Let The Record Show

Years before the Supreme Court recognized its first sex discrimination claim, a visionary lawyer named Pauli Murray was building a case that said the 14th Amendment protects against both race and sex discrimination. The case showed how these forms of discrimination work together to protect the same power structure. This week, we’re exploring the first major instance of this argument being used in court, in the 1966 Alabama case White v. Crook. On its surface, it’s a case about who gets to sit on a jury, but as we’ll learn, it’s really about who the Constitution protects. Along the way, we’ll hear from Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project, and ReNika Moore, the director of the ACLU's Racial Justice Program. Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray’s recitation of "Dark Testament" featured in this episode is courtesy of the Pauli Murray Foundation. Find more information at the Pauli Murray Foundation here. We accessed the "Dark Testament" audio via the “Papers of Pauli Murray”, Harvard Radcliffe Institute's Schlesinger Library.

Did you know that today’s justice system in the United States originated from a hiring dispute? This week, Matt and Shereen are taking us back to the early 1800s to explore the origins of judicial review — and all the gossip, intrigue, and spilled ink that brought us our modern U.S. courts.  Joining us to make sense of it all is Louise Melling, a deputy legal director at the ACLU and the director of the ACLU’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty.

On March 15, 2025, the Trump administration deported more than 100 people to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador — in defiance of a federal judge’s orders. They hadn’t been found guilty of being gang members. They never got their day in court. That blatant disregard for due process should concern us all.  This week, on our premiere episode, Shereen and Matt are exploring J.G.G. v. Trump and the related lawsuits that emerged from that fateful day in March. They’re some of the most important cases making their way through the courts today: referenda on the current state of executive overreach, due process, and judicial review. In this episode we’ll be speaking with the ACLU immigration expert Lee Gelernt to investigate what this case means for our civil liberties and how we can fight back.

Marbury v. Madison. Brown v. Board of Education. Obergefell v. Hodges.  These face-offs aren’t just part of legal history, they’re still shaping our lives today. On every episode of “Let The Record Show,” a new podcast from the American Civil Liberties Union, hosts Shereen Marisol Meraji and Matt Beat are taking major U.S. court cases off the shelf to learn about the people and stories behind them — and the precedents they’ve set.    We’ll meet plaintiffs like Wong Kim Ark, who we can thank for birthright citizenship. Lawyers like Pauli Murray, who made it the nation’s business to take both racial and gender equality seriously. And other brave individuals who spoke up for their rights and the rights of their neighbors.    Our first episode drops Wednesday, September 23, and you can join us every other week for a new featured case.

‘Tis the season ... to stay ready. A busy Supreme Court term is already underway, with trans rights, redistricting, birthright citizenship, and more on the docket. And this week, Cecillia Wang is back to break it down with Kamau. Join us as we reflect on this year's civil liberties work, celebrate our wins, and prepare for the fight ahead.

This week, we’re showing thanks to everyone who's stepping up for our collective civil liberties, with a People Power potluck! And we’ve got a seat at the table for you. Our guest of honor is Maribel Hernández Rivera, the ACLU’s National Director of Immigrant Community Strategies. And we have three volunteers from the ACLU’s grassroots network People Power stopping by. Kathy joins us just around the 20-minute mark from Minnesota, Sophia around 40 minutes in from Colorado, and Terry at the hour mark from Tennessee. Listen in as they speak with Kamau about why and how they're advocating for immigrants’ rights, and what their hopes are for their communities—and yours—this giving season and beyond. If you’d like to join Kathy, Sophia, Terry, and other People Power volunteers, now’s the perfect time. You can head to aclu.org/campaigns-initiatives/people-power to learn more. And make sure to check out the ACLU's Holiday Conversation Guide, at aclu.org/the-aclus-holiday-conversation-guide. At Liberty is a production of the ACLU. For the ACLU, our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell, our executive producer is Jessica Herman Weitz, and our intern is Madhvi Khianra. W. Kamau Bell and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD are executive producers for Who Knows Best Productions. At Liberty is produced and edited by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get. This episode was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA.

We’re living through a moment where late night jokes are next-day news, and each opening monologue feels like a litmus test for our freedom of expression. But is this dynamic anything new? This week, comedian Dean Obeidallah and writer Kliph Nesteroff join Kamau to reflect on the history—and present state—of censorship in comedy, and what makes this moment more than a callback. This episode was recorded on Monday, November 10, in the lead-up to the New York Arab American Comedy Festival, which Dean co-founded more than two decades ago. Kliph’s insights are drawn from research that he conducted for his book Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars.

Frog costumes. The Star Wars theme. Whistlemania. These could be the sights and sounds of Halloween—but this year, they've taken on new meaning. As federal agents and military troops arrive in their cities across the country, communities have used pop culture references, humor, and irreverence as an act of resilience. They’ve also banded together to form school escorts and other protective measures for their neighbors. This week, we’re exploring how residents of three cities have met this moment. We have three ACLU experts joining us. First up, we have Chandra S. Bhatnagar and Ed Yohnka of the ACLU of Southern California and Illinois. And around the 46-minute mark, Monica Hopkins of the ACLU of DC joins Kamau to discuss deployments in the nation’s capital. Want to get involved? Here are two actions you can take right now: action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-troops-our-streets action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-stop-masked-agents And if you’re still curious about the deployments, there’s a great explainer on YouTube: “Ask an ACLU Expert: President Trump’s Deployment of Federal Forces to Our Communities” with Hina Shamsi. https://youtu.be/1wQLAqD-KFM?si=LGsW6vlAM_A-1WKo At Liberty is a production of the ACLU. For the ACLU, our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell, our executive producer is Jessica Herman Weitz, and our intern is Madhvi Khianra. W. Kamau Bell and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD are executive producers for Who Knows Best Productions. At Liberty is produced and edited by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get. This episode was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA.

This summer, Emmy Award-winning journalist Mario Guevara was covering a protest near Atlanta when local law enforcement arrested him. Then, ICE detained him. For more than 100 days, the agency refused his release, citing his reporting as dangerous. On October 3, after more than 20 years of living in the United States, he was deported to El Salvador. This week, the ACLU’s Scarlet Kim, who served on Guevara's legal team, joins Kamau to discuss his case and why it should sound alarm bells for us all. Then, the ACLU’s Jessica Herman Weitz drops in to discuss another Emmy Award winner in the headlines for free speech repression: Jimmy Kimmel. You can check out the Kimmel letter here: https://www.aclu.org/defend-free-speech-letter-kimmel And add your name to an open letter in support of free speech here: https://action.aclu.org/petition/defend-free-speech-all-condemn-governments-censorship-jimmy-kimmel At Liberty is a production of the ACLU. For the ACLU, our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell, our executive producer is Jessica Herman Weitz, and our intern is Madhvi Khianra. W. Kamau Bell and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD are executive producers for Who Knows Best Productions. At Liberty is produced and edited by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get. This episode was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA.

Can humor help us make sense of unprecedented threats to our civil liberties? Join us this week for a special episode of At Liberty, recorded live at SeriesFest in Denver, where Kamau and moderator Mo Fry Pasic explore Kamau's signature style of sociopolitical comedy, how something can be funny without being true, and why laughter means we’re paying attention. You can hear Mo in conversation with a different comedian each week on their podcast, Worse Than You with Mo Fry Pasic. And you can keep up with SeriesFest year-round at seriesfest.com. Our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

This summer marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes trial, a Tennessee case where science and religion squared off in court — and the whole country tuned in. This week, the ACLU’s Daniel Mach joins Kamau to discuss the landmark trial, how it shaped our contemporary understanding of religious freedom in the United States, and what the Constitution actually says about the separation between church and state. One note is that this episode was recorded just before a court ruled that an Arkansas law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools is unconstitutional. This is a victory for religious freedom. It is also a reminder that this freedom is increasingly under threat. To learn more about this case and others like it, visit aclu.org Daniel Mach is the director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. Our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

After 104 days in detention, Mahmoud Khalil is home. And this week, we’re honored to have him join us in studio for his first extended conversation with the ACLU. He and Kamau reflect on Mahmoud’s time in ICE custody, the importance of people power, and how he’s settling back into life in New York — from attending a widely publicized comedy show to spending quiet moments with his family. Our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Gotham Production Studios in NYC. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

It’s because of the First Amendment that we have a right to protest abuses of power, advocate for our neighbors, and defend our privacy. But what does the U.S. Constitution actually say about freedom of speech? This week, the ACLU’s Emerson Sykes joins Kamau to break down this fundamental right. We cover everything from why free speech issues aren’t always First Amendment issues to why 1A rights don’t mean much if they don’t protect everyone—including people and groups we don’t agree with. Our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

This past weekend, an estimated 5 million folks across the country protested Trump's attack on our rights. And if you asked anyone in the crowd why they showed up—and who they showed up for—they’d likely have an answer. Today, W. Kamau Bell is joined by three activists—Ash Lazarus Orr and Stephen and Hobbes Chukumba—who are showing up for LGBTQIA+ rights. Listen in as they discuss how they’re navigating Trump’s escalating abuses of power, what trans rights have to do with reproductive and racial justice, and how they’re finding joy this Pride month. A note from the At Liberty team: just after recording this episode, we received a ruling on U.S. v. Skrmetti. You can learn more about the decision, and the latest on Orr v. Trump, at aclu.org: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/transgender-us-passport-holders-granted-temporary-relief-in-challenge-to-trump-gender-marker-policy https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-lambda-legal-respond-to-supreme-court-ruling-in-u-s-v-skrmetti This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. Our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

June is a time to honor and celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s also a month when the Supreme Court has historically made pivotal decisions for LGBTQIA+ rights. This week, Co-Director of the ACLU's LGBT & HIV Project Chase Strangio joins W. Kamau Bell to reflect on the 10-year anniversary of marriage equality with Obergefell v. Hodges, how that case bears on the pending U.S. v. Skrmetti decision, and what it looks like to show up for trans youth and their families in this critical moment. For more information on Skrmetti and actions you can take, head to action.aclu.org. While you’re there, take the pledge to support trans youth and sign the petition to defend trans freedom: action.aclu.org/petition/defend-trans-freedom action.aclu.org/petition/take-pledge-support-trans-youth-now This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. Our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

It may be graduation season, but here on At Liberty, class is still in session—and this week, we’re exploring students’ right to learn. Since the Trump administration took office, schools across the country have faced book bans, funding cuts, and a rollback in civil rights protections. This week, ReNika Moore—Director of the ACLU's Racial Justice Program—joins W. Kamau Bell to discuss what’s at stake for K-12 and higher education institutions, and why equal access to education must be protected. Want to make your voice heard? Head to action.aclu.org/send-message/save-department-education This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz and Gwen Schroeder for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. Our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

We talk a lot on At Liberty about knowing our rights, but since Donald Trump returned to office, where do those rights stand? This week, the ACLU’s National Legal Director Cecillia Wang joins Kamau to make sense of Trump’s first 100 days, from the more than 140 executive orders he signed to the more than 100 legal actions the ACLU has filed since January. Plus, listeners share their questions on immigration rights, freedom of speech, and how we can stay prepared for what’s ahead. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz and Gwen Schroeder for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. Our senior executive producer is Sam Riddell. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

End-to-end encryption. Burner phones. Biometric authentication. Our technology is more advanced than ever, but what does that mean for our digital footprints—and how our data is tracked, whether we’re crossing a US border or at home? This week, we’re exploring our right to digital privacy and how protecting our data can help protect our freedom of speech and expression. This conversation was made to be leaked. Esha Bhandari is deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. And Daniel Kahn Gillmor is a Senior Staff Technologist for the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. At Liberty is a production of the ACLU, and hosted by W. Kamau Bell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz and Gwen Schroeder for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. Special thanks to David Boyer and KALW. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

You know that phrase “born on the wrong side of the tracks”? Well, there’s something to it: highways, roads, and sidewalks across America have, for decades now, been racial and economic dividers. And these thoroughfares don’t just reflect inequality—they continue to play an active role in it. This week, W. Kamau Bell is joined by Deborah N. Archer and Sister Helen Jones for a conversation about transportation infrastructure in the United States, and what a safer, more equitable system could look like. Deborah N. Archer is President of the ACLU, and a tenured professor and associate dean at New York University School of Law. She’s also the author of the new book Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality. Sister Helen Jones is a community organizer and activist in the Watts neighborhood of Southern California. At Liberty is a production of the ACLU, and hosted by W. Kamau Bell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz and Gwen Schroeder for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

