At Liberty

It’s been a dizzying few days in U.S. immigration policy. Earlier this week, the Trump administration issued rules to ban most refugees arriving through the southern border. Despite legal setbacks, the administration continues to try to build a border wall. At the same time, the president has launched sustained attacks on four American congresswomen of color. Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director a...

Surveillance technology is slowly encroaching on every part of our lives. With regulation at the federal level slow to materialize, local governments are taking action. Two American cities — San Francisco, Calif. and Somerville, Mass. — recently passed local laws to ban the use of facial recognition technology by police and other government agencies. Is local advocacy our best bet for keeping the...

Hundreds of thousands of Washington, D.C. residents currently lack full political representation. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents them in the House of Representatives, is currently leading an initiative to make the District of Columbia the 51st state.

It was another dramatic year for the Supreme Court. A new justice was sworn in against the backdrop of scandal. A beloved justice got sick and recovered. And, of course, major precedent-setting decisions were handed down. David Cole, the ACLU’s legal director and a seasoned Supreme Court litigator, makes sense of the highs and lows of the past term and talks through what’s to come when the court r...

In one of the most highly anticipated decisions of its term, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration cannot add a citizenship question to the U.S. census – at least not for now. Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, who argued the case, explains the decision.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of arguably the most important privacy ruling of the digital age. In Carpenter v. the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that police violated the Fourth Amendment when they secured months’ worth of a robbery suspect's location information from his cell phone company without a warrant. Nathan Freed Wessler, the ACLU attorney who argued and won the case,...

As discussions about racism in America gain traction, so too does the question of reparations. Broadly defined as some form of repayment for the harms inflicted on enslaved peoples and their descendants, reparations have earned increased visibility thanks to advocacy by the National African-American Reparations Commission and other groups. The issue has become a 2020 presidential campaign issue an...

On this week’s episode, Georgetown Professor Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, joins At Liberty to discuss his book, "Chokehold: Policing Black Men"; how the criminal legal system has Black men in its grip; and why it's so hard to change the system from within.

In the last few months, six states have passed laws that essentially ban abortion, and several other states have similar bills pending. Restrictions on access to abortion have been building for decades since the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that abortion is a constitutional right. But these direct assaults on abortion represent a turning point. Brigitte Amiri, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Repr...

Olivia Wilde and Katie Silberman, the director and the writer of the new movie “Booksmart,” joined At Liberty to talk about storytelling, casting without bias, and why "The Big Lebowski" was an inspiration. Wilde is known for her roles on TV shows such as “The O.C.” and “House” and in many films, including the Oscar-winning film “Her.” She is a longtime activist and a board member of the ACLU of S...

May 17 marks the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court case that declared state laws enforcing racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Yet more than six decades later, segregation in some public school systems is worse than ever. Dr. Ansley Erickson, associate professor of history and education at Columbia University's Teacher College, joins At Libe...

Wyatt Cenac is an actor, writer, producer and comedian ("The Daily Show," “Medicine for Melancholy”). He joins At Liberty to discuss balancing comedy and social commentary and his new show “Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas,” now in its second season on HBO.

Mitra Ebadolahi, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Border Litigation Project, joins At Liberty to debunk misconceptions about the border and discuss the fight to hold CBP accountable. For more information visit: www.holdcbpaccountable.org.

A few weeks ago, the ACLU and other civil rights organizations announced a landmark settlement with Facebook to prevent advertisers from using ad-targeting filters based on race, gender, and age on job, housing, and credit ads. But Facebook ads are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the use of algorithms to reinforce and automatize bias. ACLU attorneys Galen Sherwin and Esha Bhandari joi...

On Tuesday, April 23, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear the case Department of Commerce v. New York, which asks whether a question about citizenship can be added to the 2020 Census questionnaire. The case will be argued by Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project. He joins At Liberty to discuss the case and how he's preparing for oral argument in our country’s highest...

At Liberty sits down with Meg Singer, the Indigenous Justice program manager at the ACLU of Montana, and Lillian Alvernaz, the ACLU’s first Indigenous Justice Legal Fellow, to discuss Indigenous justice and organizing for social change in Indigenous communities. To learn more about Meg and Lillian and the ACLU of Montana’s Indigenous justice work visit www.aclumontana.org.

Sergio de la Pava is a critically acclaimed novelist (A Naked Singularity, Personae, Lost Empress) and a full-time public defender who has represented thousands of criminal defendants over the last two decades. He joined At Liberty live at the Brooklyn Public Library to discuss his literary and legal work and his approach to life.

Nicole Ozer, the Technology and Civil Liberties director for the ACLU of California, has been at the forefront of debates around privacy and technology for more than 15 years. She joins At Liberty to break down the current state of facial recognition technology and why it raises civil rights and civil liberties concerns.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a published poet, memoirist, and legal scholar who's currently pursuing a Ph. D. in law at Yale. His legal work, like his poetry, is informed by the years he spent in prison as a teen. This week he sits down with At Liberty to discuss his journey to the legal profession, his perspective on the criminal justice system, and his art.

This week, At Liberty comes to you from Austin, TX, where we recorded in front of a live audience with Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, and The Nightwatchman. We sat down to discuss “Atlas Underground,” Morello’s new album of “social justice ghost stories,” as well as his decades of activism on issues like criminal justice reform, income inequality, unions, free speech, and men...

Rocky Myers is one of 175 people on death row in Alabama. The devastating flaws in his case from the moment of arrest to his sentencing displays the injustice of a brutal criminal system. His attorney Kacey Keeton and investigator Sara Romano join At Liberty to discuss the death penalty, Rocky’s case, and his appeal for clemency. Learn more and sign the petition for clemency at www.aclu.org/rocky.

As Black History Month comes to an end, Professor Carol Anderson (Emory University) joins At Liberty to discuss ongoing voter suppression efforts in the United States, and as a bonus, she tells the story of how the NAACP helped lead the global struggle against colonialism in the 1940s and 1950s.

Alan Rusbridger is the former editor of The Guardian and author of "Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now." He joins At Liberty to discuss the state of journalism in the social media age: what has been lost in this information revolution and what has been gained?

This Valentine's Day, we're joined by Melissa Murray, NYU Law professor and expert on the legal regulation of sex and sexuality. Professor Murray and host Emerson Sykes discuss the legal institution of marriage as it has been used by and against marginalized people, and consider the victories and setbacks in the fight for marriage — and nonmarriage — equality.

As part of the "Night of Philosophy and Ideas," renowned philosopher and NYT Ethicist columnist Kwame Anthony Appiah joined host Emerson Sykes — and a live audience! — to discuss identity, ethics, and the law. The event was hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.