Tag Archives: ACLU

‘Everyone Should Celebrate’: FCC Restores Net Neutrality Rules

“Today marks the last day that internet service providers can continue to put profit over people,” said one advocate.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 4-25-2024 by Common Dreams

*FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel at State of the Net 2015. Photo: Internet Education Foundation/flickr/CC*

Open internet advocates on Thursday applauded the Federal Communications Commission’s long-anticipated vote to revive net neutrality rules and reestablish FCC oversight of broadband.

The 3-2 vote along party lines to reclassify broadband as a public service under Title II of the Communications Act came seven months after FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced the push in the wake of the U.S. Senate confirming Commissioner Anna Gomez.

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House Dems, GOP Team Up to Expand Warrantless Spying on Americans

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“The House has voted to allow the intelligence agencies to violate the civil rights and liberties of Americans for years to come,” said the ACLU’s senior policy counsel.

By Jake Johnson. Published 4-12-2024 by Common Dreams

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaking with attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s 2023 Annual Leadership Summit at the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

The U.S. House on Friday passed legislation to expand a major mass spying authority after voting down a bipartisan push to attach a search warrant requirement to the heavily abused surveillance law.

The bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years passed by a vote of 273-147, with 59 Democrats and 88 Republicans voting no. More Democrats voted for the bill than Republicans.

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US Supreme Court Lets Texas Enforce ‘Unconstitutional and Extreme’ Border Law

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“Allowing this law to be implemented as the case makes its way through the legal process needlessly puts people’s lives at risk,” said one campaigner. “We remain committed to the fight to permanently overturn S.B. 4.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 3-19-2024 by Common Dreams

*Migrants who crossed the border illegally, surrender near El Paso, TX U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo by Mani Albrecht*

Rights advocates on Tuesday blasted the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court for allowing Texas to enforce Senate Bill 4, a contested law empowering local and state authorities to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants.

“Today’s decision is disappointing and threatens the integrity of our nation’s immigration laws and bedrock principles of due process,” said Anand Balakrishnan, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “But it is only preliminary and turned on the specific posture of the case. We’ll continue to fight against S.B. 4 until it is struck down once and for all.”

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Tracking of Planned Parenthood Visits ‘Should Terrify Every Single American’

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Sen. Ron Wyden warns that “if a data broker could track Americans’ cellphones to help extremists” send ads to clinic visitors, “a right-wing prosecutor could use that same information to put women in jail.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 2-14-2024 by Common Dreams

*Planned Parenthood- Manitowoc, WI. Photo: Michael Steeber/flickr/CC*

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and privacy rights advocates this week are sounding the alarm about an anti-abortion group using cellphone location data to send misinformation to people who visited hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.

“If a data broker could track Americans’ cellphones to help extremists target misinformation to people at hundreds of Planned Parenthood locations across the United States, a right-wing prosecutor could use that same information to put women in jail,” Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement Tuesday.

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Drowning of Women, Two Children Intensify Disgust Over Illegal Border Operations by Texas National Guard

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“Gov. Abbott’s inhumanity has no limit. Everyone who enables his cruelty has blood on their hands.”

By Jon Queally. Published 1-14-2024 by Common Dreams

*U.S. Border Patrol agents perform a water rescue and assist a migrant family in distress near Eagle Pass, Texas, August 20, 2019, CBP photo by Jaime Rodriguez Sr.*

The drowning of a woman and two young children along the U.S.-Mexico border have sparked outrage and rebuke over the weekend after it was reported that U.S. Border Patrol agents attempting a rescue operation were denied access to the area by Texas security officials operating under the direction of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

According to Texas Public Radio:

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‘This Is Madness’: Supreme Court Denies Solitary Confinement Appeal

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Rep. Cori Bush, who is leading the End Solitary Confinement Act, argues that “we are using taxpayer money to torture people.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 11-15-2023 by Common Dreams

The U.S. Supreme Court’s three liberal justices issued a scathing dissent this week as the tribunal’s right-wing supermajority rejected the appeal of an Illinois inmate with mental illness imprisoned in solitary confinement without access to fresh air for three straight years.

The nation’s high court declined to hear the appeal of Michael Johnson, an inmate at Pontiac Correctional Center northeast of Peoria, whose attorneys argued he was being subjected to unconstitutional “cruel and unusual punishment” as he was deprived of fresh air and outdoor exercise while enduring horrific conditions in a tiny, filthy cell.

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Students Demanding Protection for Pro-Palestinian Activism Arrested at House Hearing on Campus Speech

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“Palestinian students deserve to speak on the genocide of their families,” said one protester as they were led out of the room by police.

By Julia Conley. Published 11-8-2023 by Common Dreams

A pro-Palestinian rights protester holds a sign saying that “Pro-Palestine is not equal to Antisemitism” at a hearing held by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on November 8, 2023. (Photo: @codepink/Twitter)

The limits of the Republican-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s views on freedom of speech were on full display Wednesday shortly after a hearing on “Free Speech on College Campuses” began, when several pro-Palestinian rights demonstrators were removed from the hearing room and arrested for speaking out.

The committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), invited representatives of conservative and pro-Zionist groups including Young Americans for Freedom and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to speak about what Jordan called “hostility towards certain points of view, in particular conservative points of view” amid growing outrage over Israel’s U.S.-backed assault on Gaza and the West Bank.

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FCC Chair Confirms Plan to Reinstate Net Neutrality Rules Eviscerated Under Trump

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“To allow a handful of monopoly-aspiring gatekeepers to control access to the internet is a direct threat to our democracy,” said Michael Copps, a Common Cause special adviser and former FCC commissioner.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 9-26-2023 by Common Dreams

FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel Photo: Internet Education Foundation/flickr/CC

Open internet advocates across the United States celebrated on Tuesday as Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced her highly anticipated proposal to reestablish FCC oversight of broadband and restore net neutrality rules.

“We thank the FCC for moving swiftly to begin the process of reinstating net neutrality regulations,” said ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff. “The internet is our nation’s primary marketplace of ideas—and it’s critical that access to that marketplace is not controlled by the profit-seeking whims of powerful telecommunications giants.”

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Federal Court Strikes Down Mississippi’s ‘Jim Crow’ Felon Disenfranchisement Law

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“Mississippi stands as an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear national trend in our nation against permanent disenfranchisement.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 8-4-2023 by Common Dreams

A U.S. federal appellate court on Friday ruled that a Jim Crow-era Mississippi law permanently disenfranchising people with certain felony convictions is unconstitutional.

In a decision that can be appealed to the full U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel of the tribunal ruled 2-1 that Section 241 of Mississippi’s 1890 Constitution “violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.”

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Faith Leaders, Parents, and Public Education Advocates Sue Over First US Religious Charter School

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“Governmental sanctioning of a religious charter school drives a stake in the heart of religious liberty and seeks to eviscerate the fundamental precept of the separation of church and state,” said the head of a plaintiff group.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 7-31-2023 by Common Dreams

A nonprofit that supports public education and nine Oklahoma residents on Monday filed a lawsuit to stop the state from sponsoring and funding the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, the first religious charter school in the United States.

A legal challenge has been brewing since the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved the online institution in a 3-2 vote last month. St. Isidore, a “collaborative effort between the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa” intended to provide “a quality Catholic education” to children statewide, is set to open for the 2024-25 academic year.

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Tag Archives: ACLU

US Supreme Court Lets Texas Enforce ‘Unconstitutional and Extreme’ Border Law

“Allowing this law to be implemented as the case makes its way through the legal process needlessly puts people’s lives at risk,” said one campaigner. “We remain committed to the fight to permanently overturn S.B. 4.”