is a session called to address a specific focus, in this case, the gas tax.