Mahmoud Khalil is a recent Columbia University graduate, activist, soon-to-be father, and U.S. green card holder. On March 8, he was unlawfully detained because of his speech in defense of Palestinian human rights. On this week’s episode of At Liberty, host W. Kamau Bell is joined by two members of Khalil’s legal team—the ACLU’s Ben Wizner and Baher Azmy from Center for Constitutional Rights—to discuss why his case should raise alarm bells for anyone who cares about free speech. Ben Wizner is director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Baher Azmy is the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. At Liberty is a production of the ACLU, and hosted by W. Kamau Bell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz and Gwen Schroeder for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

Seventeen. That’s the number of states suing the US government to end federal protections for disabled individuals. 880 billion. That’s the amount of money that Congress is primed to cut from Medicaid funding. One in four. That’s the number of adults in the US who report having a disability. The math, well—it isn’t adding up. This week, W. Kamau Bell is joined by advocates Zoe Brennan-Krohn and Nicole Jorwic to discuss the current state of disability rights in the US, how we got here, and what a just, equitable system could look like—both for individuals needing care and their caregivers. Zoe Brennan-Krohn is Director of the ACLU’s Disability Rights Program and Nicole Jorwic is a disability rights activist and the Chief of Advocacy and Campaigns at Caring Across. At Liberty is a production of the ACLU, and hosted by W. Kamau Bell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz and Gwen Schroeder for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

Restaurants. Churches. Street corners. These are meant to be community spaces—not sites where immigrants and their loved ones live in fear of ICE raids. This week, the ACLU’s Maribel Hernández Rivera and Lee Gelernt join W. Kamau Bell to share the latest on immigrants’ rights in the US, from both an advocacy and legal perspective. Listen in as they discuss what’s changed since Trump took office, how listeners can protect themselves and their neighbors, and why we’re all in this together—regardless of our immigration status. Maribel Hernández Rivera is the ACLU’s National Director of Immigrant Community Strategies. And Lee Gelernt is Deputy Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. You can read more about their work here and here, respectively. At Liberty is a production of the ACLU, and hosted by W. Kamau Bell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz and Gwen Schroeder for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

This week, the ACLU’s Chase Strangio joins W. Kamau Bell to discuss the current state of LGBTQIA+ rights across the country. Listen in as they explore how Trump’s executive orders have already affected folks’ access to gender-affirming care, passports, and beyond; what the ACLU is doing to contest these measures; and why protecting LGBTQIA+ rights is critical to ensuring everyone’s rights. Chase Strangio is Co-Director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project as well as a nationally recognized expert on transgender rights. You can read more about his work here. At Liberty is a production of the ACLU, and hosted by W. Kamau Bell. This episode was executive produced by Jessica Herman Weitz and Gwen Schroeder for the ACLU, and W. Kamau Bell, Kelly Rafferty, PhD, and Melissa Hudson Bell, PhD for Who Knows Best Productions. It was recorded at Skyline Studios in Oakland, CA. At Liberty is edited and produced by Erica Getto and Myrriah Gossett for Good Get.

In this episode of At Liberty, W. Kamau Bell makes his debut as the official host, marking an exciting new chapter for the ACLU podcast. Joined by ACLU National Legal Director Cecillia Wang, the first podcast of 2025 dives deep into the pressing challenges facing civil liberties in America today. In this episode, Cecillia and Kamau discuss the new administration's first days in office, examining the wave of executive orders that threaten fundamental rights - from birthright citizenship to asylum seekers' protections, transgender rights, voting access, and criminal justice reform. Cecillia Wang, who oversees the ACLU's extensive legal operations, provides expert insight into these developments and the organization's strategic response.

In this fourth annual year-end holiday edition of our series, the kids of ACLU staff take over the mic to share their big ideas for a better world. From what they’d do as president to how their parents are making a difference every day, these young voices offer fresh perspectives on the work of the ACLU and inspire us all to imagine a brighter future.

You may recognize W. Kamau Bell from his multi-Emmy award-winning docuseries United Shades of America, or from his Substack Who’s With Me, or from his commercials for the ACLU. If you're a long-time ACLU supporter, you'll know Bell has worked with us for more than a decade as our artist ambassador for racial justice. We're excited to have him as our interim host for our At Liberty podcast, where he will host conversations with leaders, legal experts, artists, and storytellers dedicated to the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. In this episode, Kamau delves into fundamental flaws with the death penalty, with Herman Lindsey, an exoneree who spent three years on death row for a crime he didn't commit, and Cassy Stubbs, director of the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project. Through Lindsey's powerful first-hand account of being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, and Cassy's expertise representing people on death rows across the country, they unpack why the death penalty is broken from start to finish, doesn't keep us safe, and magnifies racial discrimination. With President Biden's term coming to a close and President-elect Trump threatening to accelerate federal executions and expand the death penalty, Cassy and Kamau discuss Biden's critical chance to commute the sentences of all 40 people currently on federal death row and walk us through what we can do to help make it happen.

You may recognize W. Kamau Bell from his three-time Emmy Award-winning docuseries United Shades of America, or from his Substack Who’s With Me, or from his commercials for the ACLU. If you're a long-time ACLU supporter, you'll know Bell has worked with us for more than a decade as our Artist Ambassador for Racial Justice. We're excited to have him as our interim host for our At Liberty podcast, where he will host conversations with leaders, legal experts, artists, and storytellers dedicated to the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. In this episode, Kamau discusses how gender-affirming health care can save lives with activist and Emmy-nominated actress Nava Mau and Dr. Susan Lacy, a board-certified gynecologist who has provided the care at her Memphis clinic for decades. They get into how the transgender community accesses this health care, why it’s vital to them, the misconceptions around it, and why — on the heels of a Supreme Court case that could threaten access — we all need to get involved. The case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, centers on when, where, and how the government can discriminate against transgender people and the health care they receive. Mau and Dr. Lacy, a plaintiff in the case representing herself and her patients, address what’s at stake and what practical next steps we can take to help protect transgender rights from an avalanche of legal and legislative battles.

You may recognize W. Kamau Bell from his multi-Emmy award-winning docuseries United Shades of America, or from his Substack Who’s With Me, or from his commercials for the ACLU. If you're a long-time ACLU supporter, you'll know Bell has worked with us for more than a decade as our artist ambassador for racial justice. We're excited to have him as our interim host for our At Liberty podcast, where he will host conversations with leaders, legal experts, artists, and storytellers dedicated to the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. In this episode, the ACLU’s newly-appointed National Legal Director Cecillia Wang joins Bell in a special post-election episode. Cecillia oversees more than 200 lawyers and staff in the ACLU National legal department, supports legal staff at 54 affiliates, and directs the ACLU’s work at the Supreme Court. Before her current role, Cecillia was the deputy legal director for the ACLU, where she helped fight the 2017 Muslim Ban, the border wall, the family separation policy, and the 2020 Census citizenship question. Together, they talk about what was learned from the first Trump administration, and how the ACLU will be ready to respond on day one. https://www.aclu.org/our-47th-president-donald-trump

You may recognize W. Kamau Bell from his multi-Emmy award-winning docuseries United Shades of America, or from his Substack Who’s With Me, or from his commercials for the ACLU. If you're a long-time ACLU supporter, you'll know Bell has worked with us for more than a decade as our Artist Ambassador for Racial Justice. We're excited to have him as our interim host for our At Liberty podcast, where he will host conversations with leaders, legal experts, artists, and storytellers dedicated to the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. In this episode, Emmy-nominated producer, television host, food expert, New York Times best-selling author and ACLU Artist Ambassador for Immigrants’ Rights and Women’s Rights PADMA LAKSHMI joins us with her good friend, comedian and former Saturday Night Live castmember PUNKIE JOHNSON, to discuss the intersection of identity, comedy...and voting. Known for her critically-acclaimed and Emmy-nominated Hulu series “Taste the Nation”, and as host and executive producer for 19 seasons of Bravo’s two-time Emmy-winning series “Top Chef,” Padma tells us how she is exploring stand-up comedy as a storyteller, her meet-cute with Punkie over tacos at Questlove’s house, and why reproductive freedom and immigrants’ rights can also be fought for on the comedy stage. For her part, Punkie talks about what it was like to be on SNL, why she needed to leave, and her text thread with friends asking all the questions about politics she didn’t understand. Through it all, they also talk about joy, which we are looking to bring you on this day before the election.

You may recognize W. Kamau Bell from his multi-Emmy award-winning docuseries United Shades of America, or from his Substack Who’s With Me, or from his commercials for the ACLU. If you're a long-time ACLU supporter, you'll know Bell has worked with us for more than a decade as our Artist Ambassador for Racial Justice. We're excited to have him as our interim host for our At Liberty podcast, where he will host conversations with leaders, legal experts, artists, and storytellers dedicated to the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. In this episode, Grammy-winning musician and activist Tom Morello joins us to discuss the intersection of music and social justice. Known for his work with the rock band Rage Against the Machine, Morello is also an ACLU Artist Ambassador. On the podcast, he shares his journey from Harvard student to social justice activism, including how he’s advocated for criminal justice reform and labor rights. He also explores the role of artists in social movements and explains why he believes music is a powerful tool for change.

You may recognize W. Kamau Bell from his multi-Emmy award-winning docuseries United Shades of America, from his Substack Who’s With Me, or from his commercials for the ACLU. If you're a longtime supporter of the ACLU, you'll know Bell has worked with us for more than a decade as our Artist Ambassador for Racial Justice. We're excited to have him as our interim host for our At Liberty podcast, where he will host conversations with leaders, legal experts, artists, and storytellers dedicated to the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. This episode is a conversation taped live earlier this month on a stop of ACLU’s Know Your Rights Bus Tour. On our tour, we hit the road with artists, influencers, advocates, and community members to host events in six cities to ensure voters know their rights and have a plan to vote. At our stop in Detroit, host W. Kamau Bell sat down with two prominent voices from Michigan's activist community: Loren Khogali, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan, and filmmaker Razi Jafri. Together, they explore the complexities of activism, democracy, and representation in Michigan — a state at the crossroads of pivotal social and political change. This episode delves into the power of coalition building among Black, Arab, and Muslim American communities. Loren and Razi share their insights on being in a battleground state, how communities can leverage grassroots activism to impact national conversations, and the unique challenges and opportunities of engaging underrepresented voters.

You may recognize W. Kamau Bell from his multi-Emmy award-winning docuseries United Shades of America, from his Substack Who’s With Me, or from his commercials for the ACLU. Bell has worked with us for more than a decade as our Artist Ambassador for Racial Justice. We are fortunate to welcome him as our interim host for our At Liberty podcast over the next few months where he will host conversations with leaders, legal experts, artists and storytellers dedicated to the fight for civil rights and civil liberties. Our first podcast is a conversation taped live earlier this month on a stop of ACLU’s Know Your Rights Bus Tour. On our tour, we hit the road with artists, influencers, advocates and community members to host events in six cities to ensure voters know their rights and have a plan to vote. At our stop in Philly, Bell sat down with Mike Lee, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. Lee is Philly born and raised. He has a long history of championing criminal justice reform and challenging discrimination against marginalized communities in Pennsylvania. He knows a thing or two about Philly, and shared how it informs his legal career. We hope you enjoy!

This Friday, July 26, the summer Olympics will kick off in Paris, France. From the athletes and storylines, to dreams being made and records being broken, the spirit of the Olympics brings out the inner patriot in many of us. To commemorate this year’s Games, we have a special treat for you. Today, we are joined by a 5-time Olympic gold medalist, Sue Bird. Sue Bird is widely known as one of the greatest basketball players in modern history, with her name often followed or preceded by the word “Legend.” A champion from a young age, Sue was a two time NCAA champion playing for the University of Connecticut. She then went on to the WNBA where she was named a 4-time champion and 13-time all star. Need we remind you that she also has five Olympic Gold medals? Sue retired in 2022 after 21 years in the WNBA. Now, she spends her time working to advance gender equity in women’s sports, be it through her media and commerce company, Togxther, A Touch More, her production company with her partner, soccer-phenom Megan Rapinoe, and her partial ownership of the Seattle Storm (her former WNBA team). A documentary about her career, "Sue Bird: In the Clutch," recently premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and is available now on Netflix. In a very exciting time for women’s sports, Sue joins us to break down all the action.

