News & Commentary

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.

Four years after the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Americans are grappling with issues of race and disparity on the frankest terms since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

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

There's a lot at stake in this election. Besides electing our future leaders, Floridians will vote on statewide initiatives that will strongly impact your civil liberties and civil rights. While the American Civil Liberties Union is nonpartisan and does not endorse candidates, we do weigh in on ballot measures that affect our civil rights and civil liberties.

By voting “YES” on amendment 2, you’re putting healthcare decisions back into physician’s hands. Our legislators have recognized that marijuana can be used as medicine by passing Charlotte’s Web Law and the Right to Try Act, but those laws are not enough.

Most of the people reading this will do so from the comfort of a place they call home. At home, you have a comfortable place to sleep and privacy when you use the bathroom. You call for law enforcement officers when you need assistance and you don’t fear their sight.

People with homes are unlikely to experience discrimination based upon their economic status. Nor do people with homes worry about being exiled from their community.
Life is much different for people without homes. Homelessness can arise from a variety of circumstances but is almost always related to lack of money and affordable housing.

Citizens experiencing homelessness are among our most vulnerable. Living in the streets, exposed to the elements, finding a place to sleep in peace and attending to other normal bodily functions make for a difficult existence.

When these challenges are accompanied by the threat of arrest and prosecution for doing what we all must, then one may also experience fear and despair, or worse.

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.