Video: "Better Angels"

MassEquality has released a documentary called "Better Angels" on YouTube and DVD. It's about the campaign in Wisconsin last year to stop a constitutional amendment banning marriage and civil unions for lesbian and gay couples.

The basic message is that Massachusetts should not underestimate how difficult it is to stop one of these constitutional amendments, and should do everything possible to prevent it from going to the ballot.

ACLUM's communications director, Chris Ott, appears in the documentary, along with several other Wisconsin leaders we helped to bring into the project. Ott served as director of the Wisconsin campaign's parent organization.

The release of "Better Angels" garnered widespread coverage, including this story from the Associated Press, as well as in the Berkshire Eagle.

Press Release: ACLUM welcomes New Hampshire civil unions

BOSTON - Today, the ACLU of Massachusetts (ACLUM) welcomed passage of legislation in New Hampshire to provide the option of civil unions for lesbian and gay couples, with important rights, benefits, and protections at the state level.

"While we believe that civil unions are only a step toward the ultimate goal of marriage equality, it is heartening to see another state recognize that lesbian and gay couples need ways to protect one another and their families," said Carol Rose, ACLUM's Executive Director.

The New Hampshire Senate voted 14-10 on Thursday in favor of civil unions. New Hampshire's House of Representatives had already passed a companion measure, and Gov. John Lynch has pledged to sign it. New Hampshire is the fourth state to provide civil unions, along with Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Maine, Hawaii, California and the District of Columbia also offer some legal protections for lesbian and gay couples.

"The fact that three of our neighboring states now offer civil unions shows how important it is for us to stop the proposed constitutional amendment that would end marriage equality in Massachusetts," said Rose. "It would be terrible for Massachusetts to move backward while our neighbors move forward.

"The ACLU of Massachusetts is proud that our Commonwealth led the nation with marriage equality, which puts all couples and their families on the same footing. We oppose voting on the proposed constitutional amendment that would reverse that pioneering move. It's simply wrong to vote on whether or not to take anyone's rights away, and no one's marriage should be put to a popular vote."

News: She can't bring same-sex date to Catholic high school prom

The Boston Globe quotes ACLUM's Sarah Wunsch in a story about a Catholic high school student told she can't bring another girl as a date to her prom.

Sarah Wunsch also appeared this morning on conservative WRKO talk radio about the issue, and we're contributing to a New England Cable News story this afternoon as well.

News: Salem couple's new book chronicles struggle for gay rights

The Salem Daily News published a review yesterday by Alan Lupo of Courting Equality, a forthcoming book which the ACLU of Massachusetts supported.

Press Release: Judge temporarily halts deportation of New Bedford immigrants

BOSTON - After arguments yesterday by the ACLU of Massachusetts and partner attorneys for immigrants detained in a New Bedford raid last month, U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns ordered that 54 immigrants be allowed to stay in the country while their case is being heard.

These 54 people have told lawyers that they unknowingly or unwillingly signed documents waiving their rights to appeal. Attorneys are filing new appeals on their behalf.

At the heart of the proceedings in Aguilar et al. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement et al., is the question of whether the federal district court in Massachusetts has jurisdiction to hear the immigrants' claims that their rights have been violated and that the government acted in bad faith by quickly transferring detainees out of Massachusetts. Within two days of the raid, ICE officials moved more than 200 immigrants hundreds of miles away from Massachusetts to detention facilities in Harlingen and El Paso, Texas.

The ACLU of Massachusetts has worked since the raid with attorneys from Greater Boston Legal Services, the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, and private law firms to argue that immigrants have been denied their constitutional right to due process, the right to attorneys of their choice, and to fair bond hearings because government officials intentionally separated them from their families and communities, denied them access to counsel, and possibly failed to inform them of their rights. Family members and friends of the detained immigrants filled the courtroom yesterday in a show of solidarity.

Government attorneys argued yesterday that the immigrants can only bring their cases before immigration judges in Texas. In addition, they argued that provisions of the Real ID Act stop the Massachusetts federal district court from having jurisdiction over their claims.

In court, ACLU attorney Laura Rótolo argued that these jurisdiction-stripping measures do not apply here. "We are not asking the court to decide their individual immigration cases. We are asking the court to look at the unconstitutional way in which the whole process of the raids and the transfer out of Massachusetts was carried out," Rótolo stated today.

Judge Stearns expressed that his preliminary inclination was to side with the government, but he requested additional briefing from petitioners' lawyers on whether a specific section of the Real ID Act applies here.

News: Plan To Use Fingerprints To Pay For Lunch Scrapped

More coverage of ACLUM's work against Lunch Bytes, from WCVB-TV in Boston.

News: Taunton schools scrap fingerprint-scanning plans

The Globe quotes ACLUM's Executive Director, Carol Rose, in its story on the cancellation of the Lunch Bytes fingerprint scanning program for school lunches.

News: Taunton School Committee gives up plan for biometric lunch lines

Fox 12 in Providence, R.I. did a story on the cancellation of the Lunch Bytes program, citing the ACLU's work.

Press Release: ACLU praises Taunton decision to cancel "Lunch Bytes" program

BOSTON - Today the ACLU of Massachusetts praised the decision by the Taunton School Committee to cancel plans for its controversial "Lunch Bytes" program, which would have used fingerprint scans to identify students in the lunch line.

In February, ACLU Staff Attorney Sarah Wunsch wrote Taunton's Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Arthur Stellar, urging the school district to reconsider its plans. A vigrous local "Ban the Scan" effort by parents also lobbied against the $40,000 program.

"While I appreciate the school system's desire to speed up the lunch line and to avoid stigma for students receiving free or reduced lunches... there are legitimate and serious privacy concerns created by this system," Wunsch wrote.