How much do you know about Araminta Ross? Her face is slated to start appearing on the twenty dollar bill by 2030. She’s the first American woman in history to lead a military raid that emancipated over 700 people, and one of the most important abolitionists in history. You might know her by another name: Harriet Tubman. But when it comes to Harriet Tubman’s legacy, an important part of her lived experience is often overlooked: her disability. With July being disability pride month, we wanted to celebrate Harriet Tubman as an icon and learn more about her identity from someone who finds her “often rightly celebrated, but seldom understood.” That someone is Tiya Miles, a National Book Award-winner and the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University. In her latest book, "Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People," Tiya writes about the somewhat unsung aspects of Harriet Tubman’s life—her intertwined relationship with God and nature—which guided her activism and connected her to a collective of other women of her time. Through “Nightflyer,” Tiya proves that even when it comes to the most heralded historical figures, there’s always more to say. And today, she joins us to tell us all about her new book, connect past and present, and offer lessons from Harriet’s life that can help us build a future of collective liberation.

Another Supreme Court term has come to a close. This year, the court delivered major decisions on reproductive freedom, voting rights, free speech, this women's rights, gun rights, and presidential immunity, among other decisions. The ACLU was involved in cases throughout the term, and as far as wins and losses, we're coming out somewhere in the middle. Here to discuss it all and help us reconcile this term's decisions is returning favorite David Cole, the ACLU's national legal director.

On June 4, the Biden administration signed an executive order that will severely restrict people's legal right to seek asylum, no matter how strong their claims. Among the measures announced, the administration will effectively shut off asylum for the overwhelming majority of people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border once the average number of encounters reaches 2,500 between ports of entry, a threshold which has already been met.  The order is the most restrictive border policy instituted by President Biden and echoes an effort in 2018 by former President Trump to cut off migration, which the ACLU and other immigrant rights advocates successfully challenged.  Under any president, lawful, harmful policies that eliminate crucial lifelines for people seeking safety will be taken to task. Joining us to discuss Biden's executive order and our lawsuit to fight against it are Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrant Rights Project and Keren Zwick, director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago.

On this episode, we’re going back into our archives to share an episode that unfortunately still has deep resonance today. Last year, we asked you what a year without Roe has been like in your lives and you responded in droves. Today, with abortion still banned in 14 states with little exception, life looks a lot like it did last year at this time. So we’re running it back today and sharing "A Year Without Roe" again, to remind us all of what’s at stake as abortion is on the ballot this November.

As we celebrate Pride Month and approach summer, one thing is on our minds: queer pop icons. From the fast fame of Chappell Roan and Reneé Rapp to praise for hitmakers like Billie Eilish and Victoria Monét, it feels like we’re in a moment for unapologetically queer music in the mainstream. This is especially true for queer femme artists, who are reaching pop stardom. To dive into this moment and see if others are noticing it too, we called up some fellow music-lovers who have been tuned in. In this episode, you’ll hear from the ACLU's Stefan Smith, head of digital engagement, and Gillian Branstetter, communications strategist for the LGBTQ Project. Later, we’re joined by music journalist Sasha Geffen, author of the book "Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary." Together, we discuss what we're noticing in the world of queer music, our favorite artists, and the rich history that led us to where we are today. To listen to the artists discussed in this episode and others we've been loving, check out our playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2PsXHQfSwtfxP2a3fiQ7RF?si=2daac59c447d4d3d

“There is no shortage of voices demanding everyone pay attention to the violence trans women suffer. But one frighteningly basic question seems never to be answered: why does it happen? If men are not inherently evil and trans women do not intrinsically invite reprisal—which would make violence unstoppable—then the psychology of that violence had to arise at a certain place and time. The trans panic had to be invented.” This is the description for historian and gender scholar Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson’s new book, “The Short History of Trans Misogyny,” a work that seeks to answer why trans misogyny is such a ubiquitous reality. Without this understanding, Jules says, we can never move beyond awareness into liberation for trans femme people. At a time when legislative attacks on trans people are at an all-time high and a pernicious focus on their lives and healthcare dominates public discourse, this question and exploration provides an important path forward. Today, Jules, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and author of the 2018 book, “Histories of the Transgender Child,” joins us to discuss.

What would American democracy look like in the hands of teenage girls? That is the question at the center of "Girls State," a new Apple TV+ documentary and the nationwide civic leadership program that it's named after. As participants, high school students are competitively selected into an immersive experiment in which they must build a mock government from the ground up, complete with municipal roles, branches, a governor, and a Supreme Court. The film takes us inside Missouri Girls State 2022, where hundreds of girls from across the state gather at Lindenwood University to reimagine what it means to govern and devise a better democracy. As citizens of Girls State, these young women take on fierce elections and the toughest political questions of today, on top of the trials of teenage-hood. Amid political polarization and set on the heels of the leaked Dobbs draft decision, the girls of "Girls State" challenge themselves and each other as they build pathways to the future that they want and make plans for how they're going to run it. Joining us today to talk about their Girls State experience and their plans to change the world are some of the girls from the film, Cecilia Bartin, Nisha Murali, and Tochi Ihekona.

On this episode, "At Liberty" producer Vanessa Handy speaks with young adult and middle-grade literature author, Jason Reynolds. Though he writes for young audiences, Jason doesn't shy away from serious themes or challenges, with many of his books dealing with death, mourning, racism, police brutality, and gun violence. Jason writes the stuff of real life, and this has made him a superstar among young readers and adults alike. He has penned numerous bestselling and award-winning books like “Look Both Ways: A Tale Told In Ten Blocks,” “Ghost,” “As Brave as You,” “Long Way Down,” and “All American Boys” with Brendan Kiely. He also used his gifts to promote literacy as the national ambassador for young people's literature from 2020 to 2022. Today, he joins us to discuss carrying on the tradition of Black storytelling and how we can all inspire young people to love literature.

May is Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Month and we’re celebrating with a guest that is sure to make you laugh hard. You might even recognize her infectious laugh from her viral videos on TikTok. Drew Afualo is one of today’s most popular feminist content creators. Her no-BS approach to roasting misogynistic men on the internet has been met with folks flocking to her social pages to feel seen, heard and to rally around squelching hate, bigotry and misogyny. Her mission to stand up for the most marginalized among us is why she’s one of Time Magazine’s Next Generation Leaders, and that’s not all. This March, the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment honored Drew with the Tastemaker Award. She’s a content creator, women’s rights advocate, podcast host, and author of the forthcoming book “LOUD: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve.” Drew joins us today to discuss her journey to TikTok, Samoan identity, and the way comedy and culture have built a meaningful community online primed not just for likes, but also for action. Simply put: Drew is using her voice and in the process, helping all of us find our own.

On April 17, students at Columbia University set up an encampment to show support for Palestinians and demand the university divest from its business related to or within Israel as a means of anti-war protest. In the weeks since its inception, the protest movement has spread, with encampments set up on over 100 college and university campuses worldwide. But as these protests continue, we’ve watched university leadership and campus and local law enforcement meet these demonstrations with a disturbing response. In the last several weeks, over 2,000 people have been arrested or detained on campuses across the country. Students and faculty have faced arrest, criminal charges, suspensions, and excessive use of force from police. This comes alongside the ongoing threats to and in some cases, the complete suspension of chapters of pro-Palestinian organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace on campuses nationwide. Universities have long been a site of protest, particularly anti-war protest, and a safe space for students, faculty, and staff to freely express themselves in the exchange of ideas. As these protests continue, our ACLU affiliates are keeping a pulse on campus demonstrations, advocating for students’ rights, and keeping universities accountable when they act with disproportionate and inequitable discipline. So on this episode of At Liberty, we’re bringing you dispatches from affiliate staff: Veronica Salama, staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, and Ramis Wadood, staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan. You’ll also hear from Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, Deputy Project Director on Policing in the Criminal Law Reform Project at ACLU National. They’ll share what they’re seeing on the ground and the legal concern and action being taken at this time. Together, we can pave a way forward that protects activism at our nation’s academic institutions and beyond. To learn more about the ACLU's response to the rise in anti-war student protests and the increased police presence on college campuses nationwide, check out these resources: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-urges-college-and-university-leaders-to-protect-free-speech-and-academic-freedom https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/protesters-rights https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/students-rights https://www.nyclu.org/resources/know-your-rights/know-your-rights-students-higher-education-first-amendment#resources Are you concerned that your civil rights have been violated at a protest? Visit the website of your ACLU affiliate to access forms to file a complaint: https://www.aclu.org/affiliates

With the rise of anti-war protests and encampments taking place on college campuses across the country, we are sharing an episode from a couple of years ago that addresses some questions related to free speech in an education setting. In this episode, our resident free speech expert Ben Wizner answers listener questions. You’ll hear us talk about the different first amendment protections at K-12 schools and universities, which vary between public and privately funded institutions. We are monitoring the student-led protests in support of Palestine and the subsequent use of force ordered by local authorities across the country and will bring you an episode next week with dispatches from our affiliates who have taken legal action or who have demonstrated legal concern. Until then, we hope this episode gives you some sense of student speech rights and why we are so committed to protecting these rights at the ACLU.

Today, on April 24, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that will determine the future of emergency abortion care. At issue in the case of Idaho v. United States is whether or not doctors in states where abortion is banned have to continue to deny abortion care—even in emergency settings—despite the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires all hospitals to provide life saving and medically stabilizing health care to anyone who shows up at their emergency room. Currently, medical providers in Idaho can only perform an abortion in the event that the pregnant person will imminently die without one. Even if a pregnant person will incur permanent disability or undue harm to their life without an abortion, the procedure is still banned. As you can imagine, these two laws have put doctors in a precarious position in Idaho. The circumstances are even more dire for pregnant patients in the state, particularly those with disabilities. Disabled pregnant people are far more likely to necessitate this kind of care than their non-disabled peers, as most disabled pregnant folks already have high risk pregnancies. Disabled people know all too well the risks of not accessing care when it's needed, and the hardship, pain, and suffering that can escape the claw of “imminent death.” So, today we're talking about the intersection of disability and abortion rights, in regard to this case and more broadly. Joining me to discuss this is Dr. Robyn Powell, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, specializing in disability and family law. She's also a co-investigator at the National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities.

On April 22, the Supreme Court will hear the case of Johnson v. Grants Pass, the most significant court case about the rights of people experiencing homelessness in decades. At its core, Grants Pass will decide whether cities are allowed to punish people for things like sleeping outside with a pillow or blanket—even when there are no safe shelter options—posing potentially great risk to the 250,000 Americans who sleep outside on any given night. This case comes at a time when the affordable housing market is strapped with a deficit of 6.8 million affordable housing units needed nationwide for extremely low-income families. Moreover, according to a recent Harvard study, one in four renters, or 11.2 million households, are “severely burdened by rents that took up over half their incomes.” These millions of renters living paycheck to paycheck are at significant risk of losing their home at the turn of a rainy day, with Americans of color, disabled Americans and queer and trans Americans at even greater risk. With so many folks on a razor thin edge of experiencing housing instability these days, all eyes are on Grants Pass. Joining us to talk more about the case and the broader systemic issue of housing instability, homelessness, and what it would take to make a meaningful dent in both, is Jennifer Friedenbach, the Executive Director of the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco.

From the ACLU, this is At Liberty. I'm Kendall Ciesemier, your host. A month ago, we visited one of our favorite spots, the library. You know, at the ACLU, we love a good library. So much so that we even spent a recent Saturday night at the Brooklyn Public Library, along with some 5,000 others, for their annual enrichment event, Night in the Library. The theme for this year's event was Out of Darkness, and it included an all-night lineup of performances and conversations focused on what it means to face hardship head-on, and what we gain from confronting life's challenges with honesty, curiosity, and compassion, and understanding. When we were invited to host a conversation during the event, we knew immediately who we wanted to share with our neighbors in Brooklyn: Ian Manuel. You might remember Ian from our episode back in January when he joined us to talk about juvenile life without parole, solitary confinement, and restorative justice. Ian is an author, poet, activist, and absolute visionary, working to change our criminal legal system after facing 18 years in solitary confinement himself and 26 years in prison, beginning when he was only 14 years old. He knows firsthand what it's like to face darkness in life and move through it and he credits his practice of magical thinking for helping him.  This is the idea that we used as the basis for our Night in the Library conversation. And with it being both National Library Week and National Poetry Month, right now, I can't think of a better time to share it. So I invite you to cozy up with us between the bookshelves and enjoy the highlights from The Light of Magical Thinking, live from the Brooklyn Public Library.

