Capital punishment is the ultimate denial of civil liberties. The death penalty today is unfair and unjustifiable. With 25 exonerations since 1973, Florida ranks at the top of the list of states whose death row inmates were released due to evidence of their innocence, according to Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The ACLU of Florida is calling for a moratorium on all executions to allow adequate time to explore ways of ensuring that innocent persons are not being executed, and that the system is being implemented equitably.

It is probably no accident that freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The Constitution's framers believed that freedom of inquiry and liberty of expression were the hallmarks of a democratic society. The First Amendment exists precisely to protect the most offensive and controversial speech from government suppression. The best way to counter obnoxious speech is with more speech. Persuasion, not coercion, is the solution.

More than 2.7 million Floridians - approximately 16.7 percent of the total population - are foreign born. That figure rises dramatically in Miami-Dade, for example, where the population is 51 percent foreign born. In fact, with the exception of Native Americans, everyone living in this state - and the rest of the country for that matter - is either an immigrant or the descendent of immigrants. Yet immigrants across the state and in other parts of the country continue to face fear and hostility, especially during times of economic hardship, political turmoil, or war.

The struggle of lesbians and gay men for equal rights has moved to the center of the American stage. At no time in our nation's history have gay people been more visible: Lesbians and gay men are battling for their civil rights in Congress, in the State Legislatures, in courtrooms and in the court of public opinion; well-known figures such as Rosie O'Donnell are discussing their sexual orientation in public, gay characters are featured in movies and on prime time television shows. More Americans today than ever before are aware of the concerns and needs of lesbians and gay men.

From New Mexico to Connecticut, Florida to California, law-abiding Americans are the targets of the government's illegal surveillance. Discover their stories, learn about their "crimes" and witness the "faces of surveillance." Click here to see what the ACLU of Florida is doing on this topic.

Police abuse continues to be a major civil liberties problem in Florida, particularly in poor communities and communities of color. In Miami, a mentally ill Vietnam veteran yielding a pocketknife was shot 17 times by a city police officer who fired his 40-caliber semi-automatic weapon from about four feet away. The shooting occurred in the midst of a federal grand jury inquiry that led to the indictment of several City of Miami police officers accused of planting guns to cover up unjustified shootings. In Escambia County, in Florida's Panhandle, there have been 14 fatal shootings involving Escambia Sheriffs deputies since 1994.

The word "privacy" means many different things to different people. One widely accepted meaning, however, is "the right to left alone," as it was described by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the Harvard Law Review of 1890. This cherished right is now under attack, and the primary culprits are public and private sector employers who are using the power of the paycheck to tell their employees what they can and cannot do in the privacy of their own homes.

Slavery was this country's original sin, infecting the Constitution at its conception. It took more than 75 years after the Constitution was adopted and a bloody civil war before the end of slavery as a legal institution and the civil rights amendments were added to the Constitution. And it would take another hundred years after that before laws were passed outlawing racial discrimination in employment, housing, public education and accommodations, and protecting the right to vote. Despite enormous progress, however, the promise of fair and equal treatment for people of color remains frustratingly elusive.

Americans enjoy a degree of religious freedom unknown in most of the rest of the world, and they take full advantage it. The United States is home to more than 1,500 different religious bodies and 360,000 churches, synagogues and mosques, and has a higher percentage of church attendance than elsewhere in the world. The right of each and every American to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all, is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The Constitution's framers understood very well that religious liberty can flourish only if the government leaves religion alone. The free exercise clause of the First Amendment guarantees the right to practice one's religion free of government interference. The establishment clause requires the separation of church and state, which obligates the government to stay neutral in matters of religion -- favoring no religion over another, nor favoring religion over non-religion. Combined, they ensure religious liberty. Yet assaults on the freedom to believe continue, both in Washington and in state legislatures around the country.

A woman's decision whether or not to bear a child is one of the most intimate and important she will ever make. Like choices about contraception, marriage and child rearing, the decision to continue or end a pregnancy is protected from government interference and by the U.S. Constitution. The “Responsible Education About Life” (REAL) Act would be the first federal program to fund comprehensive sexuality education. It would require funded programs to teach age-appropriate and medically accurate information that is free from religion. Abstinence would be taught as the only sure way to avoid pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, however programs would be required to include information on how to prevent pregnancy and infection using contraceptives. Funding for REAL would match federal dollars currently earmarked for abstinence-only-until-marriage education.

Students, parents and community leaders today commended the Hillsborough County School Board for rejecting a proposal to turn away students from extra-curricular activities if they do not have a permission slip. The proposal was the result of a year-long effort by a small but loud group to remove Gay Straight Alliances (GSAs) from Hillsborough’s schools. “These students are bringing a message of tolerance and openness; that discrimination and harassment of LGBT students, or any others, will not be tolerated,” said Zeina Salam, ACLU Staff Attorney working with the ACLU of Florida’s LGBT Advocacy Project, who worked to defeat the passage of the recent recommendation by the task force. “Students have fundamental constitutional rights just like everyone else. Requiring students to get signed permission slips in order to participate in school sponsored clubs is counter-productive to fostering an open learning environment—we are thrilled that this was voted down.”

The ACLU of Florida is committed to the ensuring that all citizens are able to cast their votes and have them accurately counted. Because so many of Florida's voting problems, particularly those of the 2000 Presidential election, fell and continue to fall most heavily on African Americans and language minority communities, much of the ACLU's work is directed toward correcting voting irregularities that have a disproportionate impact on those groups. While many positive reforms have been accomplished since 2000, the September 2002 primaries - when some South Florida voters, particularly in majority black precincts, could not cast a ballot due to machine malfunction - demonstrated that more work remains to be done.