Content warning: This piece includes disturbing details about the deaths of incarcerated people.

LaShawn Thompson died late last year while being detained pretrial in Atlanta’s Fulton County jail. He was incarcerated there — and died — because he could not afford $2,500 in bail for a misdemeanor charge. An autopsy confirms that his death was a homicide caused by neglect, malnourishment, and that his body was literally eaten by bugs. It took eight months for this gruesome and horrible truth to come to light.

Tragically and shamefully, Mr. Thompson is not the only person to recently die in the Fulton County jail. Just this week, 40-year-old Montay Stinson was found unresponsive in his cell. He had reportedly been in the jail for nearly a year, with bail set at $3,000. And last month, Noni Battiste-Kosoko, who was only 19 years old, was found dead in her cell In Fulton County custody just last month. Far less has been revealed about the circumstances of her death. What we do know is that Ms. Battiste-Kosoko was in custody because she had been accused (not convicted) of damaging walls and tables in a high school: for acting like a teenager.

Credit: ERIK S LESSER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Since the beginning of 2022, at least 18 people have died in Fulton County’s custody that we know of. These tragic deaths are not just unacceptable, they were preventable. As the ACLU and our partners have been pointing out for years, there are a considerable number of people incarcerated in Fulton County and across the country solely because they are too poor to post cash bail. In such cases, these people have been determined to not be a threat to the public, and they have not been convicted of a crime.

While much of the blame for unlivable jail conditions in Atlanta has rightly been placed with the local Sheriff’s office and those who oversee the facility, numerous elected officials in Fulton County are equally if not more responsible for the conditions in the jail. Following the unanimous passage of a bipartisan bail reform bill in 2018, Georgia law requires that judges consider an individual’s financial circumstances — their income, their expenses and debts, and whether they have dependents — when setting bail. A system where some people are indefinitely detained and others are allowed to go home and await trial with their families, simply because of their access to wealth, is unconstitutional. Unfortunately, individuals who cannot afford bond are routinely held in custody for months or years, despite a judge finding they are not a risk to the public. This doesn’t just contribute to jail overcrowding and deadly conditions: it is a primary cause of Fulton County’s current humanitarian crisis.

Much of the public debate around criminal law reform stems from our collective desire to live in safe, stable communities. Yet far too little attention is paid to the incredible harm that occurs because of incarceration, particularly in crowded jails like Fulton County’s. Assaults, including sexual assaults, are rampant; medical care is abysmal; conditions are squalid; and death tolls are rising in jails nationwide. These cascading harms traumatize and stigmatize all who are exposed to them. That trauma follows people to their communities after they are eventually released.

In addition to worsening the racial disparities in the criminal justice system, holding individuals awaiting trial increases the chances they will commit crimes in the future, according to a Georgia-based, bipartisan commission of judges, prosecutors, and policy experts. This two-tiered system of justice is intolerable and is making Atlanta less safe. Additionally, there is a financial and human cost on communities when people are incarcerated simply because they are unable to pay their bond. Low-income Fulton County residents who are incarcerated will have to rely on their friends and families scraping together whatever funds they have to pay unnecessarily high bonds, taking that money out of the community. The cost of this unnecessary detention is part of the $14 billion that Americans spend every year to incarcerate legally innocent people.

Despite bipartisan calls for reform, and full awareness of the financial and human crisis caused by overcrowding, Fulton County officials have not meaningfully acted to address the issues in the jail. In New York City, there is a growing and serious possibility that oversight of the Rikers Island jail complex will be taken over by a federal receiver. Fulton County jail is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

If county officials want to avoid similar federal intervention, including the millions (if not billions) of tax dollars such a receivership would cost, there are several urgent steps they can take. Law enforcement should focus on arrests only where individuals are a threat to others use their authority to issue citations for such crimes instead of needlessly jailing them. Prosecutors should decline to prosecute or pursue pretrial diversion more often, particularly in cases that involve addiction, mental illness, or poverty. Judges must provide timely and complete hearings to anyone arrested and jailed to ensure that anyone who can be safely released is not being unnecessarily incarcerated.