Last December, Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 4, one of the most extreme pieces of anti-immigrant legislation to emerge from any state legislature. Under S.B. 4, local and state law enforcement can arrest people they suspect to have entered Texas without federal authorization. It also permits Texas judges, who are not trained in immigration law, to order the deportation of migrants to ports of entry along the Texas-Mexico border, regardless of which country they are from. Additionally, individuals may face charges under a new state crime of “illegal entry,” or “illegal re-entry,” as well as refusal to comply with deportation orders, with some charges carrying penalties of up to 20 years in prison. Since S.B. 4 passed, a whirlwind of court orders have stopped it from being enforced or allowed it for a very short time, which has caused widespread confusion. States do not have the constitutional authority to deport people, and an unconstitutional law like S.B. 4 only imposes added threat to migrants’ livelihoods and path to asylum.  Here to give us the latest news on S.B. 4 and our fight against it is David Donatti, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas working on immigration.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that will determine if nationwide restrictions are imposed on access to mifepristone, a safe medication used in more than half of all U.S. abortions, and for miscarriage treatment. What the court decides later this year will have significant implications on our ability to access abortion, no matter where you live, even in states with legal protections for abortion. The decision could also impact how other medications are protected from interference -- that is, the court could decide that anyone who doesn’t like a certain medication can levy a lawsuit to block access to the drug. To unpack what we heard, we have Julia Kaye, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project who is on site in Washington, D.C. and is joining us just hours after hearing the arguments live.

The United States is home to the largest immigrant population in the world, with hundreds of thousands more seeking asylum and citizenship. America would not be what it is today if not for immigration and the contributions of millions of those who have come here, bolstering the population, strengthening the economy, and weaving their cultures into the fabric of this nation. And yet, despite this truth, many immigrants in the U.S. and those seeking entry at our borders continue to face a bureaucratic, dangerous system that often casts them aside. From the costly and complicated citizenship process to the anti-immigrant rhetoric that plagues today’s politics, immigrants often find themselves jumping through hoops to stay in this country. That’s the situation that Alejandro Martinez, an aspiring toymaker and Hasbro hopeful, finds himself in when he moves from El Salvador to New York City. One mistake puts him out of a job and left to scramble for new employment that will sponsor him for a work visa. The journey to get a work visa is anything but conventional. This is the basis of “Problemista” a new A24 movie starring, written and directed by comedian Julio Torres. Torres, who is an immigrant himself, plays Alejandro and through his trials, offers a glimpse into a dizzying and absurd reality of the immigration process. You may also know him from his Emmy-nominated writing for SNL, the show “Los Espookys,” and his comedy special “My Favorite Shapes” on HBO. Today, he joins us to talk about “Problemista” and the experiences that led to its creation.

The “American dream” has long been regarded as the pinnacle of success, rewarded to all who display hard work and pick themselves up by their bootstraps when life knocks them down. This might be our culture’s prevailing narrative, but it actually rarely bears out this way. The truth is that our system is full of inequities that put large swaths of people in our country at significant odds with building wealth. Intergenerational wealth, or the passing on of wealth within generations of a family, gives a notable advantage to those who have it, and often leaves those who don’t economically burdened. Income inequality in the U.S. continues to persist and the median income of white people largely outsizes that of people of color. This disparity has plagued generations, greatly reducing the ability of people of color to start businesses, pursue higher education, and buy homes. Enter baby bonds, an economic policy in which every child at birth receives an income-dependent government-funded savings account, managed by federal, state, or local governments until adulthood. The end goal? Breaking the cycle of poverty and closing the racial wealth gap to ensure economic stability for future generations. In this episode we’re exploring baby bonds and the national legislation that is seeking to create systemic equality nationwide. Joining us first is economist Darrick Hamilton, founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School, who has been at the helm of the progress on this idea. Then we speak with U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) about the American Opportunities Account Act, a bill introduced by her and Sen. Cory Booker that would implement baby bonds on a national scale. To learn more about baby bonds and Darrick Hamilton's economic justice work, visit: https://racepowerpolicy.org/baby-bonds/

At the end of 2023, migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border hit a record high of 250,000, with a surge of individuals and families entering cities like Chicago, Denver, New York, Houston, and Los Angeles. Despite this, politicians and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continue to struggle to meet demands and refuse to compromise on border policies, leaving the wellbeing of asylum seekers in jeopardy. In early February, a sweeping supplemental funding package for national security failed in the Senate. This package would have eviscerated protections for people seeking asylum, in exchange for unrelated foreign aid by imposing shutdowns to the U.S.-Mexico border and an unprecedented increase in funding for punitive immigration policies through taxpayer dollars, among other harsh measures. We know that cruel immigration policies do not stop migration — they simply put more people in danger. As the conversation about border control and immigration becomes steeped in election year politics, it’s imperative for us to mobilize lawmakers and political leaders to pass humane and effective immigration policies that meet the dire needs of the current moment. Joining us to give an update on the state of immigration policy today and its significance for this election year is Naureen Shah, deputy director of governmental affairs for the ACLU’s Equality Division.

On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children under state law, meaning the embryo has rights consistent with a person living in the United States. While this marks the first time a frozen embryo has been granted personhood, it is not the first time we’ve seen anti-abortion lawmakers elevate and amplify the idea of so-called “fetal personhood,” in an attempt to strip away rights from people who can become pregnant and people who are. While contained to the state, the decision out of Alabama is making waves across the country for what it means for both Alabamians and for the future of reproductive rights in this nation entirely. Joining us to discuss the implications of this decision and explain the concept of fetal personhood are Alison Mollman, legal director of the ACLU of Alabama, and Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project.

On August 10th, 2009, the North Carolina legislature passed the Racial Justice Act, or RJA. A first of its kind law that allows people on death row to challenge their sentences if they could show race played a factor at the time of their trial. This historic legislation allowed us at the ACLU to successfully bring claims on behalf of four people back in 2012, getting their sentences changed to life without parole. This momentum was short lived, because a year later, the North Carolina Supreme Court repealed the RJA. Then, in 2020, the court ruled that those who had already filed their cases under the RJA were entitled to move forward despite the repeal. The same year the RJA was passed, Hasson Bacote was sentenced to death in a Johnston County courtroom. As a Black man in a deeply segregated county with a history of racial terror, Bacote’s fate was all but sealed, well before the jury issued his death sentence. Now, more than a decade after the law was passed, he will be the first to challenge his death penalty sentence under the RJA since 2020. Beginning February 26th, Bacote's team will argue that race not only played an impermissible role in this case but in all capital cases in Johnston County and across the state of North Carolina. The success of this case could determine our future ability to reverse more sentences and end the death penalty in the state. Joining us today to discuss Hasson Bacote’s landmark hearing and our ongoing work to fight against the death penalty is Henderson Hill, Senior Counsel for the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project.

Since 1965, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has been integral to protecting people of color at the polls. But in recent decades, the strength of the VRA has been diminished by decisions like Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, and the subsequent influx of voter restrictions imposed by states. Despite this, there are ways we can fight back in the courts. Section 2 of the VRA prohibits voting practices and procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in certain language minority groups. It is the right of private individuals to challenge discriminatory voting practices and of organizations like the ACLU to support those who raise these challenges. But now, the right to bring these crucial cases before the courts is being threatened. On January 30, we received a decision from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that it will not rehear Arkansas State Conference NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment, a case which challenges the Arkansas House district map for unlawfully stifling the voting strength of Black Arkansas residents. This decision upholds a 2022 lower court ruling in the case that radically concluded that voters may not sue to protect their voting rights under Section 2. This is unprecedented—more than 400 Section 2 cases have been litigated in federal court in the past four decades to protect the voting rights of racial and language minorities, and private plaintiffs have brought the vast majority of them. In today’s episode, you’ll hear from Barry Jefferson, Dorothy Nairne, and Khadidah Stone, three plaintiffs from Section 2 cases. They’ll discuss their experiences challenging racially gerrymandered district maps in their respective states, what compelled them to take action, and how we can all be voting rights advocates. To learn more about redistricting, the cases we mentioned in this episode, and the ACLU’s efforts to protect voting rights, click here: https://www.aclu.org/redistricting/redistricting-101#slide2

Free speech on campus, book bans, education gag orders, the overturn of affirmative action, the resignation of former Harvard president Claudine Gay. All of these issues center on one hot-button topic: DEI. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has become a staple in national vocabulary after the so-called “racial reckoning” of 2020 brought demands for racial justice to the top of institutional priorities. From schools to Fortune 500 companies to the film industry, DEI efforts had a steady surge…until they didn’t. The burgeoning anti-DEI movement, also coined the “war on woke,” has gone from a once-fringe conservative crusade to a political machine. Already this year, about three dozen bills restricting DEI efforts, like critical race theory, have been proposed in states across the country, with more likely to emerge. Need we again mention the overturn of affirmative action? But how did we go from a public seemingly-committed to DEI to one that denounces it in the span of just a few years? Joining us to help answer this question are Alvin B. Tillery, professor of political science at Northwestern University and director of the university’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy, and Leah Watson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. Together, we’ll trace the rise of the anti-DEI machine and its political ramifications for the year to come. For more context on the ACLU’s litigation efforts against education gag orders, check out Leah’s law review article: https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/wp-content/uploads/sites/80/2023/09/HLC208_Watson.pdf

As the gang conspiracy trial of rapper Young Thug and his famed rap collective, YSL, extends past 20 days in Atlanta, we’re bringing you a conversation about the use of rap lyrics in court. Despite a groundswell of activism and legal opposition against the legal admissibility of Young Thug’s lyrics, a judge ruled in November that lyrics from Young Thug and other YSL artists can be used by the state against them as evidence pointing to the gang’s existence and the members’ attitudes towards the crimes they are charged with. We’re revisiting an episode from our archive about how the use of an artist’s creative work in court allows for implicit bias to run roughshod on rappers’ lives and lead to wrongful convictions. Joining us to discuss the evolution of this practice is Erik Nielsen, professor at the University of Richmond and co-author of the book “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America.” We are also joined by New Orleans rapper, songwriter, and former member of the 504boyz, Mac Phipps who experienced firsthand how the use of lyrics on trial can lead to a wrongful conviction.

This week, At Liberty is coming to you live from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, hosting a discussion with queer and transgender storytellers. The conversation delves into the challenges they face while navigating an onslaught of bills targeting trans people nationwide and censoring their narratives. This dialogue follows a recent decision by the Utah state House to advance HB 257, a bill that would criminalize trans people for using the bathroom—a stark example of the many threats against the trans community that have surged in recent years. Nationwide, 22 states have banned gender-affirming care for trans minors, and over 300 new anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in 2024. We're fighting back in the legislatures and the courts, but this is also a fight in the public discourse, one that demands us to fight back in cultural organizing. We must own our narratives and tell our stories because the queer and trans community will not be invisible. In this episode, we're joined by Lío Mehiel, an actor, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary artist known for starring in the films “Mutt” and “In the Summers,” both of which premiered at Sundance. We’re also joined by Jules Rosskam, a filmmaker, artist, and educator who has directed several films including “Transparent,” “Against a Trans Narrative,” and the recent Sundance premiere “Desire Lines." Last, but certainly not least, we have Gillian Branstetter, our very own communications strategist for the ACLU's LGBT and HIV project. Together, we spoke about the efforts threatening queer and trans storytelling, and how we persist in spite of them. If you want to join us and the ACLU of Utah in fighting back against HB 257, sign this petition: https://secure.everyaction.com/Ql111CGWmUiOqyG_qjNrWw2

This year marks the 51st anniversary since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, protecting the constitutional right to abortion in 1973. Unfortunately, this anniversary is marred by the overturn of Roe by the Supreme Court in 2022, resulting in the continued denial of the power to make personal medical decisions during pregnancy for millions of people in states across the country. In 2024, our fight for reproductive freedom continues. In the last several weeks, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear two abortion-related cases this term, potentially impacting access to medication abortion and whether people can receive care when facing medical emergencies. This fight requires all of us, and today we’re excited to speak with two advocates about what we can all do to advance reproductive rights in our communities. First up, we have actor and writer Busy Philipps, who is joining the ACLU as an artist ambassador for reproductive freedom. You may recognize Busy from shows like “Freaks and Geeks,” “Girls 5Eva,” and “Busy Tonight,” and the new remake of the movie “Mean Girls.” Offscreen, Busy has engaged in years of advocacy with the ACLU in states like Ohio and Texas. She joins us today to share her journey as an activist alongside J.J. Straight, the ACLU’s national campaigns director for reproductive freedom, who has led many of our state and nationwide fights for abortion access and been busier than ever since the overturn of Roe. Together, we’ll discuss what the new year has in store for reproductive freedom and our continued fight for bodily autonomy at large.

