News & Commentary

ACLU of Florida's Field Coordinator Nikki Fisher is attending the 50th Anniversary March on Washington. She will be blogging her experiences for ACLUFL.org

The original March on Washington took place over two decades before I was born. When I was a kid in school first hearing about it, it seemed as far away from me as did stories about the Civil War or the founding fathers or anything else I read about in a history books. But as I grew older and learned more about the march, more about what the people involved were fighting for, and more about the world, it became less of a mythic part of some distant history and more relevant to me.

Note: This blog post originally appeared on the National ACLU Blog of Rights. That post can be found here.
By Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project

(Update: John Ferguson was executed at 6:17 PM E.T. on Monday, August 5th)

Unless the United States Supreme Court intervenes in the next few days, Florida will execute John Ferguson on August 5, despite a well-documented history of his psychosis spanning over 40 years.

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By Mariel Graeber, ACLU of Florida Legal Intern.Public education “provides the basic tools by which individuals might lead economically productive lives to the benefit of us all.” That’s according to Plyler v. Doe, a 1981 Supreme Court decision holding that undocumented children cannot be stopped from attending public school based on their immigration status. The idea that allowing as many students as possible to enroll in school would benefit our entire community seems simple. But unfortunately, school administrators haven’t followed through.

The following is adapted from the remarks by ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which held its second hearing on June 28, 2013 in Miami.

The President’s charge to the Commission on Election Administration is an opportunity for a non-partisan conversation about how to promote the efficient administration of elections, provide better access to the polls for all voters, and shorten the lines at polling places. This Commission can provide “best practices” on these matters to state lawmakers and those charged with the administration of elections. Too often the rights of voters are lost in a tug of war between the major political parties jousting for perceived partisan advantage by manipulating election laws.

The United States House of Representatives has just passed a bill, HR 1797, which would ban women from obtaining abortion care starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy. It is the latest in wave of ever-more extreme legislation attempting to restrict a woman’s right to make her own decision about whether or not to continue a pregnancy.

On Monday, I had the honor and privilege of standing with Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Planned Parenthood of South Florida, Mi Lola, NCJW, and a health care provider at the Planned Parenthood Pembroke Pines Health Care Center in speaking out against HR 1797. Here was my statement:

Note: This blog post originally appeared on the National ACLU Blog of Rights. That post can be found here.

By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project

Last week down in Florida, 14-year-old Tremaine McMillian was playing in the water with a friend at the beach when a Miami-Dade police officer approached him to ask what he was doing, misinterpreting their play for a fight. Tremaine walked away from the officers, carrying his new puppy in his arms. After observing his allegedly "dehumanizing stares" and clenched fists, the officer used his ATV to chase Tremaine down and throw him to the ground in a chokehold so intense that the teenager wet himself during the incident. It was his mother who caught part of the incident on camera.

By Kiera Wilmot

After model student Kiera Wilmot (pictured, left, with her twin sister Kayla) was arrested and removed from her high school for doing a science experiment on school property, hundreds of thousands of people across the country signed petitions asking for charges to be dropped and for her to be reinstated in school. Kiera's school's zero-tolerance approach, like so many schools across the country requires severe discipline and does not improve student behavior or improve our schools. It just pushes kids out of school, harming their futures and perpetuating the school-to-prison pipeline. Below, Kiera blogs for ACLU.org about how she and her family have been affected by the school-to-prison pipeline.