01-22-2001 ACLU Newsfeed -- ACLU News Direct to YOU! ---------------------------------------------------------------- IN THE ACLU NEWSROOM **The Latest News Can Always Be Found At:** http://www.aclu.org/news/pressind.html * Bush Sends Ominous Message on Reproductive Rights; Re-Imposes Global Gag Rule on Family Planning Groups Overseas http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n012201a.html * CT Court is First in Nation to Protect Needle Exchange Program from Police Harassment http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n011901a.html * Citing Free Speech Concerns, Cyber-Rights Groups Call for Hearings on Internet Domain Name Decisions http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n011701a.html * Supreme Court Hears Arguments Today on English-Only Rule and Censorship of Prisoners http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n011601b.html * New ACLU Report Finds Ashcroft Record Rife With Hostility to Civil Rights, Civil Liberties http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n011601a.html * ACLU Denounces Oklahoma Governor For Allowing Execution of Mentally Impaired Woman http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n011201a.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bush Sends Ominous Message on Reproductive Rights; Re-Imposes Global Gag Rule on Family Planning Groups Overseas FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, January 22, 2001 WASHINGTON -- Sending what the American Civil Liberties Union called an ominous message on both reproductive rights and freedom of speech, President George W. Bush today reinstated a government policy that denies these basic liberties to family planning organizations operating overseas. "Where is the compassion in denying American aid to vital public health services overseas?" said Catherine Weiss, Director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. "How is it compassionate to cut U.S. support for desperately needed family planning services, maternal health care and HIV/AIDS prevention? Re-imposition of this gag rule threatens all of these services by denying U.S. dollars to organizations that exercise their right to free speech." Speaking to reporters yesterday, the Bush Administration also mischaracterized the policy, which is known as the "global gag rule." Although the Administration said it would re-impose the gag rule because it does not support using federal funds for abortions, the gag rule actually denies crucial aid to foreign nongovernmental organizations that use their own money to advocate for or against legal abortion or to perform legal abortions in their own countries. President Bush's move came on the 28th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed to women for the first time the right to control their reproductive choices. It also came as the U.S. Senate continues to consider President Bush's controversial nomination of anti-choice activist John Ashcroft to be Attorney General. And this morning, President Bush delivered a statement to anti-Roe protestors in which he said that "unborn children" should be covered by the "promises of our Declaration of Independence." "Today's statement and decision to re-impose the gag rule undermine the Administration's promises to respect the nation's laws, including those established by Roe v. Wade," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU's Washington National Office. "With one of his first actions as President, George Bush has decided to punish organizations for engaging in legal activities that would be protected by the First Amendment if carried out in the United States." The ACLU noted that the gag rule would be unconstitutional if it were attempted here. "President Bush should not be allowed to export an undemocratic policy he would be prohibited from imposing within the borders of the United States," Murphy said. A special ACLU feature on the 28th anniversary of Roe can be found at: http://www.aclu.org/features/f011901a.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- CT Court is First in Nation to Protect Needle Exchange Program from Police Harassment FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, January 19, 2001 BRIDGEPORT, CT--In a national test case challenging the illegal harassment and arrest of participants in a Needle Exchange Program, a federal court in Connecticut has ruled that police may not interfere with a public health initiative that effectively combats disease through education and prevention. "This ruling marks the first time a court has put its stamp of approval on a drug intervention method that has quietly succeeded for more than a decade," said Alicia Young, an attorney with the ACLU's Drug Policy Litigation Project, which together with the Connecticut ACLU affiliate filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Connecticut Harm Reduction Coalition and two anonymous clients of the Bridgeport Needle Exchange. "The court's ruling sends a clear message to police officers that such harassment will not be tolerated, and assures needle exchange programs and anyone who carries a syringe that they can stand up for their rights and win," Young added. The state had claimed that Exchange Program participants carrying used syringes with trace amounts of narcotics were criminally liable for possession. But the court found this conclusion "absurd and unworkable," saying that such arrests would "thwart the intended purpose" of the legislature. Allowing criminal liability for possession, the court said, "would invite the Bridgeport police to abuse the fourth amendment," by arresting any injecting drug user found with previously used injection equipment. According to the Centers for Disease Control, three out of four AIDS cases among women are due to injection drug use or heterosexual contact with someone infected with HIV through injection drug use, and over 75 percent of new infections in children result from the consequences of injection drug use in a parent. Mark Kinzly, a founding member of the Connecticut Harm Reduction Coalition, welcomed the court's ruling. "Needle exchange programs have been successful for years, and they have also been harassed for years," he said. "Fear of arrest for carrying or using life-saving instruments