Last year, states passed a record number of bills restricting health care, athletics, public accommodations, expression, and educational materials for trans people — trans kids, more specifically. With the turn of a new year, the situation continues to grow dire. Laws threatening access to gender-affirming care went into effect in several states on January 1, 2024. The ACLU is calling on the Supreme Court to block a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical care for trans people under the age of 18, and to reject a case concerning a transgender student’s access to restroom facilities that correspond with their gender identity at an Indiana school. As this unprecedented surge in attacks on the trans community rages on, we need to stay vigilant in watching what’s happening and fighting back. Joining our host Kendall Ciesemier, to update us on what’s going on and what’s to come is Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s deputy director for trans justice with the LGBT & HIV Project.

“Imagine that you, at age fifteen, have been sentenced to social death, life without parole, in a space nine feet by seven—the size of a freight elevator—where for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day you are trapped; where in a deadly daily routine you sleep, wake up, shit, piss, eat—food slipped through a slot as if you were an animal, where you are denied the possibility of human contact except as physical or mental abuse; where visual and sensory stimuli—the stuff of life—are only a memory or a dream; where who you are is defined only by your willingness or unwillingness to be disciplined and punished. Imagine life without hope in a brutal hellhole of sameness designed to break your spirit and challenge your sanity.” This is an excerpt from Ian Manuel’s 2022 memoir “My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope and Redemption” where Manuel recounts his real life experience spending 26 years in prison—18 of those years in solitary confinement—before advocacy efforts from the Equal Justice Initiative led to his release in 2016. Since his release, Manuel has made waves as an activist, poet, and motivational speaker. His memoir recounts his journey from his teenage years to the present. He joins us today to talk about juvenile life without parole, solitary confinement, and restorative justice.

For a special year-end holiday episode, we’re bringing you our third edition of “ACLU kids take over At Liberty.” Kids of ACLU staff spoke to their parents about what they do at work and how they fight for civil rights and civil liberties. They also had some hot takes about how they can do better — at everything. We hope you enjoy it.

2023 is coming to a close, and we have weathered so much this year. At the ACLU, we continue to fight for civil rights and civil liberties across the country. We’re prying open every opportunity for abortion access and reproductive health care following the overturn of Roe, blocking trans health care bans nationwide, filing lawsuits to curb the rise in book bans and educational censorship, and advocating for racial equity after the elimination of affirmative action and continued attacks on voting rights. So today, we're highlighting some of the most notable episodes from the year, which also happen to be some of our favorites. We’ll chat about what we enjoyed, how they came to be, and where the issues we reported on stand today. We hope you enjoy it.

Free speech is one of the hallmarks of a functioning democracy and one of our fundamental constitutional rights. At the ACLU, we know that it's precisely in times of crisis and fear when free speech, open debate, and peaceful dissent are most important. Over the last few months, as the world continues to witness the catastrophe in Israel and Palestine, protests in support of Palestine are being silenced and censored on college campuses. In early November, the ACLU sent out an open letter to the administrative leaders of each state's public college system that reached over 650 colleges and universities, expressing our strong opposition to any efforts that stifle free speech on college campuses, and urging universities to reject calls to investigate, disband, or penalize pro-Palestinian student groups for exercising their free speech rights. In Florida, State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues already issued an order in consultation with Governor Ron DeSantis to deactivate Students for Justice in Palestine chapters in the state. In response, we and our partners at the ACLU of Florida and Palestine Legal are suing Governor DeSantis and Florida university system officials on behalf of the University of Florida’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine to block the deactivation order from taking effect. Joining our host, Kendall Ciesemier, to discuss this important lawsuit are Shaiba Rather, the Nadine Strossen fellow with the ACLU’s National Security Project and Tyler Takemoto, the William J. Brennan fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

On January 21, 2017, a day after the inauguration of former President Donald Trump, activist and journalist Raquel Willis approached the podium at the inaugural Women’s March in Washington, D.C. to share her story at what became one of the largest single-day marches in U.S. history. With this momentous platform, Willis was determined to galvanize the crowd to support liberation for all women, namely Black trans women like herself. Not even three minutes into her speech, after calling out the erasure of trailblazing women of color from feminist history, Willis’ microphone was cut off. Unfortunately, this silencing was something that she knew all too well through her work in supposedly progressive movements and newsrooms. This experience only fueled her fire to make intersectionality the baseline of all liberation efforts. Willis has made waves in her work as the former executive editor of Out Magazine and national organizer for the Transgender Law Center, demonstrating her dedication to uplifting the voices of transgender people of color. In her new memoir, “The Risk It Takes To Bloom: On Life and Liberation,” her voice takes center stage. The book explores Willis’ history and journey with identity, education, grief, community, and remembrance. Her recount honors not only her past and present, but that of the trans community worldwide. Today, Willis joins our host, Kendall Ciesemier, to shed light on her story and vision for the future of liberation.

The holiday season is upon us. This week, we are revisiting our conversation with author and activist Glennon Doyle. In this conversation, Doyle and host Kendall Ciesemier discuss how to bring loved ones into our understanding of equity and justice through the use of storytelling, imagination, and conversation. It’s an episode fit for such a time as this and we hope you enjoy.

If you’re staying up to date with the news, you may have noticed that unions are having a moment. This summer alone, strikes by members of the WGA, UAW, SAG-AFTRA, UPS, Starbucks, Amazon, and Kaiser Permanente unions, among others, have made headlines and signaled solidarity between workers across the nation. Last year, public support for unions hit a 57-year high, with 71% of Americans expressing a favorable opinion.  However, unions themselves are not a utopia. At the ACLU, we’ve sided with and against unions to secure worker’s rights, specifically those of women and pregnant people. There’s still much work to be done to ensure that all workers are treated fairly, but one thing remains clear: unions can be a powerful force for securing civil rights and civil liberties.  Journalist Kim Kelly is a firm believer in the power of organized labor. After years of reporting on the nationwide labor movement, she released “Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor.” The book chronicles historical labor movements across several industries, focusing on the people from marginalized groups who led them, along with their wins and their losses. Kelly joins us today to help us connect our past to our present and deepen our understanding of the ongoing fight for worker’s rights.

On Tuesday, people across the country took to the polls and made one thing crystal clear: abortion rights matter to voters. In Ohio, voters passed an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, making it the seventh state to protect abortion access through the ballot box. In Virginia, voters elected a full pro-abortion rights majority in their state General Assembly, and in Pennsylvania, voters maintained a pro-abortion majority in their state supreme court. As we look to 2024, abortion rights will continue to be on the ballot, meaning that anti-abortion opponents may continue to chip away at voting rights as a mechanism to block the will of voters, using tactics like racial gerrymandering and voter intimidation. All voters deserve an equal opportunity to exercise their rights and participate in democracy. Today, we’ll get an election results update from Jessica Arons, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, who has been working to secure victories for reproductive freedom at the ballot box. Then, we’ll speak with Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, to talk about how her team is using a recent voting rights victory at the Supreme Court to fight battles all across the country.

On October 24, Britney Spears released her tell-all memoir, “The Woman in Me.” In the book, she traces her journey from childhood stardom to living 13 years under the control of a conservatorship, a court-sanctioned arrangement that strips people with disabilities of their civil liberties. In Spears’ case, her dad, who she characterizes in the book as abusive and an addict, was able to gain legal rights over her life and her business when Britney was 26-years-old. This included forcing her to work, surveilling and controlling her daily life habits, and making all of her healthcare choices. Spears’ conservatorship initially made global headlines in 2021, catapulting conservatorship as a legal construct into public dialogue and calling into question its use in the lives of more than one million other Americans with disabilities. Britney’s success in terminating her conservatorship propelled the state of California to sign meaningful legislation into law, requiring courts to consider alternatives to conservatorship, and making it easier for others to terminate their own. Today, we are checking in with Zoe Brennan-Krohn, who we originally spoke to in 2021 when this case first made headlines. Zoe is a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Disability Rights Project who has worked on conservatorship for many years, including filing amicus briefs in support of Britney. We’ve read the memoir and we’re ready to discuss.

On November 7th, Ohio voters will decide whether to pass Issue 1, which would protect their decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and abortion. The fact that this amendment is even on the ballot is a huge feat. Ohioans had to submit hundreds of thousands of signatures to get the reproductive freedom amendment on the ballot this fall. Fearing that voters will take power into their own hands to protect reproductive rights, anti-abortion politicians forced a different amendment onto the ballot in August to raise the threshold for passing any future ballot measure from a simple majority to 60 percent of the vote. This thinly veiled attack on democracy and Ohioans' voting power to protect abortion failed by wide margins. Now, Ohioans will finally have the opportunity to weigh in directly on reproductive freedom in their state over the next several weeks. Early voting started on October 11th, and election day is on November 7th. As we approach the election, our friends at the ACLU of Ohio and Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights are engaged in efforts to get Ohioans to vote “yes” on Issue 1. Voting “yes” is imperative because there is so much on the line. Joining us today to share their campaign experience are Elizabeth Chasteen Day, statewide organizing director for the ACLU of Ohio, and Alexis Morrisroe, an educator and campaign volunteer.

October marks LGBTQ History Month, and this week on At Liberty we are honoring the legacy of LGBTQ activism throughout the AIDS epidemic. Throughout the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, AIDS claimed the lives of thousands of New Yorkers per year, with city, state, and national governments doing little to address the crisis. In response to government inaction and homophobia, a group of New York City activists founded ACT UP, a grassroots, queer-led protest movement to urge action, call for change, and stand in the gap as thousands of queer people died. Due to their dogged persistence, steadfast unity in diversity, and pointed demonstrations, ACT UP achieved lasting victories in medical treatment, health care access, and more. Today, in classrooms across the country, this history has largely gone untold. In our broader public discourse, the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. and the subsequent movement that rose to fight for LGBTQ lives is often overlooked. Enter Sarah Schulman, a novelist, journalist, playwright, and AIDS historian, who is fighting to ensure that we remember. Schulman is the author of 20 books, her latest being “Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, New York 1987-1993,” which documents the people and tactics behind ACT UP’s success. Sarah is also the co-director of the ACT UP Oral History Project. She joins us today to share her expertise and remember the movement.

This May, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 264, a law that restricts Chinese nationals from acquiring property in the state of Florida under the guise of protecting national security. But the issue is actually pretty clear — Chinese people are not the Chinese government, and conflating the two is just the latest iteration of anti-Asian land laws and anti-Asian discrimination that date as far back as the 1880s. Rather than protecting national security, the law will shatter the dreams of Chinese families, students, and business owners hoping to build a life in the Sunshine State. So we at the ACLU, along with our partners, are suing Florida over SB 264, arguing in Shen v. Simpson that the law legitimizes and expands housing discrimination against people of Asian descent and therefore violates both the Constitution and the Fair Housing Act. Joining us today to discuss the case are Bethany Li, legal director of the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund and one of our co-counsels in the case, and Echo King, an immigration lawyer and co-founder of the Florida Asian Americans Justice Alliance, a group which rallies the support of Floridians against this kind of discrimination.

Today’s young people have a lot to deal with. Pandemic interruptions, social isolation, climate change, political polarization, ever-changing technology — all on top of the typical turbulence of adolescence. Studies on youth mental health outcomes show increasing loneliness and hopelessness, illustrating one thing: the kids are not alright. We all want a silver bullet for the youth mental health crisis, and some lawmakers are claiming they have one: the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA for short. After failing to gain traction in 2022, this bipartisan bill has been revised and re-introduced by Congress — but like most solutions that claim to solve all our woes with the stroke of a pen, KOSA is too good to be true. If passed, KOSA would allow each state’s attorney general to individually decide what parts of the internet kids can and cannot access. In fact, KOSA proponents have even openly admitted that they plan to use KOSA to block kids from LGBTQ content online. We at the ACLU, along with other civil rights organizations and parents of queer and trans youth, have spoken out against the bill for all the ways it overreaches, suppresses our right to free information, and targets LGBTQ people. As anti-LGBTQ legislation continues to rise, KOSA is one of many censorship tools masquerading as a kids safety solution. Joining us today to explain the consequences this bill could have for us all are Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, and Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the ACLU.

