D.C. Attorney General Is Seeking Unnecessary and Unwise Expansion of His Powers -- ACLU Tells Council

ACLU Sues MPD Officer for Assaulting 10-Year-Old In School

The ACLU of the Nation’s Capital on April 11 filed a federal lawsuit against MPD Officer David E. Bailey, Jr., assigned to the Seventh District. The suit says the officer for no reason assaulted a 10-year-old boy in his elementary school in Southeast D.C. a year ago.

ACLU Hails Proposed D.C. Law to Strengthen Protection Against Police Suggestive Lineups, Raps Second Proposal to Release Police Booking Photographs

ACLU green-lighted proposals before the D.C. Council that would improve police lineups and bring local rules in line with best practices nationwide that are reducing false eyewitness identifications, the biggest source of wrongful convictions.  The ACLU also joined a chorus speaking against a plan to let anyone get booking photos from D.C. police.

ACLU Witnesses Testify to Annual Oversight Hearings of the D.C. Council on Performance Issues in 2012 in Agencies of D.C. Government (UPDATED)

ACLU witnesses reported important facts and legal concerns about fire and police departments and about public schools to six 2013 D.C. Council oversight hearings in February and March.

ACLU Calls on Schools to Reverse Course on Barring Parents, Keeping Budget Secret; and Not to Adopt Punishing Approaches to Truants and Families

ACLU testimony to the oversight hearing of the D.C. Council on the public schools February 22, 2012, highlighted ways the schools likely alienate, rather than draw in, the District’s students and their families.

ACLU Files Disability Discrimination Lawsuit Against District of Columbia: Department of Corrections Denied Accommodation to Deaf Prisoner

A profoundly deaf D.C. resident, William Pierce, on February 1, 2013, filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia for disability-based discrimination during two months he spent in a D.C. jail. Pierce, represented by the ACLU, says he was largely unable to communicate with those around him for lack of an interpreter for key interactions with guards and medical staff and with family and friends in the community for lack of modern communications devices for the deaf.  

DC Council Drops Plan to Loosen Arrest Standards, Credits ACLU Concerns

Responding to concerns raised by the ACLU in two eleventh-hour letters, the D.C. Council in its final session of the 2012 term put aside legislation that would have made sweeping change in the law governing warrantless arrests for minor crimes in the District.

ACLU Calls On D.C. Public Schools (Again) to Make Full Spending Plans More Available to the Public

In testimony December 19 on the first budget hearing on the public schools’ budget for 2013-14, we told schools’ Chancellor Kaya Henderson from our experience “it is almost impossible for a member of the public to have timely access to the full DCPS budget.”

ACLU of the Nation's Capital 2013 Summer Law Fellow Announcement

ACLU of the Nation's Capital invites law students interested in public interest lawyering to apply for summer internships. Work on civil liberties litigation and legislation to help the community of Washington, DC.

ACLU Helps Peace Corps Member Win Reversal of Incorrect Dismissal Following Lupus Diagnosis

Early in 2011, environmental scientist Leah Ettema was busy with her job as a Peace Corps volunteer helping the nation of the Philippines manage thousands of miles of coastline on its 7,000 islands when she was diagnosed with Lupus, an unpredictable auto-immune condition. Within days the Peace Corps separated her from the work and colleagues she loved, flew her home for evaluation and in just a few more days decided she could no longer do her job and fired her. Assisted by an ACLU challenge of failure to treat her as an individual as disability law requires, she has after two years won a major victory: the Peace Corps reversed itself, acknowledged improper discrimination and offered to reinstate her as a Volunteer.