News & Commentary

A case out of Montana could result in the church-state separation being stripped to the bone.

The decision ignores our constitutional commitment to official religious neutrality.

Despite the historic judicial defeat for civil rights in Trump v. Hawaii, the fight against the Muslim ban continues. Floridians should mobilize again to tell their representatives in Congress to rescind the Muslim ban.

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

By Rebecca Guterman, ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief

Since the devastating attacks in Paris and the mass shooting in San Bernardino, the United States has seen a spike in hate crimes against Muslims, efforts by governors in 30 states to bar the resettlement of Syrian refugees, and dangerous escalation in anti-Muslim rhetoric from presidential contenders.

In an effort to stem the tide of religious intolerance, a variety of civil liberties and faith-based organizations have launched a new campaign, “Know Your Neighbor,” to promote interfaith understanding and protect basic religious freedoms. Last Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union joined a diverse collection of advocates at the White House, including the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the Center for Inquiry, the Hindu American Seva Societies, Muslim Advocates, the National Council of Churches, the Sikh Coalition, and others to help build knowledge and tolerance in this time of increasing divisiveness about religious liberty – a value we believe is at the heart of the American experience.

This year, the ACLU of Florida is celebrating its 50th anniversary. That’s half a century of defending the rights and freedoms of Floridians.

This timeline examines some of the most significant cases and historic moments in the history of the organization:

1965 – Founding: In response to the anti-Communist scare of the era, ACLU chapters in Miami, Gainesville and Tampa join together to form the ACLU of Florida. As described in the original 1965 charter, the organization’s mission will be “To uphold the guarantees of freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion, and thought, as provided in the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and to uphold the Florida State Constitution and Declaration of Rights; to uphold due process of law and equal protection under the law as provided by the Constitution; to encourage an appreciation of our basic liberties; to perpetuate, through a program of education and positive action, respect and devotion for freedom and liberty.”

By Anthony Siegrist

My name is Anthony. I’m 16 and I live in Clearwater, Florida with my moms and three siblings. I was adopted by my parents when I was 13 years old after having spent four years in foster care.

I heard about the bill that the Florida legislature is now considering that would allow child placing agencies—including those who work with children in the foster care system—to refuse to place children with families if the agencies have religious objections to those families, regardless of the needs of the child.

This bill could have prevented me from having the family I have today had it been in effect when I needed a family.