Last month, a district court judge in Montana ruled in favor of 16 youth plaintiffs in a landmark climate lawsuit. In Held v. Montana, young Montanans ranging from ages 5 to 22 sued the state, arguing that lawmakers have consciously prioritized the development of fossil fuels over the well-being of Montana’s residents and the protection of natural resources. This case marks the first time that a U.S. court has declared a government’s constitutional duty to protect people from climate change. Not only does this case model how young people can engage with the legal system, it also sets precedent for similar lawsuits, proving state constitutions as a viable pathway to scoring seemingly unlikely civil rights victories. Joining us today is Mat dos Santos, an attorney for Our Children’s Trust, the legal nonprofit group that brought the case on behalf of the youth, and Claire Vlases, one of the plaintiffs. They’ll explain what it took to get this case off the ground and what implications it could have for the future.

“The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why?” That’s the question that underscores Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist Matthew Desmond’s new book, “Poverty, by America.” America is a country that purports equality as one of its highest values. Economic opportunity and the long touted American dream have driven millions to emigrate and settle here for centuries. In reality, however, gross economic inequality undergirds every facet of American life: education, the criminal legal system, health care, and housing. Affordable housing is foundational to American life. Because America is rife with poverty, it’s also rife with housing inequality. This is Desmond’s focus of study. Desmond’s work at Princeton University’s “Eviction Lab” and his 2016 book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” continue to shape the conversation about housing and poverty today. His new book takes his exploration one step further, seeking to examine and address the roots and responses to housing insecurity and its threat to American life. Today, we are running a conversation between Desmond and the ACLU’s Sandra Park, senior staff attorney for the Women’s Rights Project, who also works on these issues. Together, they’ll break down the complexities of American poverty and how poverty as a societal force threatens the accessibility of our civil rights and civil liberties.

We’re continuing to feature major stories impacting students as the back-to-school season is underway. Today, we confront one troubling question: Why are students being fined by police in schools? Across the nation, students are being disciplined through tickets with shocking frequency, burdening them with hefty fines and subjecting them to the juvenile justice system, all of which greases the skids on the school-to-prison pipeline. The state of Illinois has become a hotbed for ticketing in schools, to such an extent that legislators and activists have proposed a House bill to end the practice. But as we await the passage of this law, students continue to pay the price. Last year, the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica published an investigation on this issue, finding that nearly 12,000 tickets were written to Illinois students over three school years, with Black students twice as likely to be ticketed compared to their white peers. 20-year-old Amara Harris is one of those students. She’s entering her senior year at Spelman College, finally free from an alleged theft fine that she received as a high school student in Naperville, Illinois. Now, the state is considering legislation to end fees and fines in schools on the backbone of cases like Amara’s. She joined us to explain how a misunderstanding over a pair of lost AirPods led to a trial four years in the making. Then, Ghadah Makoshi, advocacy and policy strategist with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, discusses her research on ticketing in Pittsburgh public schools and how we can disrupt school-based pathways to the juvenile justice system.

Back-to-school season is upon us and here at the ACLU we’ve been following the nationwide campaign to censor education, be that the censorship of important historical and social context in curriculums, or the recent rise in book bans. All of these efforts threaten students' right to learn. As we chart this issue, our eyes are on Texas. The state is banning more books than any other, eliminating libraries, and through these decisions, targeting low-income students of color. This year, some students in the Houston Independent School District — the largest district in Texas — may be heading to schools with no libraries or librarians. In August, the state announced plans to convert libraries into disciplinary centers, eliminating librarian positions at 28 elementary and middle schools. Another 57 schools are being assessed for the same outcome, with the goal of addressing low academic performance in certain schools. This alarming change comes as part of a sweeping reform program led by the HISD’s new superintendent Mike Miles, and a new state-imposed school board, both of which replaced the district's former elected school board and superintendent in the spring. We're joined by Becky Calzada and Deborah Hall, two Texas librarians who are advocating for students and the future of their profession. Then, we hear from ACLU of Texas attorney Chloe Kempf, to help explain how the rise in education censorship infringes on students’ civil rights.

Across America, 68 percent of incarcerated people with a medical condition go without care in local jails. Put simply, incarcerated people are often denied life sustaining and life-saving health care treatment. To make matters worse, carceral facilities are increasingly used as a response to “treat” those with mental and physical illnesses. But, in reality, they are doing the opposite. After an arrest, those who can’t immediately post bail can spend days on end without medical services. Until they can gather enough money to buy freedom, incarcerated people can suffer from poor health care with dire consequences, including in some cases death. Nothing reveals this experience more than the story of 54-year-old Dexter Barry. Last year, in November of 2022 Dexter was experiencing a renewed sense of health and stability in his life. This was all thanks to a heart transplant that he received after waiting for an organ for 12 years while battling ongoing heart complications. That month, Barry got into a verbal dispute with his neighbor in Jacksonville, Florida. The incident resulted in a misdemeanor arrest that kept him in jail for two days without anti-rejection medication for his transplant, despite several pleas for it. Three days after he was released from jail, he died from cardiac arrest that was caused by an acute rejection of his heart. Dexter’s story is reflective of sweeping failures in the carceral system. Unfortunately, his story is one of many. We’re joined by his children Janelle King and Dexter Barry Jr., who are amplifying their dad’s story to get justice and prevent what happened to him from happening to anyone else.

On Tuesday, June 27, more than a decade after its first introduction in a congressional committee, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act went into effect, changing the landscape of work for all pregnant people. Before this law, many pregnant workers had to decide between protecting their jobs and protecting their health. While there have been efforts in the past to protect pregnant workers, employers have always found loopholes to avoid providing accommodations. Against their judgment and against their doctors’ judgment, pregnant workers have had to lift heavy objects, stand for hours on end, and expose themselves to hazardous chemicals. This will no longer be the case thanks to national advocacy efforts, including those from us here at the ACLU. Today, we’re speaking with Vania Leveille, senior legislative counsel in the ACLU’s National Political Advocacy Department, who will share more about the mammoth undertaking that moved the law to its passage, and Gillian Thomas, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, who will detail what the act looks like in practice.

Ten years ago this July, Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Cullors tweeted #BlackLivesMatter in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death. The hashtag helped galvanize a movement calling out the racism that has deeply affected the lives and deaths of Black people in America since its founding. The Black Lives Matter movement calls for the reimagination of institutions like policing, housing, education, and health care, with the hope of redressing the harms done to historically marginalized communities and building a more just country for all. As we look back on the last 10years since the movement began, and three years since its resurgence following the murder of George Floyd, we want to better understand the history of Black Lives Matter and how it continues to shape American life.  We are joined by Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, who is widely regarded as the nation’s leading reporter on the Black Lives Matter movement. Wesley has been covering BLM since the year it began and has written two books on race in America. His latest, American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress, is a timely account of white Americans’ backlash against evolving discourses on race, identity, and equity. We are excited to speak with him about Black Lives Matter’s evolving legacy, the fervent backlash against it, and where the movement stands today.

Another Supreme Court term has come to a close. This year, the court delivered major decisions on voting rights, free speech, Indigenous sovereignty, and racial justice, among other issues. The ACLU was involved in cases throughout the term and in many ways, our wins exceeded our expectations. However, in the last two days of the term, the court dropped decisions overturning affirmative action, codifying discrimination in the name of “free speech,” and blocking President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Here to help us reconcile our wins and losses and break down the term is returning favorite, David Cole, ACLU’s national legal director.

On Thursday, June 29, in the cases of Students for Fair Admissions. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court — in a 6 to 3 decision — overturned affirmative action in higher education, restricting universities’ ability to fully address systemic racial inequalities that persist in higher education. Affirmative action in higher education has been in place since the 1960s. This decision is the latest in the Supreme Court’s move to break with decades of precedent and undo long-held civil rights. Joining us to unpack the decision is ReNika Moore, director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program.

Nearly one year ago, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court released its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case concerning abortion access in the state of Mississippi. Instead of following decades of precedent set by decisions in other cases involving abortion access that had thus far kept Roe v. Wade intact, five justices broke from precedent, overturning Roe, and with it the federal constitutional right to abortion. For 49 years, Roe granted foundational access to abortion, allowing people who could become pregnant to choose what’s best for them and their families. Since its overturn, states across the country have quickly moved to ban abortion, leaving so many without access. In the last year, we’ve lived the consequences. Losing the right to a legal abortion is calling much of our lives into question, forcing tens of millions of us to contend with a new reality. A few weeks ago, we at the ACLU asked you to share how your life has been impacted by the overturn of Roe and the abortion bans that followed. We received hundreds of submissions from folks all across the country. Your lives have changed in innumerable ways since just this time last year.

This year has brought a new level of anti-democratic behavior, particularly in state houses and legislatures. In March, Rep. Mauree Turner from Oklahoma was censured for offering a protester the use of an office in the aftermath of an arrest. In April, two Tennessee state representatives, Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, were ousted for speaking up for their constituents protesting against gun violence. And then in May, Rep. Zooey Zephyr was censured for her vocal opposition to a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. The retaliation experienced by these elected officials hints at the growing vulnerability of the right to express dissent in politics and government, a worrying trend. The rise in bans attacking the LGBTQ community is being met with protest, the foundational American mechanism we have for showing disapproval and standing up for our values in our representative democracy. When that right to dissent is threatened, we all are threatened, and the LGBTQ community is put even further at risk. Joining us today to talk about this silencing effect are Rep. Zooey Zephyr from Montana and Rep. Mauree Turner from Oklahoma.

As legislatures across the country enact anti-LGBTQ bills, one group has taken center stage in our national conversation: trans youth. Of the 491 anti-LGBTQ bills that we are tracking in this legislative session, 118 are bills seeking to restrict or ban gender-affirming care for trans kids. In the midst of all of this we are losing sight of the big picture. Trans kids are simply kids. And they’d like everyone else to let them be that. They don’t want to have to grow up fast, or be thrust into the spotlight. They want to manage their cheer team, build robots in their bedrooms, and go to homecoming with their friends. So today, we’re passing them the mic, because well, the adults are talking too much and need to sit down and listen.

On this podcast, we have covered book banning and education censorship a few times before, but the way we see it, bans and revisionist histories thrive in our silence. Despite the recent attention surrounding the onslaught of CRT bans, the suppression of certain histories isn’t new. Indigenous history and Indigenous issues have long been underreported and even erased, sidelining Indigenous folks and their experiences from the national conversation. This is one of the most active mechanisms of oppression of Indigenous Americans — erasure — erasure of history, culture, and language. Make no mistake, CRT bans are just the latest euphemisms — and violent tools — for cultural genocide. This story is playing out across the country, especially in South Dakota where the governor and state legislature of South Dakota have introduced multiple bills over the last two years aiming to dramatically dilute Indigenous history and culture in the school curriculum. Today, we will be hearing from Wyatt Hunter, a recent high school graduate from South Dakota and Sarah White, Founder & Executive Director of the South Dakota Education Equity Coalition (SDEEC), about the fight for Indigenous education in South Dakota.

Today, we are celebrating the ending of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with a conversation with legendary drag performer Sasha Colby. For the last 20 years, Colby has been one of the most celebrated names in drag and last month, she added another accolade to the list: winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Colby’s win is historic, marking the first time a first trans woman of color and a Native Hawaiian contestant has won the competition. Colby’s victory comes at a fraught time for the communities she proudly represents. Towards the end of 2022, lawmakers in six states proposed bills to ban drag in public or in the presence of minors. On April 1st, Tennessee became the first state in the country to ban drag performances anywhere in the presence of someone under 18 years old, which thankfully was temporarily blocked by a judge. So far in 2023, politicians across the country have introduced nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills overwhelmingly targeting trans people and trans youth specifically. All of these efforts rely on antiquated anti-LGBTQ ideas and tropes that are dangerous. Now more than ever, representation of trans people living and thriving is important, and Sasha has dedicated herself and her craft to this for nearly two decades. Sasha Colby joins us today to talk about what it means to be the first Native Hawaiian winner of Drag Race, her storied career, and what drag means in America right now.

