News & Commentary

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.

There is plenty of disturbing news these days about the attempts to roll back the right to abortion. There is no question about it — we are living in a country where politicians are as determined as ever to obstruct access to basic reproductive rights. But there have been recent bright spots. I can’t live up to the hilarity of my colleague’s “Anyone Can Legally Say ‘Eat Shit, Bob’” blog, but I can promise good news.For starters, federal district court judges in Alabama and Arkansas blocked outrageous restrictions on abortion access. The Alabama law was extreme: It amended the state’s law related to parental consent for an abortion. If a teen is unable to obtain parental consent — or fears doing so — she may seek a court order allowing her to proceed with an abortion without her parents’ consent. This is already a daunting obstacle to abortion access. But Alabama decided to add insult to injury by forcing the teen to stand trial, including allowing the court to appoint a lawyer for the fetus. The law was so absurd that Jessica Williams was all over it on The Daily Show.

Black Womens Equal Pay Day represents how long it would take for a black woman to make the same amount of money that the average white man made in 2016. Comparatively, black women make 63 cents on the dollar.

The ACLU joined privacy groups from across the political spectrum, including Freedom Works and Demand Progress, to deliver the public’s petitions for surveillance reform directly in the halls of Congress. We delivered over 100,000 petitions to members of the House of Representatives urging them to reform the government’s warrantless surveillance powers under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire at the end of this year.

This weekend marks the beginning of a statewide voting rights restoration campaign that the ACLU of Alabama and Legal Services Alabama are partnering on. Historically, anyone who commits a crime of moral turpitude loses their right to vote in Alabama; however, it has never been clear what specifically was a crime of moral turpitude, which has resulted in inconsistency and confusion across the state.

In case you missed it, here are a few highlights and headlines regarding the ACLU and ACLU related issues.