As our analysis of the Fulton County jail crisis showed last year, increasing the jail’s footprint and adding beds will not solve issues of community safety. Subjecting our community members to the dangers of incarceration is not making us safer, and no number of additional beds will fix the problem. Fulton County did ultimately obtain additional jail beds at the Atlanta City Detention Center, where Noni Battiste-Kosoko died. The complacency and failure to act on the policy failures that cause overcrowding will result in more deaths, bankrupt our communities financially and morally, and continue to make us less safe in Fulton County. We demand our elected officials do better, and the time to act is right now.

From banning books to restricting classroom discussions about race and gender, politicians across the country have been busy censoring speech in the name of “protecting the children.” Now they also have their eyes on limiting access to social media.

Arkansas recently passed the Social Media Safety Act, which requires every person to verify their age before they can access existing social media accounts or create new ones. If a user cannot show they are at least 18 years old using a “commercially reasonable age verification method” — potentially including biometric screening or requiring government-issued ID — the law requires them to obtain parental consent to use social media. As the ACLU, the ACLU of Arkansas, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained in a friend-of-the court brief we recently filed in a challenge to the law, these requirements violate the First Amendment. They rob users of anonymity, pose privacy and security risks, and could be used to block some people from being able to use social media at all.

American Civil Liberties Union

ACLU Supports Challenge to Arkansas Law that Places Unconstitutional Age-Verification and Parental Consent Requirements on Social Media Users | American Civil Liberties Union

Arkansas’s “Social Media Safety Act” stifles freedom of expression.

A wealth of communication and expression takes place online. Children and adults use social media to share news, opinions, and ideas; participate in social movements; interact with government representatives; explore their spirituality; and express themselves creatively.

While social media can create echo chambers, it can also expose people to ideas they wouldn’t otherwise encounter. Roughly 23 percent of adult social media users told Pew researchers that they “have changed their views about a political or social issue because of something they saw on social media in the last year.” Some social media use might harm a user’s body image, but it also allows people who don’t see their body types represented in mainstream media to share their talents and lived experiences with the world.

While social media can have negative consequences for some teens’ mental health, for others, it can be a lifeline. Paula Sojo’s TikTok account, for example, has become a community for people with chronic illnesses who might otherwise feel isolated and alone. And many young LGBTQ+ people who face discrimination and judgement offline turn to social media for community, exploration, and support. The First Amendment protects the right to engage in all of this speech.

If allowed to go into effect, the Arkansas law would prohibit users from accessing social media anonymously or under a pen name. Age verification requirements can deter even adults from engaging on social media because they worry about sharing additional personal data with social media companies, which could misuse the information or get hacked. And those who don’t have government-issued identification — undocumented immigrants, for example — might be unable to access social media at all. Additionally, the parental consent requirement violates kids’ rights to speak and receive information as well as adults’ right to hear what they have to say. Courts have struck down past government attempts to “protect the children” from all kinds of “dangerous” new communication technologies, from drive-in movies to video games, for these reasons.

American Civil Liberties Union

NetChoice v. Griffin | American Civil Liberties Union

Arkansas’s so-called “Social Media Safety Act” requires users to verify their ages before using social media.

The ACLU consistently fights against laws that purport to protect kids, but ultimately censor and chill speech. After the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) made it a crime to engage in “indecent” or “patently offensive” speech online if the speech could be viewed by a minor, we filed what would become a seminal case on First Amendment rights in the digital age: Reno v. ACLU. We argued, and the Supreme Court ultimately held, that the First Amendment applies with full force online, and the risk that minors will see indecent communications doesn’t justify censoring the internet when alternatives that restrict less speech are available.

The same is true for parental consent requirements. In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited the sale or rental of violent video games to minors — but allowed adults to purchase games for minors — on First Amendment grounds. The court explained that the law was not simply enforcing parental authority over what their kids could access; it was imposing what the government thought parents ought to want their kids to see.