Today, we're focusing on Chicago — the country's third largest (and one of the most diverse) cities, and a city that has been a blueprint for housing segregation. While the discriminatory practice of racial redlining was officially outlawed in 1968, the practice still reverberates throughout the city today. For every dollar loaned by banks in Chicago’s white neighborhoods, they invest just 12 cents in the city’s Black neighborhoods, and 13 cents in Latino areas, according to a 2020 study by WBEZ and City Bureau. A typical household’s wealth in the richest area of Chicago is 206 times higher than a typical household’s wealth in the poorest area. This continued inequity lies at the crux of the city’s ongoing struggles against gun and gang violence, unemployment, and homelessness, but are often overlooked. The system was designed to create these problems, and has worked as intended. Now, it’s time to learn how so many Chicagoans were set up to struggle, and how we can all be a part of undoing the legacy of racism that pervades the city’s maps. Here to talk to us about Chicago’s infamous housing history, ongoing consequences, and nationwide influence, is Mike Amezcua, associate history professor at Georgetown University and author of “Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification.”

The social media platform TikTok has had a meteoric rise. The app has become a hub for educators, activists, and creatives to influence all aspects of culture. From launching dance trends, catapulting decades old books onto best sellers lists, to educating voters and organizing changemakers, TikTok has become key to how over 150 million users across the United States create, engage, and learn. But a new movement has risen to ban the app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. Lawmakers at the state and federal level are growing concerned over the prospect of American users' data becoming accessible to the Chinese government. While data privacy is a concern across all social media apps, the singling out of TikTok out points to an anti-Asian sentiment that is racist. What’s more: The banning of a social media app would be a dangerous act of censorship on the free speech of so many Americans. Today, we will hear from three TikTok creators about what brought them to TikTok and why the platform has become a nexus of organizing, education, and entertainment for young Americans. Then Ashley Gorski, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s National Security Project will help us unpack the bans.

As soon as a week from today, the Biden administration could implement a policy that would force people to seek asylum and wait for an answer in Mexico, or another country they passed through, with limited exceptions. The proposed change is based off of a Trump-era policy that the ACLU fought in court, and which President Biden previously condemned. It also stands in direct violation of United States asylum laws and will lead people fleeing violence and persecution to face avoidable harm. President Biden campaigned on promises to restore and strengthen the asylum process. Instead of re-committing the United States to its promise of upholding international humanitarian practices, his administration plans to replace the inhumane Title 42 policy enacted under the Trump administration with a similarly dangerous one, taken straight from the Trump administration's playbook. Baine Bookey, legal director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, and Katrina Eiland, managing attorney for the ACLU’s Immigrants' Rights Project, join us today to unpack this rule, the harm it will cause thousands of people, and to explain what the asylum process should look like.

The ACLU is tracking 452 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S. this legislative session. Of those 452, 118 are anti-trans health care bills, and there’s a slew of trans athlete bans, public accommodations bans, drag bans, and education gag orders about gender identity, sexuality, and expression. We’re experiencing an unprecedented surge in attacks on trans people in particular, and trans kids most specifically. In Missouri, the attorney general announced new restrictions on trans healthcare that are the first of their kind, limiting care for both kids AND adults. The rule is currently scheduled to take effect Monday and while the ACLU of Missouri and their partners have filed a petition to seek a temporary restraining order to block implementation of the rule, we haven’t heard back yet. It’s still pending in court. So many attacks are being levied at once against trans people all across the country. It’s hard to keep up. The speed and viciousness are at a level beyond what we’ve witnessed in our history. So today, we’re getting an update from Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s Deputy Director for Trans Justice with the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project, because losing track of what’s happening or losing energy in the fight against these attacks is not an option.

This 4/20, we want to talk about a tool that can be used to address the horrific consequences of the war on drugs: clemency. Throughout U.S. history, presidents, and governors have had the power to grant clemency, either by pardoning people of their crimes or reducing their sentences. Clemency can be used as a check on the criminal legal system, which often imposes unjustifiably harsh sentences and disproportionately criminalizes Black and Brown people, disabled people, and poor people. As Americans grapple with the racism and punitive spirit that fueled mass incarceration, more and more advocates have called on chief executives to use their power to confront racial injustice and end imprisonment that is no longer just or justified. Few issues highlight the importance of clemency more than the unequal treatment of drug convictions. Of the 1.9 million people who are currently incarcerated in the U.S.,191,000 are in jail or prison for drug related convictions. Today, many of these convictions would be erroneous, as many states adopt public health approaches to drug use and move towards legalizing marijuana in particular. Today, we are going to look at the redemptive hope clemency can provide, both to people and the criminal legal system as a whole. We are joined by Kemba Smith, who received clemency in 2000 and has been a prominent criminal justice reform advocate ever since, and Cynthia Roseberry, Acting Director of the ACLU’s Justice Division and key leader on Clemency 2014, a historic initiative of more than 4,000 lawyers who represented over 36,000 clients as they went through the presidential clemency process.

On Friday, April 7th, the Tennessee state legislature voted to expel two out of the three state representatives, Representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, who protested on the chamber floor in the wake of a mass shooting that killed six people, including three nine-year-old children. Now, their expulsion was an unprecedented move, completely disregarding typical norms of democracy and also the will of voters. No Tennessee House member has ever been removed from elected office for simply violating decorum rules. This week, both Representative Pearson and Jones were reinstated to their elected seats in the State House, but the damage has been done. Here to unpack all that has happened in Tennessee this week. As Jeff Preptit, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Tennessee.

The U.S. is the only developed democracy that strips voting rights from its people on the basis of a criminal conviction. An estimated 4.6 million Americans across the country are barred from casting ballots. Now to give a sense of scope — this number is larger than the voting-eligible population of New Jersey. At the ACLU, we believe that when we suppress the voting rights of any group of people, our democracy weakens. In order to live up the full ideal of a constitutional democracy, everyone must be given the right and access to vote. The good news is that many states are starting to agree with us. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen states slowly improve access to those formerly or currently incarcerated and all of these movements, are victories worthy of celebration. That’s why today, we are taking a moment to recognize a big victory in Minnesota where the state passed the Restore the Vote bill just about a month ago, giving 55,000 Minnesotans the power to cast their vote in the next local, state, or federal election after they serve their time but before they finish their parole or probation. We are joined by Jennifer Schroeder, an advocate and plaintiff in an ACLU and ACLU of Minnesota lawsuit that challenged the previous voting restriction, and Julie Ebenstein, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, to discuss how this change has a meaningful positive impact on everyone.

This Friday, we celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility, an opportunity to celebrate the many contributions trans people have made to society as well as raise awareness for the work that needs to be done to achieve gender equality for all.  We are currently witnessing a wave of anti-trans legislation across the country, but the criminalization of trans people is nothing new. For over 20 years, Louisiana’s Crime Against Nature by Solicitation law (or CANS for short) made offering certain sexual acts for money a felony, with penalties including up to 5 years in prison, hard labor, and mandatory registration on the sex offender database. These harsh penalties never applied to the state’s other anti-sex work laws, and were specifically designed to target queer people, especially Black trans women. Louisiana strengthened CANS in 1992 and by 2011, 40 percent of people on the New Orleans sex offender registry were convicted under CANS. Of that, 75 percent were women, and 79 percent were Black. Our guests today have been fighting to make New Orleans a safer place for transgender and gender non-conforming people in the face of this pernicious law that targets and criminalizes them. In addition to building spaces for Black trans women to rest, learn, live and thrive, Wendi Cooper and Milan Nicole Sherry have dedicated their lives to repealing the law that once threatened their own lives. A recent documentary, "CANS Can’t Stand," highlights Wendi, Milan, and others’ fight against CANS and efforts to build community for trans women in New Orleans and beyond. We are so excited to speak with them all about their tenacious activism and the experience of releasing “CANS Can't Stand” at a time of such backlash against LGBTQ rights and representation.

Keeping kids safe is one of our greatest responsibilities as adults. But what if the main tool we use to protect children is actually preventing everyone from getting the resources they need? Every state in the nation has mandatory reporting laws that require professions such as teachers, coaches, nurses, and more to report any suspected or observed instances of child abuse to the state. While this sounds logical, its application has effectively made a surveillance apparatus out of educators, health care, and social workers, which leaves the families most in need of help afraid to ask for it, at the risk of opening an investigation.    The pitfalls of mandatory reporting are especially evident in Pennsylvania. In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed sweeping reforms expanding mandatory reporting and the definition of child abuse to include low-level neglectful circumstances that often arise from poverty. Since reforms were implemented in 2014, reports have skyrocketed, but recent studies have shown that this increase has not turned up any additional victims of child abuse but has rather over-stretched the system. Within the first five years of the reforms, one million calls were made to the state’s child abuse hotline. 800,000 regarded low-level neglect allegations stemming from poverty, and nine in ten were dismissed following traumatic housing searches and family questioning that disproportionately target Black and brown families.  
Here to help explain the mandatory reporting system and its consequences are Director of Client Voice at Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services, April Lee, who experienced firsthand how mandatory reporting can traumatize families, and Anjana Samant, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project

Today we are talking about one of the most revolutionary forces in America — teenage girls. Throughout history, teenage girls have consistently stood on the frontlines for change. At 16, Sybil Ludington outran Paul Revere in warning American troops of the impending threat of the British. At 15, Barbara Johns staged a school boycott that helped initiate Brown v. Board of Education. At 19, Heather Tobis tried to help herself and other girls around her navigate a pre-Roe world by starting Jane — a clandestine network that connected young women with access to safe abortions. Never heard of these girls? Yeah, neither had we. The achievements and contributions of girls and young women are often under-recorded and dismissed. A new book, "Young and Restless: the Girls who Sparked America’s Revolutions," by Mattie Kahn interrupts this cycle of erasure. Mattie brings to the forefront girls' and young women’s trail-blazing activism, from the labor movement of the late 19th century to the fight against climate change now. Author, writer, and editor Mattie Kahn joins us today to talk about the revolutionary power of girls, the challenges they face, and how they rise up consistently to meet the moment.

It’s March, which means it’s Women’s History Month. This month, we’ll speak with women about their activism and resistance to fight for their rights and those around them. Today, we’re talking about the very sexy idea of constitutional interpretation. The Constitution, like any text, is open to interpretation. Where this gets hairy is when different judges, or justices, have vastly different methods of interpretation, typically based on their own bias, education, and lived experience. Where it gets even hairier is when women’s rights are on the line, and when one certain theory of constitutional interpretation is applied — one in which women aren’t even people in the eyes of the law. It’s called originalism. Originalism dictates that present day readings of the Constitution should be dependent on the document’s “original public meaning,” meaning that we have to look back to the time of the Constitution’s writing and ratification to interpret its intent. The problem is that only certain people at that time had civil rights at all: white, land-owning men. While initially this was a fringe theory, originalism has grown to become a dominant legal framework, one followed by five of the nine justices on the Supreme Court. Many legal scholars are alarmed at its increased use because the stakes are so high. In decisions across the country, originalism is being used to threaten the safety of women and bodily autonomy at large. As our guest Madiba K. Dennie wrote, “American law has not historically been good to women, and whatever progress there once was is now vulnerable to regression.” Madiba K. Dennie, former counsel at the Brennan Center’s Democracy program, recently explored the consequences of using the Constitution in this way in an article for The Atlantic, “Originalism is going to get women killed.” She joins us today to discuss.

Housing is the bedrock of American society, and one of the major determinants for life outcomes like health, income, and educational opportunity. Because of its importance, housing has long been the site of discriminatory policies aimed at marginalizing Black and Brown people in America, be it through zoning, redlining, crime free housing ordinances, racial steering, and more. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 aimed to address this history and outlaw discrimination, but vague guidelines and weak enforcement mechanisms have left a lot unaddressed. In January, the Biden administration reinstated the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, which adds federal heft to the Fair Housing Act and mandates that localities submit plans for actively addressing segregation and proposes that cities and states that fail to meaningfully work towards their stated goal could face loss of funding. Throughout her career in civil rights law, ACLU President Deborah Archer has studied housing discrimination and infrastructure. She’s the Associate Dean and Co-Director of Clinical and Advocacy Programs, Professor of Clinical Law, and Co-Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Inequality and the Law — all at the NYU School of Law. We’re excited to have her here today to give us a primer on housing discrimination and explain why it’s part of the ACLU’s push for equitable systems across so many facets of society.

