Legislation

HB 5001, An Act Concerning Absentee Voting for All and Various Other Reforms to the Administration of Elections, now Public Act 26-42, removes restrictions on who may vote absentee and allows all voters in Connecticut to vote absentee without an excuse.

By the end of session, S.B. 397 became a bigger omnibus bill containing provisions around automated license plate readers (ALPRs), government accountability and transparency, and protected areas around Connecticut.

Contact between community members and police can have tragic consequences for people experiencing mental health crises and substance use disorder.[1] People who are in mental health crises need treatment. As such, public health and social work actors should be the ones to take the lead when addressing mental health crises and addiction, not as an auxiliary afterthought to police. Rather than continue to entrench the role of police in mental health, this Committee should seek to divest police from this function entirely. [1] See, e.g., If You Are Black and in a Mental Health Crisis, 911 Can Be a Death Sentence, Intercept (Sept. 29, 2019), available at https://theintercept.com/2019/09/29/police-shootings-mental-health/.

The ACLU of Connecticut supports extending voting rights to the greatest number of people, with the only permissible restrictions being those essential to making elections secure and fair. Connecticut’s history with voting rights is long and shamefully suppressive, but with continued efforts to extend the franchise and make it as accessible as possible, we can move forward with a strong electorate and truly democratic elections.

The ACLU of Connecticut is committed to ending discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. When it comes to fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution of Connecticut, we believe that those rights and elective offices are not just for the people who use the “he/him/his” pronouns throughout the Constitution, but for everyone. While modern courts have generally agreed that the male usage in the Constitution is not a bar to rights for people who are not men, that does not mean we should stop striving for a more inclusive Constitution. To the contrary, the state Constitution is the document that fundamentally aims to “define, secure, and perpetuate the liberties, rights and privileges” of the people of Connecticut. We should reflect everyone, of all genders, in this esteemed document.

The ACLU of Connecticut believes in a future where everyone can make decisions about reproductive health care, pregnancy, and parenting that are the best for them, which includes access to safe, legal, and affordable abortion. We are also dedicated to ensuring that LGBTQ+ people can live openly and freely, with full rights, personal autonomy, and freedom of expression and association.

The ACLU of Connecticut is an organization dedicated to ending mass incarceration, eliminating racial disparities in the criminal legal system, and reducing harms to justice-impacted people. Among the most vulnerable people who become enmeshed in the criminal legal system are young people under the age of eighteen, who suffer unique harms due to their involvement in the criminal legal system and are more likely to experience even wider racial disparities than exist for adults. Recognizing these harms and disparities, the ACLU of Connecticut believes that children should be supported with services and resources that support them, their families, and their communities, rather than criminalized, wherever possible.

The ACLU-CT is an organization dedicated to ending mass incarceration, eliminating racial disparities in the criminal legal system, and reducing harms to justiceimpacted people. People who are incarcerated in Connecticut’s jails and prisons deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. The ACLU-CT strongly supports legislation that works to reduce the role and scope of incarceration in society and ensure accountability and oversight when it comes to Connecticut prisons and jails. For that reason, we support Senate Bill 1541, Senate Bill 1543, and House Bill 7133.

Because of interlocking systems of oppression, voters who are less likely to be able to get to the polls on Election Day—people with little job flexibility, people lacking transportation, disabled people, and voters who lack language access—are all disproportionately likely to be Black voters and voters of color. In states that allow early voting, communities of color are utilizing early voting more and more, leading to a surge in the number of Black people voting. Ensuring that our new early voting system that is truly equitable, functional, and accessible will accordingly confer an outsized benefit on voters of color, especially Black voters. The ACLU-CT supports legislation that seeks to improve access to voting when it comes to our early voting system.