Kate Ruane

Kate Ruane is a Senior Legislative Counsel at ACLU.
Articles by this author
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Views Wednesday, July 24, 2019 With the Right to Boycott Under Attack, Some Members of Congress Are Pushing Back More than 250 million Americans , some 78 percent of the population, live in states with anti-boycott laws or policies. With the right to boycott under attack across the United States, some members of Congress are pushing back against these dangerous and unrelenting attacks. Last week,... Read more |
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Views Friday, May 10, 2019 Congress, Laws Suppressing Boycotts of Israel Are Unconstitutional. Sincerely, Three Federal Courts. Congress just got yet another reminder that the First Amendment right to political boycotts is alive and well in the United States, and any legislative attempt to infringe on that right puts them squarely against the Constitution. Last week a federal district court in Texas blocked as... Read more |
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Views Thursday, January 10, 2019 Marco Rubio and His Colleagues Need a Refresher on the First Amendment This week, amid a partial government shutdown, senators tried to sneak through a bill that would encourage states to suppress constitutionally protected political boycotts of Israel. Ultimately, the Combating BDS Act failed to make it to the Senate floor, largely because enough people exercised... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, January 08, 2019 Instead of Ending the Shutdown, Senators Plan to Encourage Punishment of Israel Boycotts In the middle of a government shutdown, the Senate leadership’s first order of business in the 116th Congress is not legislation to reopen the government. Instead, and incredibly, the Senate is again trying to slip a measure intended to suppress protected political expression past public scrutiny... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 11, 2018 Congress Is Trying to Use the Spending Bill to Criminalize Boycotts of Israel and Other Countries According to recent reports , congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle are planning to sneak a bill criminalizing politically motivated boycotts of Israel into the end-of-the-year omnibus spending bill. The bill’s original sponsor, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), is pushing Democratic leadership... Read more |