While the Lunch Bytes system would not have stored students' actual fingerprints, it translates distinguishing points on the prints into a digital code. Security experts have expressed concern that stolen codes could be misused in new forms of biometric identity theft.

"Used properly, biometric data might help to improve security-but the last thing we should do is teach parents and their children, starting from a young age, to be casual about turning over biometric data for the sake of convenience," said Wunsch.

"Again and again today, through security breaches such as the massive loss of consumer data at the TJX companies, we see the dangers of identity theft," said Carol Rose, Executive Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

"We should carefully examine programs that could further erode people's privacy, whether that is through fingerprinting, surveillance systems, or collections of personal data. The data captured and stored by these systems can be an attractive target for theft and misuse, and once security has been breached, it may be impossible to go back. We should proceed with caution."

Other school districts, in cities including Boulder, Colorado, and Irvine, California, rejected the fingerprint-scanning program after initial consideration as well.

News: A backhanded compliment...

Susan Ryan-Vollmar, editor of LGBT weekly Bay Windows, notes that the antigay Massachusetts Family Institute lists ACLUM's legisative director, Norma Shapiro, in its rundown of Massachusetts leaders in the "pro-homosexual marriage movement."

News: Legislators debate reforming Mass. Constitutional amendment process

LGBT paper In Newsweekly quotes testimony from ACLUM's Executive Director, Carol Rose, in its story on the proposal to ban amendments to the constitution which restrict civil rights.

News: Amending Article 48

LGBT weekly Bay Windows quotes ACLUM's Communications Manager, Chris Ott, in a story on the proposal to bar constitutional amendments that restrict people's civil rights.

Op-ed: Vonnegut's voice will be missed

Today the Boston Globe asked Carol Rose, ACLUM's Executive Director, to write this short piece on the death of Kurt Vonnegut.

Press Release: ACLU backs legislative proposals to safeguard constitutional rights

BOSTON—Today, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLUM) reaffirmed its position that no one's fundamental rights and freedoms should be put to a popular vote.

Carol Rose, ACLUM's Executive Director, testified before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary in support of legislative amendments to Article 48 of the Declaration of Rights. The legislative proposals would protect constitutional rights by not allowing them to be subject to a popular vote via the ballot initiative process, and by increasing the level of legislative support required before an initiative proposal to amend the constitution could move forward.

"These most fundamental of guarantees—to equality, freedom, and equal protection under the law—are among the most sacred of freedoms that we enjoy as residents of this Commonwealth. They are the cornerstones of individual liberty. Indeed, so fundamental are the rights to freedom and equality that they should not—must not—be subject to potential or actual evisceration as the result of an initiative petition to amend the constitution and a popular majority vote to constrict the rights of a minority, or even to cut minority rights off entirely," said Rose.

The ACLU of Massachusetts has long supported citizen ballot initiatives as a part of constitutional democracy—but only insofar as the process is used to protect individual and civil rights, not to eliminate them.

Article 48 already protects certain rights from the initiative process, such as the right to private property, trial by jury, and freedom of speech. Fundamental guarantees of liberty, freedom, and equal protection deserve the same protection.

The alternative is a disastrous free-for-all in which everyone's rights are insecure. Currently, just one quarter of the state Legislature has the power to send such a measure for a statewide vote. A majority could vote to overturn the rights of minorities on the basis of characteristics such as race, sex, age, sexual orientation, and others.

"[The] same prejudice that today would deny the most basic of human rights to one segment of our Commonwealth can be used tomorrow to deny the right to equality and freedom to another group, and another, and another… until, finally, any one of us, any group of us, could become the target for oppression by majority rule," said Rose.

"We should not permit this to happen on our watch."

News: ACLU offers discussion on racial profiling in Lawrence

Local activists run with an upcoming ACLU organizing meeting in Lawrence, as reported in the Eagle-Tribune.

News: A Miscarriage of Justice for Dominican Immigrant

This story in the Indypendent, the newspaper of the NYC Independent Media Center, quotes ACLUM Staff Attorney Sarah Wunsch.

Blog: Lively discussion of "Endgame"

A conversation we started about operation Endgame has become one of the week's hottest topics on the Massachusetts political blog Blue Mass Group.

News: Some see scans for lunch as taste of Big Brother

The Globe quotes Sarah Wunsch, ACLUM Staff Attorney, in a story about the proposed fingerprint scanning system for serving school lunches in Taunton. Wunsch told school officials that teaching students to be casually fingerprinted is "the wrong lesson."

Letter: "Immigration op-ed a new ACLU low"

Well, we seem to have gotten ICE's attention.

It's in the form of a letter to the editor of the Globe, responding to our op-ed last week about operation Endgame plans to expel all 12 million undocumented immigrants from the United States within the next few years.

ICE asserts that during the March raid in New Bedford, its agents "took extraordinary steps, in concert with Massachusetts social-service and law-enforcement agencies, to help ensure that no child was, at any point, without proper care" -- which is at odds with coverage such as:

As immigration raids rise, human toll decried
State officials blame feds for immigration 'crisis'
A lapse in planning
DSS urges release of 21 more detainees

Meanwhile, ICE has taken down several documents which used to be available through its own website, such as a copy of the Endgame strategic plan itself (we have it here), as well as documents which refer to progress in meeting Endgame goals.

ICE spokesperson Jamie Zuieback, who was offended by our mention of similar techniques used in ethnic cleansing in the Balkans during the 90s, also offered to buy us tickets to the Holocaust Museum in DC -- but as one of our attorneys, Laura Rótolo, quickly pointed out, admission is free.