News & Commentary

Actor Jussie Smollett did not deserve the mistreatment he said he experienced in Chicago in January, nor should anyone face mortal threat for living on their own terms.

A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday issued the most affirming judicial opinion about transgender people I’ve ever read.

In recent years, the number of transgender and nonbinary people murdered has hit record highs. This year, the alarming trend is expected to continue.

The 2016 election is over, but the rhetoric and acts of hate targeted at specific groups following Election Day has left many of us feeling at risk.

In the ten days following Election Day, the Southern Poverty Law Center tallied more than 900 hate incidents across the country – many targeting Black people, immigrants, Muslims, and Jewish people.

We want to make sure that you know your rights and have access to the resources you need. Please check out these resources below to get information from the ACLU about what to do if your rights are violated.

Like many Americans, last Tuesday I found myself first in shock – but then fear for our country and for the civil liberties values we cherish.

This was because of how the campaign of President-elect Donald Trump stoked racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic fears, promising polices that, if enacted, would be an unprecedented all-out attack on the rights of Americans.

The day after the election, the ACLU of Florida staff met first to come to terms with our collective shock at the civil liberties challenges we are now surely facing, then to immediately begin planning how we will deploy our resources and the tens of thousands of ACLU members in Florida to respond to them.

We are now preparing to fulfill the role the ACLU has always played since it was established in 1920: standing up against and challenging any government abuses of rights and liberties.

People understand this about the ACLU. That is why, in the week since the election, the ACLU has received an unprecedented outpouring of support. We are now hard at work putting that support to work.

This morning, Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States, and the ACLU has a message for him.

President-elect Trump, as you assume the nation’s highest office, we urge you to reconsider and change course on certain campaign promises you have made. These include your plan to amass a deportation force to remove 11 million undocumented immigrants; ban the entry of Muslims into our country and aggressively surveil them; punish women for accessing abortion; reauthorize waterboarding and other forms of torture; and change our nation’s libel laws and restrict freedom of expression.

IT'S TIME TO FIGHT

This is a guest blog post by Reiyn Keohane, ACLU of Florida client. Reiyn is a transgender woman currently being denied hormone therapy and other treatment for gender dysphoria in a Florida prison. We have filed a lawsuit on her behalf to restore her medically necessary treatment. She wrote the below letter to let the world know about her experiences as a transgender woman being denied care in a Florida prison.

In the years I have been incarcerated, I have been made to endure more cruelty by the State of Florida than I ever imagined the government could commit. I am a transgender woman—but to the classification officers there is no such thing. If they say you’re male, you go to men’s prison, where you will be forced to “act like a man” under threat of being locked up in solitary, beaten, and humiliated. I have suffered through it all.

I have been forced to strip with men, and been slapped and hit for telling the officers in charge of the search that the rules say I must be searched separately. I have been handcuffed, thrown to the ground, and held down so officers could shave my head. I have been called a punk, a sissy, and a faggot; I have been beaten while handcuffed for asking to see mental health professionals.

Sunday afternoon, as the shocking details of the shooting at gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando trickled in and the totality of the horror was becoming clear, I had a strange realization: I’ve been to that bar.As a gay man, I want to let straight folks in on a little secret: For many of us, when we’re traveling out of town, the first thing we do after setting down our bags in the hotel room is open up Yelp and find the nearest gay bar. Sure, grabbing a beer at the hotel bar might be easier. But whatever strange town you’re in, a gay bar is an extension of home.By "home," I don’t mean where you’re from, I mean someplace where you are welcome, where you can relax, where you are instantly understood without saying a word.

Catherine Merchant, a transgender woman from the Panhandle, was denied a name change by a state judge. Three years later, with the help of the ACLU of Florida, she won in her fight to have her legal name reflect who she is. This is her story in her own words:

A name is a very special thing, just a set of words that refer to you more personally than anything else, but I imagine most people go through their whole lives without ever giving their name any real thought. For most, it just isn't something to be concerned about one way or the other.Your name is used hundreds of times, every single day, everywhere you go. It is one of those things you just absorb into your being, one more fact about you.

But what if you found out your name isn't really yours? What if every time someone used your name, it simply felt wrong, like people were consistently confusing you with someone else? Or even worse, like they were denying you your true identity?