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 Davin Rosborough, Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project who is on the litigation team for the case.

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 measure was only just recently added to the ballot after 750,000 people signed a petition to ensure that Michiganders would have a choice to protect abortion access in their state Constitution.

To protect abortion access in a post-Roe reality, we need to pursue every avenue possible, including at the ballot box. Today, we’re speaking with Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom who led the ballot measure to a sweeping victory for reproductive rights. And, also, Connie Kross, a retiree-turned-repro-rights-champion who volunteers for Reproductive Freedom For All, the ballot measure campaign in Michigan. These two have rolled up their sleeves and recruited their friends, family and neighbors to do the same. They are not turning back. And neither are we.

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 codes are tricky and they can be ripe venues for the discrimination and censorship of young people.

In this episode we will hear from Kayla, a track athlete originally from Albany High School who found herself and her teammates suspended for their dress code violation. We’ll also chat with Linda Morris, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project who will break down why we got involved.

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, and nearly 20 states across the country have passed these kinds of laws.

Florida’s law, we argue, violates the First and 14th Amendments by imposing viewpoint-based restrictions on educators and students that are both vague and discriminatory. Additionally, the laws violates the Equal Protection Clause because it was enacted with the intent to discriminate against Black educators and students. Today we’re digging in and speaking with two of our clients who are impacted by this law as well as one of the ACLU’s lead attorneys on the case.

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 American economy but enslaved people nor their descendants have ever seen the economic benefit from their labor. In fact, Black Americans have systematically been denied opportunities to build and accumulate wealth since the country’s founding.Advocates of reparations argue this is one of the most effective ways to decrease the racialized wealth gap.

Joining us today Tammerlin Drummond, a communications strategist at the ACLU of Northern California and Brandon Greene, director of the racial and economic justice program at the ACLU of Northern California, Brandon Greene. Tammerlin is also the host of Gold Chains, a podcast that explores California’s ties to slavery, and Brandon worked with the California Reparations Task Force, helping build the interim report.

To learn more about the Gold Chains project, visit: https://www.aclunc.org/sites/goldchains/index.html

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, they aren’t played by someone with a disability. In fact, one study found that in the top 10 TV shows for 2018 only 12% of disabled characters were played by disabled actors. In contrast, around 133 million Americans live with visible or invisible disabilities — that’s 40% of the public.

To put it plainly, there’s A LOT of room for improvement. Enter Ali Stroker, a singer and actress phenom who became both the first person using a wheelchair to perform on Broadway and the first person using a wheelchair to win a Tony award. Ali, in many ways, has put disability on the media map, landing roles in film, television, theater and even writing a children’s book. She joins us on At Liberty to discuss the importance of the representation and celebration of disability in the entertainment industry and beyond.

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 the medication, leaving the patient without the medication for her procedure. This is one of the ways Roe’s overturn has already impacted access to other kinds of reproductive care. We worry this will not only continue but get worse.

Today we are going to dig into the new landscape of reproductive healthcare in a post-Roe world by talking with two physicians who have dedicated their lives to helping people who can get pregnant navigate their vast pool of healthcare needs. From deciding how to prevent pregnancy and how to manage harmful periods to how to recover from a miscarriage and how to deal with infertility, these doctors know better than most, and certainly better than the Supreme Court, that the full spectrum of reproductive care is of vital importance to the lives of millions of Americans.

Joining us today are Dr. Colleen Denny, the Medical Director of Women's Health Services at Bellevue Hospital in NYC and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the NYU School of Medicine who provides OB-GYN care that includes abortion, and Dr. Lucky Sekhon, a double board-certified OB-GYN and Reproductive Endocrinologist & Infertility Specialist at RMA of New York, a fertility clinic. She is an assistant clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

To donate to support our fight against the attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow. Please visit aclu.org/keepfighting. To get involved in our people power effort to protect abortion access, please visit aclu.org/abortionactivist.

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.

When people don’t have trust in their government or its institutions, when our electoral system is riddled with fractures, it can be hard to mount meaningful change. One of our most powerful mechanisms of change is voting. So... we’re at an impasse, and we’re going to acknowledge that today and explore ways to surmount the challenges ahead of us.

Joining us to discuss is the ACLU’s Executive Director, Anthony Romero. Anthony has been at the helm of the organization since 2001 and has seen our work through a number of inflection points. He knows, better than most, that progress is possible, even after major setbacks.

RSVP to the ACLU’s Abortion Activist Training: www.ACLU.org/abortionactivist

To donate to support our fight against the attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow, please visit: https://www.aclu.org/keepfighting

To get involved in our people power effort to protect abortion access, please visit: https://aclu.org/abortion-pledge

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 counsel for the ACLU, about all the different avenues we, as individuals, can explore when trying to plug in and do something to help. We know it’s confusing. There’s a lot of information out there. It’s also so easy to feel dejected and disempowered. It’s understandable to feel like our efforts won’t matter when there is so much we are up against, but we need you in this fight. So today we’re going to walk through the different avenues you can use to fight back whether that’s through voting, donating, volunteering, or just talking with your loved ones. You’re going to want to share this episode with your people.

RSVP to the ACLU's Abortion Activist Training:  www.ACLU.org/abortionactivist

Other organizations mentioned in this episode: 

https://keepourclinics.org/

https://www.ifwhenhow.org/

More resources listed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRqbxh96ynlqdYUInUZB5GWrE2GIcW3FEXdtxO_n2BXMAd2HOkNssn3aP77zSXBN43TIJ3Xab2ih9vE/pub?s=04&fbclid=IwAR0OJetoWqvi9lKb-N-OYEuACRuCCOC7WpCZVyIo-Sv47mHVlHB5R9VcSbk

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, a draft opinion for the case was leaked in May, revealing the intent to overturn the right to access an abortion in the U.S. but I’m not sure anything could truly prepare us for the reality we are now facing. So much is at stake.

Joining us to help us break down the decision and discuss what we all can do in response are Jen Dalven, Director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, Ria Tabacco Mar, Director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, and Louise Melling, Deputy Legal Director and Director of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty at the ACLU.

To donate to support our fight against this attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow, please visit aclu.org/keepfighting. To join our new abortion activist training RSVP at aclu.org/AbortionActivist.