News & Commentary

The enactment of the First Step Act earlier this month will bring some much-needed change to our criminal justice system. But the First Step Act remains just that, a first step — particularly with respect to the impact that mass incarceration has had on cisgender women and trans people.

This year hasn’t been easy: Thousands of families are still suffering the effects of family separation; the Muslim ban continues to keep loved ones apart; and whole generations of family trees are being decimated by an unfair, out-of-control mass incarceration machine. But beneath the headlines, the news alerts, and the legal battles are a few glimmers of hope that ACLU supporters made possible.Here are some of our favorite moments from 2018.

The Trump administration’s campaign to dismantle our asylum system just suffered another major setback.

This piece was originally published in The New York Times.

The New York Police Department announced this week that it will deploy 14 new drones as part of its policing activities across New York City. The use of this highly invasive technology represents a new frontier for both public safety and abuses of power.

The most common refrain from gun rights supporters in the wake of mass shootings or other gun violence is that the best response to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Yet in recent weeks, we have seen two Black men, a group already disproportionately victimized by police use of lethal force, shot and killed by police while protecting those around them with guns they were legally allowed to carry.  

When the American Civil Liberties Union arrived in South Carolina in 1968, it tackled a very different set of cases from the legal battles it is waging today.

When reports starting flowing in across the state on November 6, 2018, of long wait times and malfunctioning voting machines, we sent a letter to South Carolina State Election Commission Executive Director, Marci Andino, alerting her to the issues and imploring her to step in.  We also demand that she address the funding issue with the state legislature to buy new voting machines before the 2020 election.

On Tuesday, October 30, Susan Dunn delivered testimony before the Joint Citizens and Legislative Committee on Children in support of S.916.