Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, is the largest maximum-security adult prison in the US. Angola is the perfect symbol for the criminal legal system’s ongoing legacy of racism. It’s transformed from a slave plantation to a camp for mostly Black laborers exploited by convict leasing, all before becoming a prison. For over a century, Angola has been a site of human rights abuses, which continue to this day. This fall, a new chapter of horror began on its grounds: the deten...
Jan 26, 2023•31 min
January 22nd marks the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that codified the right to an abortion. But this year on January 22nd, we’ll largely remember this anniversary as the one that wasn’t. For 49 years, Roe helped to allow people who could become pregnant decide what was best for them and their families, but on June 24th, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Since then, bans on abortion have taken effect in 13 st...
Jan 19, 2023•36 min
Last year, the LGBTQ community faced an onslaught of scrutiny and threats, from bills banning trans youth from participating in sports, to bans on gender-affirming care for trans youth. Towards the end of the year, another front for legislative and violent attacks emerged: drag shows. As drag reality competitions and drag brunches become increasingly popular, backlash in the form of armed protests and intimidation of drag performers has followed. In November, an Oklahoma bakeshop had a molotov c...
Jan 12, 2023•32 min
Happy New Year. It's so good to be back with you. Often on At Liberty, we detail what is happening in the field of civil rights and public interest law, from an issue perspective. This week we're doing something a little different. We're highlighting the people behind that work, specifically the contributions of women and non-binary people to the movement of resistance law. Women weren't always allowed to be lawyers. In fact, in 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court said that women had no constitutional ...
Jan 05, 2023•37 min
For this special holiday episode, we handed the reins over to the ACLU kids. Together, with their adults, they talk about what we do to fight for civil rights and civil liberties. You’ll hear from our ACLU family all across the country and they have some pretty interesting insights to share. We hope you enjoy!
Dec 21, 2022•18 min
As we near the end of the year, we are bringing you an episode of reflection. A lot has happened in the world, in our country and in our work at the ACLU. While we have weathered devastating losses like the overturn of Roe v. Wade this past summer, there are still meaningful victories we can celebrate this year and build on in the coming year. We’ve successfully fought back in courts all across the country on behalf of abortion access, racist and homophobic education gag orders, immigrant rights...
Dec 15, 2022•37 min
In August of this year, President Biden followed through on a campaign promise to help debt-drowning college students pay off their loans. He announced a loan forgiveness program acknowledging that the total cost of both four-year public and private college has nearly tripled over the last 40 years…and that’s after accounting for inflation. A variety of court cases have been brought against Biden’s plan blocking the U.S. Department of Education from moving forward. Just last week, the Supreme Co...
Dec 08, 2022•32 min
When Ice-T and his band, Body Count, released the song “Cop Killer” in 1992, it spurred outrage. At the time, Bill Clinton and George Bush were running for president, and condemning “Cop Killer” was among the handful of stances where they found common ground. Officials and police departments called for a complete boycott of Time Warner Inc. for refusing to halt the sales of the song. In response, Time Warner publicly stated its unshakable commitment to stand by freedom of expression and argued t...
Dec 01, 2022•37 min
This week as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, we want to challenge our listeners to acknowledge and honor the day as a National Day of Mourning for indigenous people. The truth of this holiday isn’t that white people from Europe and the Wampanoag people in Plymouth, Massachusetts sat down to eat a nice meal together, celebrating a fall harvest. The true story of Thanksgiving is one of brutal genocide, theft of land, and the beginning of a relentless assault on native people and culture. Thi...
Nov 22, 2022•36 min
This week, we are re-airing a conversation we had with Alok Vaid-Menon in early June, before we had the final Dobbs decision. Alok’s work is always salient but with the recent midterm election results showing an overwhelming affirmation of reproductive access, we believe their call for transformative thinking around gender essentialism and bodily autonomy is a way both to celebrate the wins at the polls and drive us towards a more expansive and imaginative vision of what’s possible from here. Al...
