At Liberty

Over the last two years, we've talked with civil rights leaders, organizers, journalists, artists, ACLU lawyers and people whose lives have been affected by the civil rights and liberties issues of our day. We've covered family separation at the border, talked to founders of the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. And we even spoke via video link with Edward Snowden. To mark our 100th episode...

Over the last few weeks, various protests have erupted across the country in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are related to the virus: protestors in Ohio and Michigan took to the state capitols to call for an end to their governors' stay-at-home orders. Others are calling out an ongoing injustice: the killing, often at the hands of the state, of Black Americans. The rights of participants...

Our guest today is Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet, memoirist, and legal scholar. Loyal listeners will remember our conversation from March of 2019. The episode was called “A Poet Gives a 360 Degree View of The Criminal Legal System,” and we talked about Dwayne’s journey from a teenage defendant sentenced to 9 years in prison to a Yale Law School graduate and published poet. A lot has happened since...

Over the next month, states will start to loosen their COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions. Some of us will return to work, gather in small groups, and maybe even dine at a neighborhood restaurant. But what will it take to keep us safe and prevent new spikes in infections? Many experts say we will not be out of the woods until there's a vaccine, but how would a national vaccination plan even work?...

Public opinion on marijuana legalization has shifted in recent years—roughly two-thirds of all Americans are now in favor of national legalization, according to a recent Pew Research Study. However, a new ACLU report called "A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform,” shows that despite legalization and decriminalization efforts, many of them successful, mar...

The Coronavirus has spread quickly through communities around the world, prompting physical distancing measures to keep people safe and “flatten the curve.” But people in custody are especially at risk because they are often held in close quarters and lack decent medical care. Currently, nearly 36,000 people are being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, and they are all in g...

As many Americans stare down the end of their first month of social distancing, it’s clear that the toll of “stay at home” orders during the COVID-19 pandemic is much more than economic. The anxiety and fear that wash over us each day that we spend alone, away from friends, coworkers, and family, inflict their own kind of emotional damage. The cost of social isolation is a worthy cost in this case...

As the coronavirus continues to spread across the country, the nation’s jails and prisons have become ripe breeding grounds for COVID-19. Millions of people who interact with our criminal justice system are at risk. Last weekend marked the first COVID-related death of an inmate and new reports show that the rate of infection in prisons is far higher than their surrounding areas, evidence of the ur...

With the recent spread of COVID-19 in the United States, we now face a public health emergency unlike any we’ve seen in our work at the ACLU. Across the country, schools are closed, employees are adapting to new work from home policies, and some state and local officials have even implemented “shelter in place” orders. At the ACLU, we work with a variety of vulnerable populations. COVID-19 brings...

Megan Rapinoe is a superstar soccer player who has become a global icon for her breathtaking play, her purple/pink hair, and her bold activism. She’s a World Cup champion, Olympic gold medalist, and co-captain of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. She has also kneeled during the national anthem in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and others to protest police brutality and she’s spoken out in f...

In 2018, Stacey Abrams ran for Governor of Georgia and lost by just 54,723 votes to Republican Brian Kemp, who was then serving as Georgia’s Secretary of State. Before Kemp entered the governor’s race, he purged 1.4 million voters and instituted many other policies to dissuade people from voting. It’s a story of the real-world impact of voter suppression. What happened in that race was egregious,...

Abortion access is yet again under attack. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, a case that threatens to chip away at the constitutional right to a safe and legal abortion. The Court will decide whether or not a Louisiana law that requires abortion providers to have the ability to admit patients to a nearby hospital is constitutional. If allowed to go...

Since President Trump took office, his administration has waged a series of attacks on asylum in the United States. They are restricting the number of asylum cases heard in a given day, sending asylum seekers to other countries to await review, and even working to bar specific groups of people from the process entirely. Now, a case before the Supreme Court threatens the right of asylum seekers to...

This year, Hair Love, a story about a black girl and her dad navigating natural hairstyles, won the Oscar for animated short and three beauty pageant winners wore natural hairstyles under their crowns. But as more and more people step out into the world celebrating their natural hair, they are also being met with school and workplace dress codes that punish them under the auspice of "professionali...

This Valentine's Day, we're re-running one of our favorite episodes. Melissa Murray, NYU Law professor and expert on the legal regulation of sex and sexuality joins us to discuss the legal institution of marriage as it has been used by and against marginalized people, and to consider the victories and setbacks in the fight for marriage – and non-marriage – equality.

The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in a case that will decide whether nearly half of Oklahoma is legally an Indian Reservation. The Court’s decision could have massive implications for tribal sovereignty and subsequently, many other Native issues that are impacted by jurisdictional power. Our guest this week is Rebecca Nagle, an activist, writer, artist, and citizen of the Cherokee Nation,...

The U.S. has a long history of detaining and incarcerating communities of color under the auspice of protecting its national security. Today, on Korematsu Day, we honor and celebrate the legacy of those who stood up against the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. On this episode, we speak with Linda Morris, an ACLU fellow and a descendant of Japanese American prisoners in...

In 2017, Arkansas announced a plan to execute eight people in 10 days because the state’s lethal injection drugs were about to expire. The first person executed was Ledell Lee. He was convicted of the 1993 murder of Debra Reese and sentenced to death. But his trials and appeals were plagued by problems from the start. DNA and fingerprints found at the scene of the crime were never tested before hi...

This weekend, we celebrate the ACLU’s 100th birthday. To commemorate the centennial, novelist and essayist Ayelet Waldman and her husband Michael Chabon edited an anthology of essays from today’s most prominent writers reflecting on landmark ACLU cases. The book is called Fight of The Century, and it features authors like Jesmyn Ward, Dave Eggers and Salman Rushdie, among many others. Waldman join...

This week, we are bringing back a very special episode from 2019 featuring our former director of the Women’s Rights Project, Lenora Lapidus. Lenora passed away just a few months after the interview, having fought a long battle with cancer. She started as an intern in 1988, later served as legal director of the ACLU of New Jersey, and for nearly two decades led the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, w...

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. Since this episode first ran in July, more American cities in California, Massachusetts, and Maine passed local laws to ban the use of facial recognition technology by police and other government agencies. Is local advocacy our bes...

For a special year-end holiday episode, we decided to ask some ACLU staff to have a conversation with their kids about the work they do. On this episode, you’ll hear kids learn about gerrymandering, how we inform legislation, the Keystone XL Pipeline and what kinds of snacks we keep nearby. Thanks for all of your support in 2019! We have some great conversations to share in the new year.

At the ACLU, we receive lots of holiday mail, and not all of it brings tidings of comfort and joy. In this episode, we share a few letters that accuse the ACLU of being "anti-Christian" or "anti-religion.” To respond and dispel the falsehood, At Liberty spoke with Dan Mach, the director of the ACLU’s Program on Religious Freedom and Belief. Mach tells us about the uphill battle of protecting relig...

This week, the ACLU's Women's Rights Project filed a pair of federal lawsuits against Frontier Airlines for discriminating against pregnant and breastfeeding employees. We talked to flight attendant Melissa Hodgkins and pilot Shannon Kiedrowski about their experiences working for Frontier, and senior staff attorney Galen Sherwin, about the lawsuit.

Mass incarceration in the U.S. is an indisputable fact, but most reforms focus on nonviolent offenses. As uncomfortable as it may be, we can't dismantle mass incarceration without changing the way we think about, talk about, and respond to violence. At Liberty spoke with Danielle Sered, who is doing just that with her organization Common Justice, and her book, Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incar...