As soon as a week from today, the Biden administration could implement a policy that would force people to seek asylum and wait for an answer in Mexico, or another country they passed through, with limited exceptions. The proposed change is based off of a Trump-era policy that the ACLU fought in court, and which President Biden previously condemned. It also stands in direct violation of United States asylum laws and will lead people fleeing violence and persecution to face avoidable harm.

President Biden campaigned on promises to restore and strengthen the asylum process. Instead of re-committing the United States to its promise of upholding international humanitarian practices, his administration plans to replace the inhumane Title 42 policy enacted under the Trump administration with a similarly dangerous one, taken straight from the Trump administration's playbook.

Baine Bookey, legal director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, and Katrina Eiland, managing attorney for the ACLU’s Immigrants' Rights Project, join us today to unpack this rule, the harm it will cause thousands of people, and to explain what the asylum process should look like.

The ACLU is tracking 452 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S. this legislative session. Of those 452, 118 are anti-trans health care bills, and there’s a slew of trans athlete bans, public accommodations bans, drag bans, and education gag orders about gender identity, sexuality, and expression. We’re experiencing an unprecedented surge in attacks on trans people in particular, and trans kids most specifically. In Missouri, the attorney general announced new restrictions on trans healthcare that are the first of their kind, limiting care for both kids AND adults. The rule is currently scheduled to take effect Monday and while the ACLU of Missouri and their partners have filed a petition to seek a temporary restraining order to block implementation of the rule, we haven’t heard back yet. It’s still pending in court. So many attacks are being levied at once against trans people all across the country. It’s hard to keep up.

The speed and viciousness are at a level beyond what we’ve witnessed in our history. So today, we’re getting an update from Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s Deputy Director for Trans Justice with the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project, because losing track of what’s happening or losing energy in the fight against these attacks is not an option.

This 4/20, we want to talk about a tool that can be used to address the horrific consequences of the war on drugs: clemency.

Throughout U.S. history, presidents, and governors have had the power to grant clemency, either by pardoning people of their crimes or reducing their sentences. Clemency can be used as a check on the criminal legal system, which often imposes unjustifiably harsh sentences and disproportionately criminalizes Black and Brown people, disabled people, and poor people. As Americans grapple with the racism and punitive spirit that fueled mass incarceration, more and more advocates have called on chief executives to use their power to confront racial injustice and end imprisonment that is no longer just or justified.

Few issues highlight the importance of clemency more than the unequal treatment of drug convictions. Of the 1.9 million people who are currently incarcerated in the U.S.,191,000 are in jail or prison for drug related convictions. Today, many of these convictions would be erroneous, as many states adopt public health approaches to drug use and move towards legalizing marijuana in particular.

Today, we are going to look at the redemptive hope clemency can provide, both to people and the criminal legal system as a whole. We are joined by Kemba Smith, who received clemency in 2000 and has been a prominent criminal justice reform advocate ever since, and Cynthia Roseberry, Acting Director of the ACLU’s Justice Division and key leader on Clemency 2014, a historic initiative of more than 4,000 lawyers who represented over 36,000 clients as they went through the presidential clemency process.

On Friday, April 7th, the Tennessee state legislature voted to expel two out of the three state representatives, Representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, who protested on the chamber floor in the wake of a mass shooting that killed six people, including three nine-year-old children. Now, their expulsion was an unprecedented move, completely disregarding typical norms of democracy and also the will of voters. No Tennessee House member has ever been removed from elected office for simply violating decorum rules.

This week, both Representative Pearson and Jones were reinstated to their elected seats in the State House, but the damage has been done.

Here to unpack all that has happened in Tennessee this week. As Jeff Preptit, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Tennessee.

The U.S. is the only developed democracy that strips voting rights from its people on the basis of a criminal conviction. An estimated 4.6 million Americans across the country are barred from casting ballots. Now to give a sense of scope — this number is larger than the voting-eligible population of New Jersey. At the ACLU, we believe that when we suppress the voting rights of any group of people, our democracy weakens. In order to live up the full ideal of a constitutional democracy, everyone must be given the right and access to vote.

The good news is that many states are starting to agree with us. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen states slowly improve access to those formerly or currently incarcerated and all of these movements, are victories worthy of celebration.

That’s why today, we are taking a moment to recognize a big victory in Minnesota where the state passed the Restore the Vote bill just about a month ago, giving 55,000 Minnesotans the power to cast their vote in the next local, state, or federal election after they serve their time but before they finish their parole or probation. We are joined by Jennifer Schroeder, an advocate and plaintiff in an ACLU and ACLU of Minnesota lawsuit that challenged the previous voting restriction, and Julie Ebenstein, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, to discuss how this change has a meaningful positive impact on everyone.

This Friday, we celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility, an opportunity to celebrate the many contributions trans people have made to society as well as raise awareness for the work that needs to be done to achieve gender equality for all. 

We are currently witnessing a wave of anti-trans legislation across the country, but the criminalization of trans people is nothing new. For over 20 years, Louisiana’s Crime Against Nature by Solicitation law (or CANS for short) made offering certain sexual acts for money a felony, with penalties including up to 5 years in prison, hard labor, and mandatory registration on the sex offender database. These harsh penalties never applied to the state’s other anti-sex work laws, and were specifically designed to target queer people, especially Black trans women. Louisiana strengthened CANS in 1992 and by 2011, 40 percent of people on the New Orleans sex offender registry were convicted under CANS. Of that, 75 percent were women, and 79 percent were Black.

