News & Commentary

January 8, 2015. Charleston. Post & Courier. By Jennifer Berry Hawes. The U.S. Supreme Court will discuss Friday whether to review a same-sex marriage case during its coming term - and finally create a precedent for the entire nation to follow.

December 23, 2014. Island Packet, Hilton Heads. By Victoria Middleton. At a recent public event on immigration reform, U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford made disappointing comments, suggesting that a guest worker program might provide legal redress for undocumented workers. The ACLU opposes merely expanding the existing guest worker program, which is riddled with civil liberties abuses. We call on our members of Congress to craft a broad path to citizenship that creates a level playing field for all eligible immigrants. Potential concerns with the "work-visa only" approach would be inadequate worker protections; the inability of guest workers to come with their family members; and the lack of promise of an eventual path to citizenship.

BY Todd Rutherford, Garry Smith and Victoria Middleton*

December 8, 2014. Charleston, SC. Post & Courier. Editorial. Outfitting police officers with body cameras could resolve many disputes about their actions. That sounds particularly inviting considering the continuing, divisive debate about the details of Ferguson (Mo.) Police Officer Darren Wilson's fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August.

December 2, 2014. Charleston, SC. By Andrew Knapp. President Barack Obama's push Monday to outfit more of the nation's police officers with video cameras in the wake of the disputed shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown came as no surprise to Charleston-area law enforcement officials, but some of the authorities doubted whether the move would make the technology any closer to reality.

November 21, 2014. Charleston. Post & Courier. By Jennifer Hawes. Same-sex marriage cascaded across South Carolina on Thursday, from Charleston out into the most conservative rural swaths of the state, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt it.

November 7, 2014. Columbia. Statehouse Report. By Victoria Middleton, Executive Director - ACLU of SC.  Turnout for mid-term elections is traditionally light, but there are ways to encourage more people to exercise their fundamental right to vote. Regrettably since 2006, 34 state legislatures have worked diligently to chip away at  voting rights.

October 13, 2014. Charleston Currents. By Susan Dunn, Legal Director of the ACLU of SC. In his column [9/29/14: "Don't contribute to panhandling problem"], Andy Brack was wise to remind us that our treatment of the poor is important. We need solutions to the problem of homelessness that do not violate the constitutional rights of people who are poor. But police control of panhandlers raises issues larger than the criminalization of the homeless.

October 13, 2014. Greenville News Online. By Victoria Middleton, Executive Director. When T.L. was 16 years old, he was expelled from high school for skipping school. After leaving school, T.L. started getting into more trouble and ended up getting arrested for stealing. The judge sent him to a locked “evaluation center” in Union where he was incarcerated for weeks just to have a social worker interview him.