September, 17 2008, 01:55pm EDT
ACLU Launches Constitution Voter Campaign To Restore Lost Liberties In '08
WASHINGTON
The
American Civil Liberties Union launched a new campaign asking Americans to
pledge to be Constitution Voters. The "I'm a Constitution Voter" campaign is a
nonpartisan initiative to encourage activists to let candidates - including
those running for president - know that the Constitution will be the first thing
on their minds when they step into the polling booth this November. In addition
to asking voters to sign a pledge to help make the Constitution a central issue
in this campaign season, ACLU affiliates from coast to coast are holding events
to commemorate Constitution Day and educate people about the rights and freedoms
the Constitution protects.
"The next president will have the
power to piece back together our Constitution after eight years in which it has
been torn apart. Whoever is elected president must act with energy and
conviction to restore our lost liberties, end torture and hold accountable those
who have broken the law," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the
ACLU. "By pledging to be a Constitution Voter, you can make sure that the next
president will be committed to restoring the Constitution and the fundamental
freedoms it protects. When we step into the ballot box this November, our
leaders need to know that we care about our liberty. We want the next president
to uphold the law - not try to subvert it."
The pledges will be delivered to
the presidential candidates. The pledge, to be signed by Constitution Voters,
includes the following statements:
- I believe that no one
- not even the president - is above the law. - I oppose all forms of
torture, and I support closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, shutting down the military
commissions, and ending indefinite detention. -
I oppose warrantless
spying. -
I believe that
government officials, no matter how high-ranking, should be held accountable for
breaking the law and violating the Constitution. -
I believe that the
Constitution protects every person's rights equally - no matter what they
believe, how they live, where or if they worship, and whom they love. I reject the notion
that we have to tolerate violations of our most fundamental rights in the name
of fighting terrorism.-
I am deeply committed
to the Constitution and expect our country's leaders to act on that commitment -
every day, without fail.
Day
One: Stop Torture, Close Guantanamo, End Extraordinary
Renditions
"The next president will have an
historic opportunity to restore the Constitution and the rule of law," said
Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office
"Every executive order issued by President Bush can be reversed by the executive
orders of our next president - with the stroke of a pen, on day one."
On his first day in office, the
next president should:
- Ban the use of torture by the
government, without exception. - Close the Guantanamo Bay prison, shut down the military
commissions and either try the detainees in criminal court or under the Uniform
Code of Military Justice. If they can't be tried in established American courts,
they should be sent to countries where they won't be tortured or held without
charge. - End the practice of extraordinary
rendition - kidnapping people and sending them to countries where they are
likely to be tortured.
The First
100 Days
"The first 100 days of any new
administration is crucial," said Fredrickson. "The new president needs to hit the
ground running."
The following are the things the
next president should do within his first 100 days in office:
End warrantless
spying Restore critical constitutional
checks and balances when our government wants to spy on
Americans.
Review watch
lists Order the government's watch lists
to be completely reviewed within three months, and the names on the lists be
limited to those who would do us harm.
Encourage the freedom of
information Rescind the "Ashcroft Doctrine,"
which encourages agencies to withhold records requested under the Freedom of
Information Act.
Stop monitoring of
activists Direct the attorney general and
other relevant agency heads to end government monitoring of political
activists.
Enforce civil rights
laws Order the Department of Justice's
Civil Rights Division to enforce civil rights laws.
Suspend Real ID
Act Direct the secretary of homeland
security to suspend the regulations for the Real ID Act pending a congressional
review.
Ban sexual orientation
discrimination Prohibit discrimination against
LGBT workers employed by the federal government.
Halt the death
penalty Implement a federal death penalty
moratorium until its inherent racial disparities are
addressed.
Monitor "faith-based
initiatives" Ensure that no one endures
religious discrimination when applying for a job or receiving services funded by
the government.
These changes will happen only if
we elect a president who is committed to restoring the Constitution and the rule
of law.
Go to www.aclu.org/constitutionvoter to sign
our pledge and let the candidates running for office know that in this election,
you are voting for the Constitution.
Visit www.aclu.org for more
information on Constitutional issues, to sign the pledge and to find organizing
resources and toolkits.
Visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh-SaU8DzoY for a new
ACLU video celebrating Constitution Day.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
Critics Blast 'Reckless and Impossible' Bid to Start Operating Mountain Valley Pipeline
"The time to build more dirty and dangerous pipelines is over," said one environmental campaigner.
Apr 23, 2024
Environmental defenders on Tuesday ripped the company behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline for asking the federal government—on Earth Day—for permission to start sending methane gas through the 303-mile conduit despite a worsening climate emergency caused largely by burning fossil fuels.
Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC sent a letter Monday to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Acting Secretary Debbie-Anne Reese seeking final permission to begin operation on the MVP next month, even while acknowledging that much of the Virginia portion of the pipeline route remains unfinished and developers have yet to fully comply with safety requirements.
"In a manner typical of its ongoing disrespect for the environment, Mountain Valley Pipeline marked Earth Day by asking FERC for authorization to place its dangerous, unnecessary pipeline into service in late May," said Jessica Sims, the Virginia field coordinator for Appalachian Voices.
"MVP brazenly asks for this authorization while simultaneously notifying FERC that the company has completed less than two-thirds of the project to final restoration and with the mere promise that it will notify the commission when it fully complies with the requirements of a consent decree it entered into with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last fall," she continued.
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Russell Chisholm, co-director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition—which called MVP's request "reckless and impossible"—said in a statement that "we are watching our worst nightmare unfold in real-time: The reckless MVP is barreling towards completion."
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Appalachian Voices noted that MVP's request comes days before pipeline developer Equitrans Midstream is set to release its 2024 first-quarter earnings information on April 30.
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On Monday, climate and environmental defenders also petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, challenging FERC's approval of the MVP's planned Southgate extension, contending that the project is so different from original plans that the government's previous assent is now irrelevant.
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David Sligh, conservation director at Wild Virginia, said: "Approving the Southgate project is irresponsible. This project will pose the same kinds of threats of damage to the environment and the people along its path as we have seen caused by the Mountain Valley Pipeline during the last six years."
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Others renewed warnings about the dangers MVP poses to wildlife.
"The endangered bats, fish, mussels, and plants in this boondoggle's path of destruction deserve to be protected from killing and habitat destruction by a project that never received proper approvals in the first place," Center for Biological Diversity attorney Perrin de Jong said. "Our organization will continue fighting this terrible idea to the bitter end."
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Apr 23, 2024
U.S. workers' rights advocates and groups celebrated on Tuesday after the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to approve a ban on most noncompete clauses, which Democratic FTC Chair Lina Khansaid "keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism."
"The FTC's final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market," Khan added, pointing to the commission's estimates that the policy could mean another $524 for the average worker, over 8,500 new startups, and 17,000 to 29,000 more patents each year.
As Economic Policy Institute (EPI) president Heidi Shierholz explained, "Noncompete agreements are employment provisions that ban workers at one company from working for, or starting, a competing business within a certain period of time after leaving a job."
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has suggested it plans to file a lawsuit that, as The American Prospectdetailed, "could more broadly threaten the rulemaking authority the FTC cited when proposing to ban noncompetes."
Already, the tax services and software provider Ryan has filed a legal challenge in federal court in Texas, arguing that the FTC is unconstitutionally structured.
Still, the Democratic commissioners' vote was still heralded as a "seismic win for workers." Echoing Khan's critiques of such noncompetes, Public Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert declared that such clauses "inflict devastating harms on tens of millions of workers across the economy."
"The pervasive use of noncompete clauses limits worker mobility, drives down wages, keeps Americans from pursuing entrepreneurial dreams and creating new businesses, causes more concentrated markets, and keeps workers stuck in unsafe or hostile workplaces," she said. "Noncompete clauses are both an unfair method of competition and aggressively harmful to regular people. The FTC was right to tackle this issue and to finalize this strong rule."
Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, praised the FTC for "listening to the comments of thousands of entrepreneurs and workers of all income levels across industries" and finalizing a rule that "is a clear-cut win."
Demand Progress' Emily Peterson-Cassin similarly commended the commission "for taking a strong stance against this egregious use of corporate power, thereby empowering workers to switch jobs and launch new ventures, and unlocking billions of dollars in worker earnings."
