News & Commentary

May 17, 2012Governor Sam BrownbackCapitol, 300 SW 10th Ave., Ste. 241-STopeka, KS 66612-1590Dear Governor Brownback,I write to today on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Kansas and Western Missouri, representing thousands of members and activists throughout the State of Kansas who seek to preserve and expand individual freedoms and civil liberties guaranteed under the United States an Kansas Constitutions. Respectfully, the ACLU asks that you veto House Substitution for Senate Bill 79 (H Sub SB 79). I have outlined our concerns with this bill below.

As 2011 comes to end, we’re taking a look back at the year in criminal justice. Over the next few days, we’ll run a series of blog posts on the developments, good and bad, that have shaped our justice system – from overincarceration and sentencing policy to the treatment of prisoners and capital punishment.Read the series here.It is said that you can tell a lot about a society by how it treats its most vulnerable members. In the United States, a good measure might be how we treat those who come in contact with our criminal justice system, for they are often the very same. In 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union made the fight against overincarceration a top organizational priority with the launch of our Safe and Fair Campaign. It was the perfect time to do so: after decades of “tough on crime” policymaking, there is now an opening to shift to being smart on crime, and to make policy based on facts and evidence, rather than emotion and politics. America’s criminal justice system should keep communities safe, treat people fairly, and use fiscal resources wisely. It should use prison as a last resort. While we are having some success in breaking our addiction to mass incarceration, we still have a long way to go.The good news:

 Hon. Emanuel Cleaver, Julian Bond, and John Bluford  Susan Schmelzer, Ruth Shechter, Judge George Draper, Judge Judy Draper, Niki Lee Donawa, and John Bluford Pamela Horowitz, Julian Bond, Niki Lee Donawa, and Pam Woodard Ralph Reid and Brian Williams

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Kansas HB 2372 – AZ SB1070-Like LegislationSection 1: Requires that all state and city governments, as well as government contractors and subcontractors, use e-verify, a federal employment eligibility verification program used by DHS in partnership with the Social Security Administration.Section 2: "Show me your papers" section requiring law enforcement officers to determine the citizenship and immigration status of a person if "reasonable suspicion" exists that the person is unlawfully present in the U.S.Section 3: "Aiding and Abetting" section making it a crime to harbor or transport anyone unlawfully present in the U.S or encouraging a person to enter the U.S. unlawfully. Punishable by class A misdemeanor to level 8, person felony.Section 4: Requires the Kansas Attorney General to enter into a cooperative agreement with DHS to allow performance of immigration officer functions by state officers and employees.Section 5: No person unlawfully present in the U.S. shall receive any state or local public benefits. This includes but is not limited to: "any grant, contract, loan or commercial or professional license provided by an agency of state or local government, or any retirement, welfare, health, disability, housing, food assistance or unemployment benefit."Section 6: Makes is unlawful to fail to complete or carry immigration documentation when unlawfully present in the U.S. punishable by a class C misdemeanor and $100 fine.Section 7: Any section of this bill that is found to be unconstitutional shall be stricken from the law and all other sections will remain intact and valid.Section 8: Knowingly manufacturing or selling falsified identification a felony.Section 9: Any person charged with a crime and unable to prove citizenship will have their immigration status verified. If verified as unlawfully present, then will be presumed to be at risk of flight.

2011 was certainly a year in which a number of the issues the ACLU works on really disturbed our blog readers. To sum up the year, we present you with some of the top issues from the past 12 months by taking a look at the most popular blog posts from the National ACLU's Blog of Rights.National Defense Authorization Act  This past year, there was no topic hotter on the Blog of Rights than the National Defense Authorization Act. In May, we blogged about the vote in the House of Representatives on a troubling expansion of war authority. Though the House passed the NDAA with the provision to authorize worldwide war, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed its version of the bill without that provision. Unfortunately, this version did include provisions for indefinite detention.Outraged by indefinite detention provisions that would allow this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world, blog readers took action to ask their Senators to vote against the provisions. Despite our efforts, both the House and Senate passed the NDAA with the indefinite detention provisions. As I write this, the NDAA is sitting on the President’s desk. According to reports, the President's advisors are recommending that he not veto this legislation despite earlier promises to do so. We need to tell the President to listen to the American people.FBI: If We Told You, You Might Sue In May we blogged about some documents released to us by the government as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. In the documents, the government explains that it doesn't want you to know whether your internet or phone company is cooperating with its dragnet surveillance program because you might get upset and file lawsuits asserting your constitutional rights.Tennessee Principal's Reaction to GSA T-Shirt Raises the Question: Who's Really Causing the Disruption Here? Blog of Rights readers were also heated about Tennessee Principal Maurice Moser, who threw a fit in school about student Chris Sigler’s Gay-Straight Alliance t-shirt. Opposed to allowing a GSA at the school, Moser charged into Chris's economics class, interrupted the students in the middle of taking a test and ordered everyone except Chris to leave.License Plate Scanners Logging Our Every Move Last month, we found out that the District of Columbia is engaging in widespreadtracking of citizens’ movements using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). It has now become clear that this technology, if we do not limit its use, will represent a significant step toward the creation of a surveillance society in the United States.

Missouri offers survivor benefits to spouses of state troopers who are killed in the line of duty, but excludes committed same-sex partners from receiving those benefits. Glossip is seeking the same survivor benefits provided to opposite-sex partners.