07-30-2000 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 * Final Passage of Breakthrough Religious Freedom Bill Hailed By Religious and Civil Rights Groups http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072800a.html * Government Plotted to Disrupt Peaceful Protests, Rights Groups Charge http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072700b.html * New Jersey Court Ruling on Abortion Ban Protects Women's Health and Lives, ACLU Says http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072700a.html * ACLU Calls on Congress to Address Broad Issues Affecting Fairness of Death Penalty http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072500c.html * ACLU Applauds House Committee Members For Stopping Attack on Civil Liberties http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072500a.html * ACLU Enthusiastically Endorses Measure To Restore Fairness to Immigration Laws http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072500b.html * ACLU Tells House Panel That FBI Is Engaged In Unprecedented Power Grab http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072400a.html * Other Recent ACLU News Releases ----------------------------------------------------------------- Final Passage of Breakthrough Religious Freedom Bill Hailed By Religious and Civil Rights Groups FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, July 28, 2000 WASHINGTON -- An unusual collection of religious and advocacy groups today applauded the House and Senate for unanimously adopting landmark bipartisan legislation to protect religious freedom from unfair government restrictions. "This legislation is a victory for all who cherish the basic American values of fairness and religious freedom," said Christopher T. Anders, a legislative counsel for the ACLU. "Soon religious communities will no longer be subject to arbitrary or discriminatory government regulations that unfairly restrict their ability to worship." The bill's dramatic passage was marked by down to the wire negotiating over its impact on historic preservation laws. With minutes left before Congress left town for the August recess, the Senate agreed to a unanimous consent request. The bill was then transferred to the House, where it passed just moments before the chamber closed for recess. The bill's primary sponsors were Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Representatives Charles Canady (R-FL), Chet Edwards (D-TX) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY). Named the "Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act," the bill is the result of months of negotiation not only across party lines, but between groups that are traditionally pitted against one another in battles over the relationship between the government and religion. It is actively supported by a coalition of more than 60 groups, including the ACLU, the Family Research Council, the Baptist Joint Committee, the Christian Legal Society, the American Jewish Congress, and groups representing Christian denominations from Catholics to Mormons to Seventh Day Adventists. The ACLU said the consensus legislation will provide important new protections for religious freedom without the potential for harmful civil rights problems raised by previous legislative efforts. The new bill focuses on land use for religious groups and religious freedom for people institutionalized in state facilities such as hospitals, group homes or prisons, the two areas in which the majority of conflicts between religious exercise and government arise. The ACLU led opposition last year to a religious liberty measure adopted by the House because of concerns that it would undermine state and local civil rights laws. "Religion has been unfairly targeted by government regulation across the country," said Terri Schroeder, an ACLU legislative representative. "The balance between the needs of religion and the larger community's concerns has been off kilter for far too long. This bill will restore the equilibrium." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Government Plotted to Disrupt Peaceful Protests, Rights Groups Charge FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, July 27, 2000 WASHINGTON -- The United States and District of Columbia governments deliberately plotted to disrupt and stifle peaceful protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, according to a lawsuit filed by civil rights and protest groups here today. The class action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District court by the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area, the National Police Accountability Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and the Partnership for Civil Justice, on behalf of Fifty Years is Enough, the International Action Center, the Mobilization for Global Justice, and other organizations and individuals who participated in the April, 2000, protests in Washington, D.C. "In this country, the government is supposed to protect the constitutional right to protest," said Arthur Spitzer, Legal Director of the ACLU of the National Capital Area. "But the evidence in this case will show that D.C. and federal officials deliberately sabotaged those rights." "We recognize that some demonstrators engaged in civil disobedience last April," Spitzer added. "But we expect the police to obey the law, whether or not others do." The lawsuit claims that federal and D.C. government agencies and officers unlawfully