While such agreements are common across various industries, Teófilo Reyes, chief of staff at the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, said that "many restaurant workers have been stuck at their job, earning as low as $2.13 per hour, because of the noncompete clause that they agreed to have in their contract."
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Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) executive director Mike Pierce pointed out that the FTC on Tuesday "recognized the harmful role debt plays in the workplace, including the growing use of training repayment agreement provisions, or TRAPs, and took action to outlaw TRAPs and all other employer-driven debt that serve the same functions as noncompete agreements."
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at Open Markets Institute, highlighted that the addition came after his group, SBPC, and others submitted comments on the "significant gap" in the commission's initial January 2023 proposal, and also welcomed that "the final rule prohibits both conventional noncompete clauses and newfangled versions like TRAPs."
Jonathan Harris, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and SBPC senior fellow, said that "by also banning functional noncompetes, the rule stays one step ahead of employers who use 'stay-or-pay' contracts as workarounds to existing restrictions on traditional noncompetes. The FTC has decided to try to avoid a game of whack-a-mole with employers and their creative attorneys, which worker advocates will applaud."
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One plaintiffs' attorney said the ruling "makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society."
Apr 23, 2024
Democracy defenders on Tuesday hailed a ruling from a U.S. federal judge striking down a 19th-century North Carolina law criminalizing people who vote while on parole, probation, or post-release supervision due to a felony conviction.
In Monday's decision, U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs—an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama—sided with the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute and Action NC, who argued that the 1877 law discriminated against Black people.
"The challenged statute was enacted with discriminatory intent, has not been cleansed of its discriminatory taint, and continues to disproportionately impact Black voters," Biggs wrote in her 25-page ruling.
Therefore, according to the judge, the 1877 law violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.
"We are ecstatic that the court found in our favor and struck down this racially discriminatory law that has been arbitrarily enforced over time," Action NC executive director Pat McCoy said in a statement. "We will now be able to help more people become civically engaged without fear of prosecution for innocent mistakes. Democracy truly won today!"
Voting rights tracker Democracy Docket noted that Monday's ruling "does not have any bearing on North Carolina's strict felony disenfranchisement law, which denies the right to vote for those with felony convictions who remain on probation, parole, or a suspended sentence—often leaving individuals without voting rights for many years after release from incarceration."
However, Mitchell Brown, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, said that "Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to reengage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
"It also makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society, specifically Black voters who were the target of this law," Brown added.
North Carolina officials have not said whether they will appeal Biggs' ruling. The state Department of Justice said it was reviewing the decision.
According to Forward Justice—a nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. South, "Although Black people constitute 21% of the voting-age population in North Carolina, they represent 42% of the people disenfranchised while on probation, parole, or post-release supervision."
The group notes that in 44 North Carolina counties, "the disenfranchisement rate for Black people is more than three times the rate of the white population."
"Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to re-engage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
In what one civil rights leader called "the largest expansion of voting rights in this state since the 1965 Voting Rights Act," a three-judge state court panel voted 2-1 in 2021 to restore voting rights to approximately 55,000 formerly incarcerated felons. The decision made North Carolina the only Southern state to automatically restore former felons' voting rights.
Republican state legislators appealed that ruling to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which in 2022 granted their request for a stay—but only temporarily, as the court allowed a previous injunction against any felony disenfranchisement based on fees or fines to stand.
However, last April the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the three-judge panel decision, stripping voting rights from thousands of North Carolinians previously convicted of felonies. Dissenting Justice Anita Earls opined that "the majority's decision in this case will one day be repudiated on two grounds."
"First, because it seeks to justify the denial of a basic human right to citizens and thereby perpetuates a vestige of slavery, and second, because the majority violates a basic tenant of appellate review by ignoring the facts as found by the trial court and substituting its own," she wrote.
As similar battles play out in other states, Democratic U.S. lawmakers led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont in December introduced legislation to end former felon disenfranchisement in federal elections and guarantee incarcerated people the right to vote.
Currently, only Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia allow all incarcerated people to vote behind bars.
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