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You’ve got to admire the Florida Legislature for its creativity in inventing ways to circumvent democracy and minimize the power of the people’s vote. Voters should not be fooled by the Legislature’s latest con – proposed constitutional Amendment #3. It is a pernicious proposal “requiring” that a lame-duck Governor, rather than the newly-elected Governor, fill judicial vacancies. It should be soundly defeated.

By Nate Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology ProjectIn a tremendous step forward for our right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has held in United States v. Quartavious Davis that police need a warrant to obtain historical cell phone location information from a cell service provider. The ACLU filed an amicus brief in the case, along with the ACLU of Florida, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy & Technology, and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In April, I argued the cell phone tracking issue before a three-judge panel of the court.This ruling is the first time a federal appeals court has held that the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant when police seek cell phone location records from carriers. As the court concluded: “In short, we hold that cell site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy. The obtaining of that data without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation.”

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU Racial Justice Program This post originally appeared on ACLU National's Blog of Rights The tragic killing of college-bound teenager Michael Brown has raised questions about the frequency with which police kill unarmed black men in America. The answer, unfortunately, is far too often. Just three months ago, on a warm April afternoon, a white police officer shot and killed Dontre Hamilton, a 31-year-old black man, in downtown Milwaukee's Red Arrow Park. According to the Milwaukee police chief, the officer was "defending himself in a violent situation." But the eyewitness report of a Starbucks barista paints a very different picture. According to the barista, Hamilton had been sleeping on the concrete sidewalk next to Starbucks when two police officers approached him, asked him questions, and left after determining that he was doing nothing wrong. But an hour or so later, she heard yelling. Looking out the Starbucks window, she saw a different white police officer standing up against Hamilton, "who was holding the officer's own baton in a defense posture." The officer "lunged" at Hamilton in an attempt to get the baton, but failed.