undermines a proven means of reducing the risk of transmitting blood-borne diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C." State-established Needle Exchange programs currently operate in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin. Each of these 13 states has passed laws exempting program participants from criminal liability for carrying hypodermic syringes. According to AIDS Action, a leading advocacy group, there are currently 140 needle exchange programs operating in 39 states, the District of Columbia and the territories (including the 13 states where the programs are legal). The ACLU's Young said that litigation on behalf of needle exchange participants has been filed in only one other state, New York, where the lawsuit is still at the preliminary stages. "Participants in needle exchange programs have come to expect police harassment even when the law is on their side. We hope today's decision will change that point of view." In 1990, Connecticut decriminalized possession of injection drug equipment and established Syringe Exchange Programs to stop the growing rates of HIV infection and AIDS-related deaths among members of the injecting drug user community and their partners and children. Exchanges operate by getting used, dangerous needles off the streets and replacing them with sterile, clean ones. The program was legally mandated by the state. But the ACLU said in court papers, the Bridgeport police routinely destroyed syringes found on drug users and ripped up clients' Syringe Exchange Program identification cards, which are issued by the Health Department. Such illegal intimidation, the ACLU argued, not only discourages drug users from participating in legal programs that get dirty needles off the streets, it sabotages the counseling and public education components of Syringe Exchange Programs that encourage drug users to enter treatment. In a declaration before the court, Dr. Robert Heimer of the Yale University School of Medicine and a leading expert on HIV transmission among injecting drug users, described a case study he conducted for the state on New Haven's Exchange Program. The program, Heimer found, decreased the rates of blood-borne diseases like HIV infection by 33 percent, but a pattern of police harassment and arrest of injection drug users on possession charges discouraged them from visiting Exchanges. The case, John Doe et al. v. Bridgeport Police Department, was filed in Connecticut District Court by Graham Boyd, Harry Williams and Young of the ACLU's Drug Policy Litigation Project and Philip Tegler from the ACLU of Connecticut. Fact sheet on needle exchange programs can be viewed online at: http://www.aclu.org/issues/drugpolicy/syringe_exchange_facts.html The legal complaint in John Doe et. al v. Bridgeport Police Department et al. and supporting memorandum are available online at: http://www.aclu.org/court/bridgeport_pd.pdf and http://www.aclu.org/court/bridgeport_pd_memo.pdf ----------------------------------------------------------------- Citing Free Speech Concerns, Cyber-Rights Groups Call for Hearings on Internet Domain Name Decisions FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, January 17, 2001 NEW YORK -- In a move to protect freedom in cyberspace, a coalition of cyber-rights groups and scholars last night issued a joint letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce calling for hearings and additional public commentary before the department acts on recent Internet domain name decisions that limit free expression. The coalition argues that artificial limitations placed on the number of generic top-level domain names, such as ".com," and ".org," present a serious threat to freedom of expression. The groups also say that the closed process imposed by both the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Commerce Department violates the Due Process clause of the Constitution and the Federal Administrative Procedures Act (APA). "Top-level domain names make content visible on the Net and are the road signs for navigating cyberspace," the coalition said in its letter. By severely limiting the domain space, ICANN and the Commerce Department have failed to recognize the needs and free speech rights of individual Internet users and non-commercial organizations. ICANN - a new global organization originally chartered by the U.S. government to administer the Internet addresses and the Domain Name System that govern what a Internet site can be called and how it can be found - recently approved only seven new top level domain names. This decision came as many experts have voiced concerns over corporate domination of the Internet domain name system through a combination of bulk registrations and intellectual property-based legal threats. The coalition, including Professor A. Michael Froomkin from the University of Miami (Florida) Law School, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, seeks to broaden Internet democracy and defend free speech online. The group also voiced concerns over the undemocratic process by which domain names are administered, saying that ICANN's decision making process may have violated various federal laws (such as the APA) that are designed to ensure openness and public accountability. "ICANN's decision-making process was characterized by a large number of arbitrary decisions, process failures, and plain mistakes of fact," the letter said. "The process got off to a bad start when ICANN announced that it would require a $50,000 non-refundable fee from domain name applicants, thus skewing the pool towards those organizations able to afford a $50,000 lottery ticket. Deadlines for public comment were missed, and the period for public input was small." The letter specifically cited ICANN's rejection of the ".union" proposal based on unfounded speculation that the international labor organizations that proposed this new top level domain name were somehow undemocratic. The procedures being used gave the proponents no opportunity to reply to this unfounded accusation. ICANN also rejected ".iii" because it was concerned that the name was difficult to pronounce, even though the ability to pronounce a proposed domain name had never before been mentioned as a decision criterion. