News & Commentary

On Election Day 2017, candidates in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Virginia, and New York won on platforms that proactively embraced criminal justice reform or rejected fear-mongering attempts by opponents to label them as soft-on-crime.

A recently leaked FBI “Intelligence Assessment” contains troubling signs that the FBI is scrutinizing and possibly surveilling Black activists in its search for potential “extremists.”

The Department of Justice today issued religious-liberty guidelines for all federal agencies, and anyone who values equality for all and the separation of church and state should be deeply disturbed by the message the guidelines send.

Sunday September 17 is Constitution Day, an annual commemoration of the day the US Constitution was signed in 1787. The individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights applies to all people living in the United States, including the very important freedom of speech and the right to peacefully assemble. 

On September 15, 1963, KKK members planted dynamite during Sunday service at the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls. This attack marked a turning point during the Civil Rights Movement. We spoke with Lisa McNair, sister of one of the girls, to discuss the importance of remembering.

When the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed almost 40 years ago, it was intended to tackle the range of mistreatment women faced when they became mothers. And it did wipe out some of the most blatant forms of discrimination, like company policies that prohibited women from working during pregnancy at all or “protected” them out of hazardous — and, not coincidentally, high-paying — jobs. But despite this progress, many women today still find that becoming pregnant or having a child results in their careers taking a sudden nosedive.

In case you missed it, here are a few highlights and headlines from the past few months regarding the ACLU and our work here in Alabama.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has been an unqualified success.Since its creation five years ago, it has allowed nearly 800,000 young men and women who came to this country as children — or Dreamers — to attend school, support their families, buy homes, begin careers, contribute to their communities, and pursue their dreams. DACA has been a major driver of economic growth for cities and states that reap the benefits of new tax dollars from DACA recipients’ large purchases and new jobs. It’s no surprise then that nearly 78 percent of American voters agree that Dreamers should be allowed to stay in the country.

In one week, Alabamians will be heading to the polls for the first step of replacing Jeff Sessions in the Senate, left vacant when he assumed the position of Attorney General of the United States. For those of you interested in making your voices heard by voting, here is what you need to know.