Nov 17, 2022•53 min
This week, voters went to the polls to elect their representatives at every level of government. Most notably for us at the ACLU, the midterms are the first opportunity to get a national sense of where voters are sitting on abortion access since the June overturn of Roe v. Wade. We are also on guard watching for voting rights violations and are eager to make sure every ballot is counted. So far we are cautiously optimistic and hopeful about the positive progress for civil rights and civil libert...
Nov 10, 2022•33 min
The midterm elections are just around the corner. On Tuesday, November 8th, all across the country will vote for our representatives in Congress and in our state government. On the ballot, we have 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats, 27 secretary of state seats, and many more positions to vote for. We know that midterms can be hard to piece through. There's so much information. Down ballot races don't get a lot of airtime, and many states have important ballot initiatives to consider. The ACLU is a...
Nov 03, 2022•29 min
On November 9th, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Brackeen vs. Haaland. At the center of the case are the future of Indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty. The case involves the Indian Child Welfare Act, otherwise known as ICWA, an act that was passed in the 1970s to protect native children from removal from their community and culture and to keep families together. Texas, together with individual plaintiffs, allege that ICWA is unconstitutional because they say it vio...
Oct 27, 2022•33 min
The Supreme Court is set to hear a case this term that could upend the very foundation of our democracy: free and fair elections. In the case of Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court will decide whether the North Carolina Supreme Court has the power to strike down the legislature’s gerrymandered congressional map for violating the state’s Constitution. The North Carolina legislators are arguing for an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution — known as the "independent state legislature theory” — th...
Oct 20, 2022•29 min
It’s October, which means it’s LGBTQ History Month, a time to remember, look back and celebrate the history of LGBTQ activism and the resulting progress. It’s also a time to acknowledge the work still to be done and understand the roots of systemic discrimination and inequality. To that end, our fight continues. On October 17th, the ACLU is headed to District court in Arkansas to argue the case of Brandt v. Rutledge, where we are challenging Arkansas’s law banning health care for transgender ado...
Oct 13, 2022•37 min
If you live in a state where abortions have been banned since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, accessing abortion is a huge challenge. But unfortunately, access is not the only challenge -- pursuing an abortion without leaving a trace poses another huge hurdle. If you search for resources online, if you get in your car and travel, who you text, if you ship pills to your house -- will the state find out? In our daily lives, many of our actions are tracked for consumption and utilization by various co...
Oct 06, 2022•31 min
On October 4th, the Supreme Court is set to hear Milligan v. Merrill, a case that would undermine Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. At question is Alabama’s new congressional map, a map that underwent what is called racial gerrymandering or racial redistricting, diluting Black Alabamans’ voting power. The case’s outcome will determine the future of voting rights in America. Joining us today, our plaintiff in the case Shalela Dowdy, Organizer, Veteran, law student and resident of Mobile and Dav...
Sep 29, 2022•30 min
On August 2nd, voters in Kansas came out in droves to protect abortion access in the state through a ballot measure. It was the first opportunity for voters to cast their support for abortion access since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. For many, Kansas was proof in the pudding: Americans overwhelmingly support reproductive rights. This November, a slew of other states have ballot measures that will similarly allow the people to decide if abortion will be protected in their state. In Michigan, the ...
Sep 22, 2022•36 min
It’s back to school season! And, this week we are digging into the wild world of dress codes. Clothes, like most things, have the power we give them. Sometimes they are a way to craft or express identity and sometimes they are just pieces of fabric stitched together to help us get through our days. In school, certain kinds of clothes are given more power and more scrutiny than others. In school, certain kinds of clothes and style can get you in trouble. At the ACLU, we believe that school dress ...
Sep 15, 2022•32 min
It’s September and we’re back! Did you miss us? We missed you. So happy to be back and bringing you a very timely episode for the back to school season. In August, the ACLU along with partner organizations, filed a challenge to Florida's Stop W.O.K.E. Act, a censorship law which restricts educators and students from learning and talking about issues related to race and gender in the classroom. This isn’t the first law we’ve seen like this: education gag orders have been introduced in 40 states, ...