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a subdivision of the Commerce Department, will soon receive ICANN's recommendations and has the final say on which new domain names will be introduced. The coalition pointed out the general need for oversight (including a more open notice and public comment procedure) and urged NTIA to help remedy this situation by holding hearings on this matter and allowing opportunities for the public to comment on these developments. "Any attempt by the U.S. government or its agents to decide such an important matter of public policy without adherence to principles of notice and public participation embodied in the APA would be wrong as a matter of principle, and indeed illegal not to mention potentially unconstitutional," the letter said. According to the groups, ICANN must follow these federal guidelines for a number of reasons, including that its funding originates from the authority that the Commerce Department has given it. "We therefore believe that it is essential for you to carefully consider the substance of this decision rather than to rubber-stamp ICANN's recommendations, and to allow the public to comment before making any decisions," the coalition said. "Indeed, we believe that it would be arbitrary and capricious, and a denial of basic due process, to do anything less." The coalition letter can be found at: http://www.aclu.org/congress/l011601a.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- Supreme Court Hears Arguments Today on English-Only Rule and Censorship of Prisoners FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, January 16, 2001 WASHINGTON--The U.S. Supreme Court will hear two important civil rights arguments today. In the first, the Justices will consider whether Alabama may refuse to accommodate driver's license applicants who do not read English; the second case looks at whether prison officials may censor prisoner communications that are critical of its employees. The American Civil Liberties Union joined the brief in the English-only case, Alexander v. Sandoval, No. 99-1908, and joined a friend-of-the-court brief in Shaw v. Murphy, No. 99-1613, the prisoners' right case. In the Alabama case, Martha Sandoval was barred from taking a driver's license test because the state refuses to accommodate applicants who do not read English. The state claims that private parties may not sue to enforce regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act that prohibit practices that have a discriminatory effect. Title VI bars discrimination by recipients of federal dollars. "This is a case about whether victims of governmental discrimination deserve to have their day in court," said Steven R. Shapiro, Legal Director of the ACLU. "In the 1960's, Alabama officials stood in front of the schoolhouse door and declared, 'whites only,' today, the state is standing in front of the courthouse doors and saying 'English only.'" Ironically, until recently Alabama accommodated a wide variety of non-English speakers. From the 1970s to 1991, Alabama administered the driver's exam in 14 different languages, including Spanish. Currently, Alabama provides special accommodations to illiterate applicants, handicapped applicants, out-of-state drivers with valid licenses and even foreign nationals with valid licenses. In addition, Alabama uses international traffic signals that enable comprehension with little or no understanding of the English language. In Shaw v. Murphy, the court will consider whether a state-prison inmate has a First Amendment right to communicate with another state-prison inmate information for use in the other's criminal trial about abuse by a prison guard. The prisoner in the case, Kevin Murphy, wrote to another prisoner informing him that a prisoner guard who had accused that prisoner of assault had himself engaged in serious misconduct. Prison officials intercepted the letter and punished Murphy for sending it. "To legitimize such retaliatory punishment would further institutionalize a culture of impunity within prisons," the ACLU's National Prison Project said in a friend-of-the-court brief submitted along with the Legal Aid Society, Human Rights Watch and the Southern Center for Human Rights. The speech that the prison punished, the brief said, is at the core of First Amendment protection. The prison disciplined Murphy "because of the contents of his letter, and without any findings that the information was false, malicious or intended to harass the staff," according to the brief. The brief noted that the government may limit prison speech in ways that are reasonably related to legitimate and neutral interests. But the Court has never upheld the type of restriction presented here, in which discipline is imposed solely because the speech was critical of prison staff. In 1999, a unanimous 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled in Murphy's favor, concluding that "the Prison's conduct here constitutes an 'exaggerated response." The Ninth Circuit's opinion is online at: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=9th&navby=case&; no=9735989 The Murphy brief is online at: (http://www.aclu.org/court/shaw.pdf). Jeffrey Renz, a law professor at the University of Montana in Missoula, is arguing the case before the Justices. Daniel L. Greenberg and John Boston of the Legal Aid Society are counsel of record in Shaw v. Murphy, joined by Mary Lynne Werlwas, also of the Legal Aid Society based in New York; Elizabeth Alexander, Margaret Winter and David C. Fathi of the ACLU's National Prison Project based in Washington, D.C.; Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch, based in New York; and Stephen Bright and Tamara Serwer of the Southern Center for Human Rights based in Atlanta. The brief in the Sandoval case is online at: (http://www.aclu.org/court/sandoval.pdf). The case was brought by Richard Cohen and Rhonda Brownstein of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in cooperation with Eric Schnapper of the University of Washington School of Law based in Seattle (who will argue the case); Elizabeth Kleinberg and Rohit Nepal of SPLC, based in Montgomery, Alabama; Steven R. Shapiro, Legal Director of the national ACLU, based in New York; Edward Chen, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California; and