News & Commentary

Amendment 1 purports to allow public bodies, including public schools, to display the Ten Commandments on government property. But, there’s a huge catch that legislators are hoping voters won’t notice.

For the ACLU of Alabama, the month of September was a busy month! So in case you missed it, here are some highlights on our work with the upcoming midterms, our effort to reform the criminal justice system, and a new case with First Amendment implications.

The ACLU and ACLU of Alabama, alongside the Cato Institute and the Constitutional Accountability Center, filed an amicus brief in Gamble v. United States urging the Supreme Court to end the “dual-sovereignty” loophole for good.

Alabama’s prisons are notoriously some of the worst in the country. They’re violent. They’re underfunded. They’re unable to handle the mental health care needs of those incarcerated. And they’re also overcrowded.

Every day I approach my work with the question, “how can I find solutions to our communities’ greatest challenges?”.

Thank you for supporting the ACLU of Alabama. As you know, our team has been working zealously this year in the fight for equality and human rights. This newsletter will be a roundup of ACLU's top news stories.

This week, a federal appeals court struck down Alabama’s ban on a safe, medically proven abortion method. The decision shows just how high the stakes are ahead of next month’s Senate confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

Roy Johnson’s “Alabama's violent criminal sweeps extract cancers among us; what happens next?” column was troubling. Calling people accused of crimes a “cancer” is grossly dehumanizing.

Like millions of others in this country, my experience didn’t involve expensive defense lawyers, just overworked and underpaid public defenders.