Weekly Civil Liberties e-mail

Welcome to Connecticut Civil Liberties in the News, a weekly email from the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Connecticut. Our goal is to keep you informed of news about civil rights and civil liberties in the state and to give teachers topics for classroom discussion. We launched this newsletter, fittingly, on the 225th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. Please respond with your thoughts or suggestions so that we can continue to adapt it to your needs. If you know anyone who would like to receive it, please ask them to email jleblanc@acluct.org to be added to the list. We will also post the newsletter each week on this page. Please see below to view past newsletters.

May 6, 2013: Pregnancy Discrimination

Under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, it's illegal for employers to fire women because they are pregnant. But the courts have sometimes found that the law doesn't require employers to accommodate workers whose pregnancies temporarily prohibit them from carrying out all the duties of their jobs. Connecticut has a state law, however, that requires employers to make reasonable efforts to find alternate duties so that pregnant women can stay at work. The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut recently settled such a case involving a pregnant police officer in Wallingford.
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April 8, 2013: Tasers

Over the past decade, police departments in Connecticut have been arming their officers with Tasers, electronic weapons designed to incapacitate people with bursts of electricity without causing them permanent physical harm. But there is increasing evidence that Tasers can sometimes cause fatal heart attacks, particularly when people are subjected to multiple or prolonged shocks to the chest. At least 11 people have died in Connecticut since 2005 after police shocked them with Tasers. A bill now before the legislature would set statewide training standards for police who use Tasers, require police to report the circumstances each time they use a Taser and require police to get medical attention for anyone they have hit with a Taser shock.
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April 1, 2013: Free Speech and Bullying

When several students were arrested on sexual assault charges in Torrington, the school superintendent warned students in a letter that they could be disciplined for "disparaging" or "inappropriate" online comments directed against other students or staff. The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut responded with a letter reminding the superintendent that students have free speech protections under the First Amendment, and that the courts have set limits on how far school officials may go in restricting the things students say.
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March 25, 2013: Right to Counsel

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees defendants in criminal cases the right to counsel. Fifty years ago the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the states, as well as the federal government, must therefore provide lawyers for defendants who can't afford to pay. The unanimous ruling came in Gideon v. Wainwright, the case of a man who was sent to prison for five years after representing himself at trial because the state of Florida provided lawyers for indigent defendants only in death penalty cases. In 2011, public defenders in Connecticut handled 92,989 cases.
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March 18, 2013: Mandatory Psychological Screening

Connecticut legislators are considering a bill that would require universal behavioral health screening for school-age children, even those who are educated at home. The proposal drew opposition from home-schooling parents and from the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, which argued that mandatory screenings would threaten families' privacy and parents' rights to choose what is best for their children. The ACLU would support voluntary screening with parental consent.
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March 11, 2013: Title IX

Title IX is a groundbreaking federal law, passed in 1972, that requires equity for men and women attending any school that accepts federal funding. This requires even private universities to provide equal opportunities for their male and female students, including athletic opportunities. What that means in practice is at the center of a lawsuit filed in 2009 on behalf of female athletes at Quinnipiac University in Hamden by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut and cooperating law firms. A judge ruled last week that the university is still not giving women the same level of competitive sports opportunities as men, and refused to lift an injunction that prevents the university from eliminating its varsity women's volleyball team.
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