Our guests today have been fighting to make New Orleans a safer place for transgender and gender non-conforming people in the face of this pernicious law that targets and criminalizes them. In addition to building spaces for Black trans women to rest, learn, live and thrive, Wendi Cooper and Milan Nicole Sherry have dedicated their lives to repealing the law that once threatened their own lives.

A recent documentary, "CANS Can’t Stand," highlights Wendi, Milan, and others’ fight against CANS and efforts to build community for trans women in New Orleans and beyond. We are so excited to speak with them all about their tenacious activism and the experience of releasing “CANS Can't Stand” at a time of such backlash against LGBTQ rights and representation.

Keeping kids safe is one of our greatest responsibilities as adults. But what if the main tool we use to protect children is actually preventing everyone from getting the resources they need? Every state in the nation has mandatory reporting laws that require professions such as teachers, coaches, nurses, and more to report any suspected or observed instances of child abuse to the state. While this sounds logical, its application has effectively made a surveillance apparatus out of educators, health care, and social workers, which leaves the families most in need of help afraid to ask for it, at the risk of opening an investigation. 

 

The pitfalls of mandatory reporting are especially evident in Pennsylvania. In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed sweeping reforms expanding mandatory reporting and the definition of child abuse to include low-level neglectful circumstances that often arise from poverty. Since reforms were implemented in 2014, reports have skyrocketed, but recent studies have shown that this increase has not turned up any additional victims of child abuse but has rather over-stretched the system. Within the first five years of the reforms, one million calls were made to the state’s child abuse hotline. 800,000 regarded low-level neglect allegations stemming from poverty, and nine in ten were dismissed following traumatic housing searches and family questioning that disproportionately target Black and brown families. 


Here to help explain the mandatory reporting system and its consequences are Director of Client Voice at Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services, April Lee, who experienced firsthand how mandatory reporting can traumatize families, and Anjana Samant, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project

Today we are talking about one of the most revolutionary forces in America — teenage girls. Throughout history, teenage girls have consistently stood on the frontlines for change.

At 16, Sybil Ludington outran Paul Revere in warning American troops of the impending threat of the British. At 15, Barbara Johns staged a school boycott that helped initiate Brown v. Board of Education. At 19, Heather Tobis tried to help herself and other girls around her navigate a pre-Roe world by starting Jane — a clandestine network that connected young women with access to safe abortions.

Never heard of these girls? Yeah, neither had we. The achievements and contributions of girls and young women are often under-recorded and dismissed. A new book, "Young and Restless: the Girls who Sparked America’s Revolutions," by Mattie Kahn interrupts this cycle of erasure. Mattie brings to the forefront girls' and young women’s trail-blazing activism, from the labor movement of the late 19th century to the fight against climate change now.

Author, writer, and editor Mattie Kahn joins us today to talk about the revolutionary power of girls, the challenges they face, and how they rise up consistently to meet the moment.

It’s March, which means it’s Women’s History Month. This month, we’ll speak with women about their activism and resistance to fight for their rights and those around them. Today, we’re talking about the very sexy idea of constitutional interpretation. The Constitution, like any text, is open to interpretation. Where this gets hairy is when different judges, or justices, have vastly different methods of interpretation, typically based on their own bias, education, and lived experience. Where it gets even hairier is when women’s rights are on the line, and when one certain theory of constitutional interpretation is applied — one in which women aren’t even people in the eyes of the law.

It’s called originalism. Originalism dictates that present day readings of the Constitution should be dependent on the document’s “original public meaning,” meaning that we have to look back to the time of the Constitution’s writing and ratification to interpret its intent. The problem is that only certain people at that time had civil rights at all: white, land-owning men. While initially this was a fringe theory, originalism has grown to become a dominant legal framework, one followed by five of the nine justices on the Supreme Court. Many legal scholars are alarmed at its increased use because the stakes are so high.

In decisions across the country, originalism is being used to threaten the safety of women and bodily autonomy at large. As our guest Madiba K. Dennie wrote, “American law has not historically been good to women, and whatever progress there once was is now vulnerable to regression.”

Madiba K. Dennie, former counsel at the Brennan Center’s Democracy program, recently explored the consequences of using the Constitution in this way in an article for The Atlantic, “Originalism is going to get women killed.” She joins us today to discuss.

Housing is the bedrock of American society, and one of the major determinants for life outcomes like health, income, and educational opportunity. Because of its importance, housing has long been the site of discriminatory policies aimed at marginalizing Black and Brown people in America, be it through zoning, redlining, crime free housing ordinances, racial steering, and more.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 aimed to address this history and outlaw discrimination, but vague guidelines and weak enforcement mechanisms have left a lot unaddressed. In January, the Biden administration reinstated the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, which adds federal heft to the Fair Housing Act and mandates that localities submit plans for actively addressing segregation and proposes that cities and states that fail to meaningfully work towards their stated goal could face loss of funding.

Throughout her career in civil rights law, ACLU President Deborah Archer has studied housing discrimination and infrastructure. She’s the Associate Dean and Co-Director of Clinical and Advocacy Programs, Professor of Clinical Law, and Co-Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Inequality and the Law — all at the NYU School of Law. We’re excited to have her here today to give us a primer on housing discrimination and explain why it’s part of the ACLU’s push for equitable systems across so many facets of society.