Christopher Ho of the Employment Law Center based in San Francisco. ----------------------------------------------------------------- New ACLU Report Finds Ashcroft Record Rife With Hostility to Civil Rights, Civil Liberties FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, January 16, 2001 WASHINGTON -- Releasing a report that outlines a record rife with hostility to civil rights and liberties, the American Civil Liberties Union today urged the U.S. Senate to carefully review the positions and policies of John Ashcroft as it considers his nomination as Attorney General of the United States. "John Ashcroft's record demonstrates that he is willing to change the law to impose his particular religious and moral views on all Americans," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington National Office. "Integrity in pursuit of such a goal is no virtue." As a nonpartisan organization that has never endorsed or opposed Cabinet nominees, the ACLU is not taking a position on whether Ashcroft should be confirmed by the Senate as Attorney General. Instead, the ACLU is analyzing and disseminating his positions on important civil liberties issues and urging the Senate to evaluate them in light of grave responsibility and vast powers of the Attorney General. In report released today on the Ashcroft record -- Not Moderate, Not Compassionate, Not Conservative: John Ashcroft's Radical Revisionism of Basic Constitutional Values in America -- the ACLU said that Ashcroft's legislative career has not been one of total hostility to civil liberties. But considered in its totality, Ashcroft's policies "represent radical notions about changing the Bill of Rights and the Constitution to conform to his vision of liberty and justice for some." The ACLU report examined the Ashcroft record in eight specific areas, including a fundamental disdain for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and a willingness to eviscerate other rights, such as religious liberty, free speech, reproductive freedom and remedies designed to seek racial equality. "After an examination of Sen. Ashcroft's statements and his votes on major federal legislation," the ACLU's Murphy said, "we conclude that he supports a radical evisceration of rights as we now know them." The ACLU report is available online at: http://www.aclu.org/congress/ashcroftreport.pdf ----------------------------------------------------------------- ACLU Denounces Oklahoma Governor For Allowing Execution of Mentally Impaired Woman FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, January 12, 2001 OKLAHOMA CITY -- The American Civil Liberties Union today denounced Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating's refusal to grant a 30-day reprieve to Wanda Jean Allen, who was executed last night despite the fact that she was deprived of adequate legal representation. "It is shocking that the state of Oklahoma forced Allen's lawyer to investigate and defend her case her for only the $800 that her family could scrape together," said Diann Rust-Tierney, Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. "That's not due process, as Governor Keating claims to endorse, that's another example of the unfairness of the death penalty." Wanda Jean Allen was sentenced to death for shooting her partner, Gloria Leathers, in a domestic dispute. Allen's lawyer, who had never tried a death penalty case before, lacked the resources to investigate or defend her case properly. Nevertheless, an Oklahoma Court forced Allen's lawyer to represent her at trial without assistance from the public defenders office or resources to properly investigate the case. Neither was Allen's lawyer made aware of state generated psychiatric reports that showed his client to be seriously mentally impaired. Because the lawyer was not aware this information existed, the jury never heard about Allen's mental impairments and other issues that might well have convinced them to choose a prison term over a death sentence. "Governor Keating has said that he understands his duty to ensure that defendants in capital cases in Oklahoma have due process," Rust-Tierney said. "But in this case, when the inexperience and failures of the lawyer are glaring, he looked the other way." Wanda Jean Allen's case has also garnered a great deal of attention in the lesbian and gay community because of concerns that bias against her sexual orientation may have played a part in her trial. Prosecutors referred repeatedly to Wanda Jean Allen's sexual orientation during her trial, relying on stereotypes about lesbians. "This is not over," said Joann Bell, Executive Director of the ACLU of Oklahoma. "There are serious problems in Oklahoma's death penalty system that will not be swept under the rug with this execution or the others scheduled to follow. Each time the Governor and the Board of Pardons and Parole refuse to do their jobs -- to provide a relief when lawyers fail miserably to defend their clients -- our argument for a moratorium on executions is strengthened." Four of the eight people scheduled for execution in Oklahoma during the next 30 days were denied adequate legal representation, Bell said. The four prisoners could not afford to hire lawyers, and those lawyers assigned to them by the state lacked the experience and financial resources to investigate their cases thoroughly. Five of the Oklahoma inmates scheduled to be killed this month are mentally ill, mentally retarded, and/or victims of childhood abuse. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ONLINE RESOURCES FROM THE ACLU NATIONAL OFFICE ----------------------------------------------------------------- ACLU Freedom Network Web Page: http://www.aclu.org America Online: keyword ACLU ----------------------------------------------------------------- ACLU Newsfeed American Civil Liberties Union National Office 125 Broad Street New York, New York 10004 To subscribe to the ACLU Newsfeed, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with "subscribe news" (without the quotation marks) in the body of the message. --- You are currently subscribed to news as: [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] To unsubscribe, forward this message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