intimidated, harassed and disrupted the protests: -- falsely portrayed the protesters as threatening violence -- maliciously closed the protesters' headquarters for pretextual fire code violations -- confiscated protesters political literature, banners, and medical supplies -- wrongfully barred protesters from demonstrating near the World Bank-IMF meetings -- arrested hundreds of protesters without cause, and -- used excessive force against non-violent demonstrators. All this, the groups charged, was done in order to prevent the protesters from exercising their constitutional rights of freedom of speech and assembly. The lawsuit seeks money damages for people whose rights were violated, and court orders prohibiting the government from interfering unlawfully with future protests. Today's case is being filed in the wake of a similar lawsuit recently filed by the ACLU in Seattle, claiming that Seattle police unconstitutionally banned protesters from demonstrating at the International Monetary Fund meeting there last fall. Within the past few weeks, the ACLU has also sued the cities of Philadelphia and Los Angeles, where officials attempted to confine protesters at the upcoming Republican and Democratic Party Conventions to small areas far removed from the convention sites. On July 20, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that the protesters had a right to bring their message within sight and sound of the convention, and the Philadelphia case was settled when the city agreed to make closer protest sites available. "These efforts around the country to prevent protesters from bringing their messages to their intended audiences are very troubling," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, of the Partnership for Civil Justice. "These dissenters, and the people on whose behalf they advocate, are not allowed a seat at the table of the non-democratic bodies that they oppose, or cannot afford the price that political representatives charge to hear their views. The only way that they can be heard is when they take to the streets and speak in unison." Dan Schember, on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild's National Police Accountability Project, added, "It's unreasonable to exclude lawful demonstrators from a large area of sidewalks, streets and parks near the World Bank just because other demonstrators may sit down in the street. Police may move and arrest those who block the street, and that is all that is justified." No date has yet been set for a court hearing. Today's lawsuit was filed on behalf of: Fifty Years is Enough, an organization that since 1994 has lawfully protested annually outside World Bank-IMF meetings. The Mobilization for Global Justice, the umbrella organization that coordinated the World Bank-IMF protests in April, 2000. The International Action Center, based in New York, which sponsored the "Prison Industrial Complex" demonstration on April 15, 2000, at which more than 600 people were arrested without cause. A legal brief in the case is available online at: http://www.aclu.org/court/wto_brief.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- New Jersey Court Ruling on Abortion Ban Protects Women's Health and Lives, ACLU Says Statement of Lenora M. Lapidus, Legal Director, ACLU of New Jersey FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, July 27, 2000 NEWARK, NJ -- The American Civil Liberties Union is encouraged by a decision of the court of appeals striking down a deceptively vague and dangerous law that would have put women's health at risk and banned all of the safest, most commonly used methods of abortion throughout pregnancy. Yesterday's ruling, consistent with last month's United States Supreme Court ruling on a similar ban, rejects the argument that so-called "partial-birth abortion" bans target a single discrete procedure. The appeals court affirmed the ruling of the federal district court, which blocked enforcement of the ban. Now doctors in New Jersey can continue to provide safe, quality medical care based on consultation with their patients, without regard to the meddling of politicians. We hope this message will resonate with courts in the more than 30 states where similar bans have been enacted, many of which lack adequate exceptions for the life and health of the woman involved. While we are encouraged by this decision, we remain concerned about other efforts to restrict women's rights to safe, legal abortions. The Parental Notification Act, currently pending before the New Jersey Supreme Court, requires minors to notify a parent before having an abortion. If allowed to go into effect, this statute will only harm teens, not help them. We hope and trust that the state Supreme Court will uphold the rights of New Jersey teens and protect their health and constitutional right to choose. The case was filed by Lapidus of the ACLU of New Jersey, Talcott Camp from the ACLU's National Reproductive Freedom Project and Dara Klassel of Planned Parenthood Federation. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ACLU Calls on Congress to Address Broad Issues Affecting Fairness of Death Penalty Statement of Diann Rust-Tierney, Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, July 25, 2000 WASHINGTON -- For the first time in the history of the modern death penalty, Congress voted today to place limitations on the use of capital punishment. Even though the effort was of questionable political motivation, the unanimous vote by the House of Representatives to ban the execution of pregnant women had the laudatory effect of showing that the death penalty comes with deeply troubling baggage. Although the situation that Congress addressed today is remote at best -- there has never been a case of a pregnant prisoner facing execution -- today's vote lays the groundwork for Congress to address the more disturbing issues raised by capital punishment. These troubling issues abound. Just today, for example, a study reported that federal prosecutors favor whites over African Americans when agreeing to settlements of criminal cases that avoid death sentences. And a June report found that every two of three death sentences nationwide are overturned because of serious errors. Rather than focusing on non-existing situations, we call on Congress to vote on bills that would address the inherent unfairness of the death penalty. Such legislation is pending in both the House and Senate and includes: -- The Innocence Protection Act of 2000 (S2690/HR 4167), introduced by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Carl Levin (D-MI), and by Reps. William Delahunt (D-MA) and Ray LaHood (R-IL). It would allow death row prisoners better access to DNA tests and to an experienced lawyer and would ensure that sentencing juries are aware of the option of life imprisonment instead of execution. -- The National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2000 (S. 2463), introduced by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) would suspend executions while a national commission reviews the administration of the death penalty. -- The Accuracy in Judicial Administration Act of 2000 (HR 4162), sponsored by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) would establish a 7-year moratorium on state and federal executions, during which the government would be directed to find standards to provide "overwhelming confidence that innocent parties will not suffer the death penalty." While the ACLU opposes capital punishment as incompatible with constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment, we believe that short of abolition, Congress and the courts must ensure its fair application insofar as humanly possible. Now that Congress has demonstrated its willingness to place limitations on the scope and application of the death penalty, we urge it to go further to address broader problems in a broken system. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ACLU Applauds House Committee Members For Stopping Attack on Civil Liberties FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, July 25, 2000 WASHINGTON -- In a victory for privacy and free speech rights, the House Judiciary Committee today adopted a drug bill that was swept clean of its most troubling civil liberties proposals, including both a secret "black bag" searches provision and an Internet censorship measure. "The Judiciary Committee today bravely withstood pressure to expand some of the worst elements of the so-called war on drugs," said Marvin Johnson, a Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington National Office. Over the last several months, proponents of the bill -- known as the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act, (HR 2987) -- have steadily dropped some of its most controversial pieces, including a provision that would have made it illegal for news websites to link to webpages about topics like medical marijuana and hemp production by threatening them with jail time. Another provision that was removed would have forced Internet Service Providers to remove users' web pages without due process on the basis of mere allegations by the government. In a display of extraordinary bipartisan cooperation, the committee passed an amendment offered by Representatives Bob Barr (R-GA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) that stopped the government from criminalizing speech that might contradicts its "war on drugs" propaganda. The ACLU expressed disappointment that the bill still included a provision that would create new federal drug offenses, ignoring calls to halt the federalization of crime from across the political spectrum, including Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Representative Maxine Waters. "Despite recent groundbreaking reports showing that minorities are far more likely to be targeted under harsh federal drug laws than whites accused of the same crimes, some members of Congress appear to be saying that no cost is too high when it comes to cultivating a tough on crime image," said Rachel King, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ACLU Enthusiastically Endorses Measure To Restore Fairness to Immigration Laws Statement of Gregory T. Nojeim, ACLU Legislative Counsel FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, July 25, 2000 WASHINGTON -- The United States is a nation of laws, and our government is charged with guaranteeing that these laws are administered with impartiality and fairness. To ensure that impartiality and fairness, we are also a nation that provides for court review of government decisions. In our system of checks and balances, judicial review is an essential tool for preserving individual liberty. But anti-terrorism and immigration laws passed in 1996 eliminate that guarantee for many immigrants in the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union is therefore happy to join with the AFL-CIO, B'nai B'rith, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, National Council of La Raza, National Immigration Forum, Organization of Chinese Americans and Immigrant and Refugee Services of America in endorsing the "Restoration of Fairness in Immigration Law Act of 2000" being introduced today in the House by Rep. John Conyers, (D-MI), joined by Reps. