News & Commentary

Sonia Gill, Senior Legislative Counsel, ACLU

The ACLU and the ACLU of Tennessee filed a lawsuit against the Smith County School System for violating the separation of church and state on Monday. According to the lawsuit, four students who are atheists have had to contend with school officials promoting Christianity through official prayers, Bible distributions, religious posters, and even a giant cross painted in one of the school’s athletic facilities.

Lea Allison is a 30-year-old Alamance County resident and mother to a 6-year-old daughter. She has been living with relatives because she cannot afford to live on her own, but was about to start a new job that she hoped would provide her and her daughter with financial stability.

Emily Bellamy is a single mother living in South Carolina earning low wages as a daycare worker. Emily strives for a better life for her young children and, in the past, has been able to earn more money cleaning vacation condominiums or working as a home health aide for the elderly. But Emily no longer has access to those opportunities because her driver’s license is suspended for unpaid traffic tickets that she cannot afford to pay.

My name is Kimberly Haven. I am an activist, an advocate, and I have also been referred to as the “tampon queen.” I got this moniker because, while I was incarcerated, I learned how to make my own tampons out of the subpar menstrual products I was “given” while incarcerated. 

Louise Melling, Deputy Legal Director and Director of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty, ACLU Last

Jeffery Robinson, Executive Director, The Who We Are Project This

On Tuesday, a federal court issued a decision in our challenge to Alabama’s near-total ban on abortion blocking the law from taking effect. The decision comes on the heels of similar rulings blocking abortion bans in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah. In other words, the ACLU has an undefeated, 7-0 record challenging state abortion bans in court. None of the state abortion bans passed earlier this year will be permitted to take effect. Abortion is – and will remain – legal in all 50 states.

This week the House Appropriations Committee advanced the Labor, Health, and Human Services appropriations bill, the annual bill that funds federal health and education programs.  It makes important strides forward on reproductive health and rights--and it also shines a light on the need for presidential leadership on abortion coverage.