Of course, some parents (and some minors) might decide that the negative consequences of social media use outweigh the benefits. They might choose to impose limitations on their children’s — and their own — social media use. For example, they might forbid their children from using social media until they reach a certain age or level of digital literacy, impose time limits, or leave all devices in a separate room before bed. But those decisions are not for the government to make.

We urge the Western District of Arkansas to protect adults’ and kids’ right to access social media. We all have the right to speak and read about everything from upcoming protests to violin tips to challenging Arkansas’ law.

A religious school can’t be a public school, and a public school can’t be religious. These fundamental legal tenets have long protected both the integrity of our public-education system, which serves all students, and the right of private religious schools to indoctrinate students in accordance with a particular faith. In approving a Catholic public charter school, however, Oklahoma officials are not just blurring these lines separating church and state; they’re attempting to completely eviscerate them. We’re suing to put a stop to it.

American Civil Liberties Union

OKPLAC, Inc. v. Statewide Virtual Charter School Board | American Civil Liberties Union

The ACLU and partners are working with plaintiffs to fight against the sponsoring and funding of the nation’s first religious public charter school.

Oklahoma’s public-school system includes both brick-and-mortar and virtual charter schools. State statutory provisions and the state constitution require these schools and all other public schools to remain open to all students — regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, religion, LGBTQ status, disability, or any other characteristic — and to teach a non-religious curriculum. St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School will do neither. Nevertheless, in June, the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, which authorizes and sponsors online charter schools, approved St. Isidore’s application, setting the school up to receive taxpayer funds and operate as a government entity.

In its application, St. Isidore asserts that it will be managed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and will participate “in the evangelizing mission of the Church.” To that end, the school’s application makes clear that it will discriminate in admissions and student discipline, as necessary to satisfy the Catholic Church’s religious beliefs. This means that students could be denied admission or punished based on their religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other failures to comply with Catholic doctrine. St. Isidore even refused to certify that it will not discriminate against students with disabilities if accommodating a student would violate Catholic beliefs. The school also plans to discriminate in employment.

Not surprisingly, St. Isidore’s curriculum will be thoroughly religious, as “the School fully embraces the teachings of the Catholic Church” and will incorporate these teachings “into every aspect of the School,” including all subjects taught and all activities offered. The school aims to ensure all students know and believe that:

• “among all creatures, the human person is the only one created in God’s image with the ability to know and love God, and that God created persons male and female”;
• “because of sin humanity was separated from God, but in God’s love He has provided a path to salvation through the saving power of Christ, the second person of the Trinity, in His suffering, death and resurrection”; and
• “human persons are destined for eternal life with the Holy Trinity but that in freedom, an individual may reject God’s invitation and by this definitive self-exclusion end up in hell.”

A private religious school is, of course, well within its rights to teach these lessons. And churches are free to inculcate these beliefs in Sunday school. But they are wildly unconstitutional in public schools. Indeed, the mere notion of a religious public school is a constitutional oxymoron. This would be true for any proposed religious charter school — whether imposing Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or any other faith on students. Government institutions cannot be religious entities, and that is what St. Isidore is. Even Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general has said that approving St. Isidore as a charter school is unlawful and has vowed to fight it.

Allowing St. Isidore to operate as planned would transform Oklahoma’s public schools into tools of discrimination and religious indoctrination. And, as the first religious public school in the nation, it could inspire copycats in other states, with grave consequences. It would threaten to severely undermine public education, a cornerstone of our democracy, while infringing the religious freedom of students, families, and taxpayers.

Our lawsuit, filed today in Oklahoma state court with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Education Law Center, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, takes a stand against the insidious efforts to co-opt public schools for private, religious interests. We represent Oklahoma faith leaders, parents, and public-education advocates who have had enough. Public schools are not Sunday schools, and we and our allies will fight to keep it that way.