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), James Clyburn (D-SC), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), and Robert Underwood (D-GU). The Conyers measure would enhance judicial review of immigration decisions on such matters as deportation, asylum eligibility and detention. It would restore the pre-1996 law granting immigration officials authority to release immigrants who do not pose a danger to society and who are likely to appear for future proceedings. The bill would also prevent indefinite detention of non-citizens whom the Immigration and Naturalization Service is unable to remove. Currently, the government claims the authority to detain non-citizens indefinitely, after they have already served criminal sentences. Finally, the bill would help correct a number of other problems, including retroactive and discriminatory use of immigration laws. Immigration decisions are life-altering and must be undertaken with great care. Deportation or detention can separate a person from her family and from all that makes life worth living. Mandatory and indefinite detention are perhaps the most flagrant, unfair deprivations of liberty possible. When such a substantial liberty interest is at stake, the Constitution demands that adequate protection -- or due process -- is provided to ensure that such decisions are correct and fair. Judicial review of the decisions of immigration officials provides this essential due process protection. Congress should adopt the Conyers legislation to provide due process and ensure fairness for all on American soil. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ACLU Tells House Panel That FBI Is Engaged In Unprecedented Power Grab FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, July 24, 2000 WASHINGTON -- Testifying about the new "Carnivore" wiretapping system, the American Civil Liberties Union today told a House committee that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is engaged in an "unprecedented" power grab that threatens the privacy of all Americans. "Never before has the FBI insisted that it has the authority to capture all of the communications passing through a network," said ACLU Associate Director Barry Steinhardt. "Never before has a law enforcement agency asked for this kind of power based on an unsupervised promise that it will not stray beyond the confines of its authority." In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Steinhardt urged Congress to reject the FBI's reasoning and adopt legislation that would uphold the Fourth Amendment's protection against unwarranted searches. Steinhardt said that the FBI's recent dog-and-pony shows with lawmakers and the media to demonstrate the technology behind Carnivore have not addressed concerns that the system includes no oversight of the information the FBI is capturing. "If you accept the FBI's arguments in favor of Carnivore," he said, "you reject the Fourth Amendment, which is built on the premise that law enforcement cannot be trusted with carte blanche authority when it conducts a search." According to the FBI, the Carnivore system -- essentially a computer running specialized software -- is attached to an Internet Service Provider's network and searches through all of its customers' electronic messages (including email, web addresses and instant messages) looking for the messages of a person suspected of a crime. The new system comes at a time of record wiretapping by federal law enforcement. In the last reporting period, Steinhardt said, the Clinton Administration conducted more wiretaps in one year than had ever been conducted before. "Congress must send a clear message to the FBI," Steinhardt said. "Under no circumstances must it be allowed to engage in such a mass invasion of the privacy of law-abiding Americans." Steinhardt's testimony can be found at: http://www.aclu.org/congress/l072400a.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- Other Recent ACLU News Releases: 07-24-00 -- ACLU Challenges Invasive Home Searches of Welfare Recipients in San Diego Area http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072400b.html 07-21-00 -- Minneapolis Police Department Changes Its Tune In Response To MCLU's Concerns http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072100a.html 07-20-00 -- Federal Judge Requires Los Angeles to Follow First Amendment During the Democratic National Convention http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072000c.html 07-20-00 -- ACLU Applauds Bipartisan Legislation to Protect Employees' Privacy http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072000b.html 07-20-00 -- ACLU Urges Senate to Take Immediate Action To Protect Against Genetic Discrimination http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n072000a.html 07-19-00 -- ACLU Claims Free Speech Victory in Texas; Displaying Political Posters is Now Legal http://www.aclu.org/news/2000/n071900a.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 For general information about the ACLU, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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]