Sep 08, 2022•34 min
Last month, the California Reparations Task Force released an interim report detailing California’s history of slavery and its impact on the state. The task force was created in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Its goal is to examine what a reparations program in the state could look like. The idea of reparations for slavery itself is not new. It stems from the value of enslaved labor, which, in 1860, was estimated at over 3 billion dollars. This forced labor built the backbone of the Ame...
Jul 28, 2022•34 min
Today, we are bringing you a conversation celebrating Disability Pride Month, which is July. This conversation with actress and singer Ali Stroker was recorded last year, but we think it has the same resonance today. We talk to Ali about disability identity and representation in the media. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Roll the tape! Across the top 100 movies of 2019 only 2.3% of all speaking characters had a disability. What’s more, the rare times we do see a character with a disability, ...
Jul 21, 2022•36 min
It was a few days after the overturn of Roe v. Wade when a doctor in Louisiana prescribed a medication to make the insertion of an IUD, a form of birth control, less painful for a patient. The medication has several uses. One of them is to act as the second part of a two-drug protocol used to terminate a pregnancy. The pharmacy called the prescribing physician to ask if the prescription was for an abortion. When she told them it was for an IUD insertion, the pharmacist still refused to give out ...
Jul 14, 2022•35 min
It’s a precarious time for American democracy. This year, the Supreme Court term resulted in a number of concerning opinions that rollback civil rights and civil liberties across many facets of American life, most notably the decision in the Dobbs case that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. At the same time, the congressional hearings around the violent attack on the capitol on January 6, 2021, have revealed a dangerous and unabashed attempt to subvert our electoral system. Whe...
Jul 07, 2022•35 min
On Friday, June 24th, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and with it, the constitutional right to an abortion. In the immediate, we spoke with our legal experts Louise Melling, Jen Dalven and Ria Tabacco Mar, about the opinion and the legal concerns ahead. Check out that episode. It’s called Post Roe: The Supreme Court Won’t Stop at Abortion, and it’s worth a listen if you missed it. But today, we are doing something a little different. We are talking with Jessica Arons, senior policy coun...
Jun 30, 2022•27 min
In a landmark decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court has voted to overturn both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, eliminating a 50-year precedent and the constitutional right to an abortion. We expect half of the states across the country to ban abortion either immediately or in the coming days, weeks or months. Pregnant people in these states will now be forced to carry their pregnancies to term. This decision was expected in some ways...
Jun 24, 2022•33 min
Over the last few weeks, a surge of texts and phone calls have gone out from local politicians. Most of them focus on one issue: crime. Worried about the rising crime? Want to keep you and your family safe? Vote for me. I'll make sure to fund the police and get the riffraff off our streets, direct quote. Crime is being used as a wedge issue this midterm season, and candidates are stoking fears in hopes to mount a meaningful backlash to recent progress in both policing and criminal legal reform. ...
Jun 23, 2022•32 min
This week, we are bringing you an important conversation about the state of abortion care in Texas. In September, Texas passed SB8, a bill that banned abortions at 6 weeks of pregnancy and deputized private citizens to enforce the ban. Since then, it’s been an “all hands on deck” operation to provide care to those in Texas still eligible in-state, while also helping shuffle others to states still with broader access. We can look to Texas to see some of what a world post-Roe v. Wade could look li...
Jun 16, 2022•33 min
June 12th, 2022 marks the 55th anniversary of the landmark case Loving v. Virginia which made interracial marriage legal across the United States. We also know this day as Loving Day. This year, Loving Day has a bit of a weightier feel to it. In the recent Supreme Court leaked draft opinion on the Dobbs case, the legal reasoning that Justice Alito used to overturn Roe could be applied to undo Loving v. Virginia, signaling a new threat to interracial marriage as we know it. To those who say Lovin...
Jun 09, 2022•35 min
This year brings an unprecedented surge of anti-trans legislation banning everything from sports participation to healthcare access. So far, we’re tracking roughly 280 state bills that have been filed ahead of or during this legislative session. At the same time, the Supreme Court is on the precipice of delivering a final decision that will likely overturn Roe v. Wade, blocking people who can get pregnant from abortion care. These attacks are actually all part of the same movement, a movement ag...
Jun 02, 2022•53 min
