News & Commentary

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project

Rick Scott, the Governor of Florida, signed legislation earlier this week that would provide professional development for teachers in "single-gender" classrooms.

This may sound innocuous — Who doesn't want better-trained teachers?

But the truth is that this is actually code for training teachers in the discredited philosophy that boys and girls are so fundamentally different that they need to be taught using radically different methods — methods that sound an awful lot like good old-fashioned sex stereotypes.

Here are a few examples of the type of "training" we're talking about, plucked from a complaint filed on Tuesday by the ACLU and the ACLU of Florida against the state's second-largest school district:

By Carmel Ferrer

Like nearly half of children with autism spectrum disorder, Krystin Polk regularly attempts to wander from supervised, safe places such as her home or school.

The 13-year-old is enrolled at the Magnolia School for special education students in DeSoto County, Miss. Enrollment is contingent upon having an Individualized Educational Program (IEP), which federal law requires for all special education students.

After Krystin ran away from the school twice in one day, Magnolia staff enlisted school resource officer (SRO) Robert "Scooter" Rayborn to help locate her. Before the day was over, Krystin would be in handcuffs.

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By Ramya Sekaran
ACLU Women's Rights Project

Imagine you endure abuse in your own home, and are finally able to flee. You want to keep your children safe, and you are ready to start a new life. But your abuser continues to stalk you. You finally find a safe and affordable place to live.

But just as you are about to finalize the paperwork, you are asked to disclose information about your children that could put all of you at risk of being found by your abuser. You are told that without that information, you cannot rent the apartment.

In December 2010, this is exactly what happened to Hope, a survivor of domestic violence, who was denied housing by a property management company because she refused to provide the Social Security numbers of her minor children for safety reasons. Hope shared her experience in an earlier post.

By Nathan Freed Wessler
Staff Attorney, ACLU National Speech, Privacy & Technology Project

The City of Sunrise, Florida, tried to take a page from the CIA’s anti-transparency playbook last week when it responded to an ACLU public recordsrequest about its use of powerful cell phone location tracking gear by refusing to confirm or deny the existence of any relevant documents. And the state police are trying to get in on the act as well. We have written about the federal government’s abuse of this tactic—called a “Glomar” response—before, but local law enforcement’s adoption of the ploy reaches a new level of absurdity. In this case, the response is not only a violation of Florida law, but is also fatally undermined by records the Sunrise Police Department has already posted online.

A few weeks ago, the ACLU sent public records requests to 36 state and local Florida law enforcement agencies seeking information about their use of “cell site simulator” surveillance devices known as “Stingrays.” We were partly motivated by the discovery that the Tallahassee Police Department had argued in court to permanently seal court records discussing its Stingray use, apparently in deference to a nondisclosure agreement with the device’s manufacturer. That’s pretty offensive, but at least the new Tallahassee police chief has promised to investigate his department’s practices. The City of Sunrise’s position might be even more galling.

By Tanya Greene,
Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU National

Angela Corey is certainly making a name for herself. Not only has she worked to send more people to death row than any other state’s attorney in the Sunshine State, but she leads the pack nationally as well.

We’re all used to hearing stories about the madness that passes for criminal justice in Florida. Headlines like “Florida Man Wanted for Peeing on Gators Fans” are so funny they have their own dedicated Twitter feed. Much less hilariously,Marissa Alexander, a Black domestic violence survivor, was sentenced to 20 years for shooting a gun to scare off her abusive husband, hurting no one. (Corey—of George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn fame, it should be known—was also responsible for prosecuting Alexander, and is now seeking a 60-year sentence in the new trial.)