News & Commentary

ACLU of Connecticut executive director David McGuire shares insight into how we can collectively act and organize to slow, shut down, and reverse the country's march towards autocracy under the Trump administration.

The 2025 legislative session has come to a close, and it was certainly a trying session for all. In a session where roughly 3,800 bills were introduced, only about 380 bills were passed, rounding up to a passing rate of about ten percent.

One hundred days into the second Trump administration, it’s clear that we are living through an explicit assault on civil rights and liberties, and democracy itself. If we remain united, active, and stand firm in our values, we will not only survive this moment, but we will build something stronger.

The Criminal Justice Commission is interviewing the final 2025 Connecticut Inspector General candidates Tuesday, April 29th at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. Here's what the finalists had to say about police accountability and racial justice.

My name is Christopher Douze, I am a resident of Bridgeport, a father and with ACLU Smart Justice. With respect to HB 6948, I can attest to the factual evidence that housing is a basic human right.

My name is Terri Ricks, I am a resident of Hartford and a Smart Justice Leader with the ACLU of Connecticut. I am a person who has been directly impacted by homelessness due to housing challenges. I am an individual who is here speaking and fighting for change even when I lived for three-and-a-half years in a hotel due to housing challenges. Every day has been a fight, but nothing has been a fight as tough as being freed from prison in 2005. After completing changing my life, housing has consistently been a problem that even eludes me to this day.

Housing is the most critical and fundamental part of reentry, but far too often the most difficult to achieve. The more I see it the more I understand why people go back to jail. HB 6948 is about giving people a fair opportunity to find a safe place to live.

We’re focused on another kind of big score: Getting voting rights properly funded by our state legislature and Governor Lamont.

Students deserve to learn in an environment free from harm.