Today, we’re digging into the archives and sharing one of our most celebratory episodes, because we all need a little joy, right? Please enjoy former ACLU staff attorney Lizzy Watson and her conversation with award-winning artist, Jon Batiste. You may have seen him on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” where he’s been the music director and bandleader since 2015. You may have heard him on the soundtrack of the Pixar-animated film “Soul” where he performed and composed the jazz portion of the score. Or you may have experienced his live performances in the streets of New York City with his band Stay Human during the pandemic lockdown, the protests of 2020, or during one of his “love riots” – a spontaneous show in the streets where the musicians stand among the crowd and exchange in the energy of the music and the moment. We’ll talk to him about his New Orleans roots, his most recent album “We Are,” and his commitment to creating music that celebrates his culture and aims to unite us all.

Over the past two years, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of books being banned or challenged in school districts across the country. While here's a long history of book banning and censorship in America, over the 2021 to 2022 school year book banning reached an unprecedented high. What's even more worrying about this increased censorship is which stories are being censored. The majority of the books being targeted by these bans contain LGBTQ storylines and protagonists of color. Here today to talk with us about book banning and how we can all show up in the fight against censorship is George M. Johnson. Their memoir, All Boys Aren't Blue, explores themes of gender identity, sexual orientation and race. As Johnson shares their experience growing up black and queer in New Jersey and Virginia. All Boys Aren't Blue was published in 2020 and has become one of the top five most banned books in the country.

Since the repeal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the fight for reproductive freedom has increasingly centered on medication abortion. The two pill regimen allows pregnant people to safely terminate pregnancies, with medicine alone. Since the FDA approved one of the medications used, mifepristone, in 2000, the method has grown to now account for 54% of abortions performed nationwide. For that reason, anti-abortion advocates view it as a threat and are looking to take mifepristone off of shelves across in the U.S. That is the goal behind a lawsuit filed in November 2022 by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The ADF is suing the FDA to rescind its approval of mifepristone. If the suit is successful, it could drastically limit access to medication abortion across the country and force millions of Americans seeking abortions to undergo operations, carry unwanted pregnancies to term, not have access to miscarriage care, and more. This nightmare is already playing out and causing pain and trauma for people who can get pregnant in the 12 states where abortion is banned, and this lawsuit could bring these realities to all 50 states. The stakes are so high. Here to talk with us about this dangerous lawsuit, the importance of mifepristone for reproductive healthcare, and how the ACLU is showing up to preserve reproductive care nationwide is Andy Beck, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project.

February marks Black History Month, an opportunity to celebrate the contributions Black Americans have made to society. And today, we're going to be celebrating that. But before that. Given the themes of this episode, we want to acknowledge the brutal murder of Tyree Nichols and the violence towards high schooler Tauris Sledge, both by police. This horrific violence only adds to the urgent call for alternatives to policing in America. And this conversation today is about imagining and realizing those alternatives. As it turns out, it's been done before, and Black Americans have always led the way. This conversation was recorded before recent events, so we don't address them directly, but we do dive into the possibility of a better vision for our country. Advocates are rightly calling for communities to slash police budgets and reinvest that funding into community health services. These calls have been met with varying degrees of buy in, with some claiming that they are too idealistic or even naive. But all we need to do is to look to Black history to prove that these naysayers are wrong. This has been done before. This is the story of our country's first ambulance service, an alternative to policing that became a model used across the country. Freedom House was founded in Pittsburgh's historically Black neighborhood, The Hill, in 1967. Back then, police were responding to all health emergencies, a service they were not effectively providing, particularly to Black communities at a time when the US was deeply segregated and reeling from the civil rights movement. Freedom House provided both life saving health care and career advancement for Hill residents who are both underserved and often overlooked by society. Here to talk with us about the Freedom House, its ongoing legacy, the importance of community based emergency response, and why alternatives to policing are both so important and so possible, are John Moon, former Freedom House EMT and retired assistant chief of Pittsburgh's Emergency Medical Service, and Brandon Buskey, director of the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project.

Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, is the largest maximum-security adult prison in the US. Angola is the perfect symbol for the criminal legal system’s ongoing legacy of racism. It’s transformed from a slave plantation to a camp for mostly Black laborers exploited by convict leasing, all before becoming a prison. For over a century, Angola has been a site of human rights abuses, which continue to this day. This fall, a new chapter of horror began on its grounds: the detention of children in the same cell block that once held incarcerated people awaiting the death penalty. In August, the ACLU and partner organizations filed a class action suit, Alex A v. Edwards, seeking to block the transfer of children to Angola. The lawsuit is pending, and in October, the state began moving children as young as 14 into Angola, a move that violates state and federal laws. Here to talk to us about how we got here and how the ACLU and community partners are continuing to fight the avoidable and unconstitutional detention of children in Angola are Gina Womack, executive director and co-founder, Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children, and Tammie Gregg, Deputy Director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.

January 22nd marks the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that codified the right to an abortion. But this year on January 22nd, we’ll largely remember this anniversary as the one that wasn’t. For 49 years, Roe helped to allow people who could become pregnant decide what was best for them and their families, but on June 24th, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. Since then, bans on abortion have taken effect in 13 states, and courts have blocked abortion bans in 9 others, according to the New York Times abortion ban tracker, though this is constantly changing. On this anniversary episode, we are going to look at the reality that people are facing in a post-Roe America, both those seeking care and those providing it. Without Roe, a key component of reproductive care has become illegal or restricted for more than 20 million people, throwing many into painful and life-threatening situations. We are joined by Community Organizer, Kaitlyn Joshua, who experienced firsthand how new restrictions on abortion endanger the lives and wellbeing of pregnant people and Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, an ob/gyn, reproductive health educator, author, and Executive Director of Mayday Health, an organization focused on providing information on abortion access and options for people, regardless of where they live.

Last year, the LGBTQ community faced an onslaught of scrutiny and threats, from bills banning trans youth from participating in sports, to bans on gender-affirming care for trans youth. Towards the end of the year, another front for legislative and violent attacks emerged: drag shows. As drag reality competitions and drag brunches become increasingly popular, backlash in the form of armed protests and intimidation of drag performers has followed. In November, an Oklahoma bakeshop had a molotov cocktail thrown through its window after hosting a drag show. Later that same month, a shooter entered a Colorado Springs drag show and opened fire, killing five people and injuring over 20 more. In December, far right groups such as the Patriot Front and Proud Boys showed up to a drag story hour in Columbus, Ohio, armed while others held up signs with slogans like "groomers not welcome" and "groomers are child abusers." These are, unfortunately, not one offs. GLAAD reported that drag events faced 141 protests and serious threats in 2022. Towards the end of 2022, lawmakers in six states proposed bills to ban drag in public or in the presence of minors. Amidst this wave of anti-drag legislation and violence, drag performers and host venues across the country are moving to higher security or cancel performances altogether. Despite this risk, drag performers are mobilizing to resist this most recent wave of discrimination and can count on the ACLU to support the fight against drag censorship. Here to talk with us about drag censorship and the tools to defend this expression are Peppermint, notable drag performer and ACLU's Artist Ambassador for Transgender Justice, and Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's Speech Privacy and Technology Project.

Happy New Year. It's so good to be back with you. Often on At Liberty, we detail what is happening in the field of civil rights and public interest law, from an issue perspective. This week we're doing something a little different. We're highlighting the people behind that work, specifically the contributions of women and non-binary people to the movement of resistance law. Women weren't always allowed to be lawyers. In fact, in 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court said that women had no constitutional right to practice law. Thanks to women who fought back, that is no longer our reality. And actually, it's quite the opposite. Women are now seen, celebrated and remembered at the highest levels of the practice. This advancement is due to the work of hidden figures throughout history, like Pauli Murray, for example, who you'll hear more about today. We're sharing a conversation between two women lawyers. ACLU's very own senior staff attorney, Gillian Thomas, is in conversation with Dahlia Lithwick, legal journalist and author of the new book Lady Justice. Together, they discuss Dahlia's new book that traces the history of women in law and highlights the work of women lawyers, most notably since 2016, who've taken up the mantle to fight back against injustice that oppresses the most marginalized and threatens all of us. Dahlia argues that in a constitutional democracy, like our own power is for the taking and that women have heeded that call and stepped into their arena to fight.

For this special holiday episode, we handed the reins over to the ACLU kids. Together, with their adults, they talk about what we do to fight for civil rights and civil liberties. You’ll hear from our ACLU family all across the country and they have some pretty interesting insights to share. We hope you enjoy!

As we near the end of the year, we are bringing you an episode of reflection. A lot has happened in the world, in our country and in our work at the ACLU. While we have weathered devastating losses like the overturn of Roe v. Wade this past summer, there are still meaningful victories we can celebrate this year and build on in the coming year. We’ve successfully fought back in courts all across the country on behalf of abortion access, racist and homophobic education gag orders, immigrant rights, voting rights and so much more. So today we are regrouping with the ACLU’s National Legal Director, David Cole, to talk through where we can find hope this year and also where we can continue to press forward.

In August of this year, President Biden followed through on a campaign promise to help debt-drowning college students pay off their loans. He announced a loan forgiveness program acknowledging that the total cost of both four-year public and private college has nearly tripled over the last 40 years…and that’s after accounting for inflation. A variety of court cases have been brought against Biden’s plan blocking the U.S. Department of Education from moving forward. Just last week, the Supreme Court agreed to weigh in on one of them -- Nebraska v. Biden, that will determine whether or not the Biden administration overstepped its authority in using the HEROS Act -- an act that allows the administration to change payments on student loans during times of national emergency -- to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for nearly 40 million Americans. The oral arguments are set for February. Thankfully while this issue pends in court, the administration extended a pause on federal student loan payments so that borrowers are protected. At the ACLU, we believe the student debt crisis is a racial justice issue depriving Black and Brown Americans important social and economic mobility. Here to discuss how we got here, the litigation at hand, and why this issue is one of racial justice and systemic equality is Persis Yu. She is the Deputy Executive Director and Managing Counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center, a group leading the charge in advocating for forgiveness.

When Ice-T and his band, Body Count, released the song “Cop Killer” in 1992, it spurred outrage. At the time, Bill Clinton and George Bush were running for president, and condemning “Cop Killer” was among the handful of stances where they found common ground. Officials and police departments called for a complete boycott of Time Warner Inc. for refusing to halt the sales of the song. In response, Time Warner publicly stated its unshakable commitment to stand by freedom of expression and argued that “Cop Killer” is an "artist's rap on how a person in the street feels." "It's a shout of pain and protest," and "raw with rage and resentment." Professor Carrie Fried of Winona State University conducted a long study that year in an attempt to contextualize this dialogue in research; she found that participants exhibited several implicit biases. they were more likely to find one of two songs with the same lyrical content more threatening and offensive if they thought it came from a Black artist or fell under the genre of rap. She also found that participants were quick to pin violent lyrics on the rap genre, even when they came from folk songs. So what happens when these implicit biases sit on the jury in a real criminal case? Across the country, rap lyrics are on trial as prosecutors pull from the expressive words of artists, and judges deem these songs to be admissible evidence in court. Joining us today to discuss this evolution of this practice is Erik Nielson, professor at the University of Richmond and co-author of the book Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America. We are also joined by New Orleans rapper, songwriter, and former member of the 504boyz Mac Phipps, who experienced firsthand how the use of lyrics on trial can lead to a wrongful conviction.

This week as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, we want to challenge our listeners to acknowledge and honor the day as a National Day of Mourning for indigenous people. The truth of this holiday isn’t that white people from Europe and the Wampanoag people in Plymouth, Massachusetts sat down to eat a nice meal together, celebrating a fall harvest. The true story of Thanksgiving is one of brutal genocide, theft of land, and the beginning of a relentless assault on native people and culture. This is a hard truth, but it is one we must acknowledge in order to reconcile our past and do better in the future. As we gather with family and friends, we encourage you to bring this conversation to bear. Today we’re running a conversation from our archive featuring indigenous artist and educator Josué Rivas in conversation with Molly Kaplan, one of At Liberty’s old hosts. Josué is a visual storyteller, educator, creative director, and self-described “Indigenous futurist.” He descended from the Mexica Otomi peoples. He aims to challenge the “mainstream narrative about Indigenous peoples,” and to “be a visual messenger for those in the shadows of our society.” His work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, and National Geographic — to name a few publications. He is also the founder of the 2018 Standing Strong Project, a tribute to the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota, and co-founder of Natives Photograph, a database for photo editors looking to hire indigenous photographers in North America.

This week, we are re-airing a conversation we had with Alok Vaid-Menon in early June, before we had the final Dobbs decision. Alok’s work is always salient but with the recent midterm election results showing an overwhelming affirmation of reproductive access, we believe their call for transformative thinking around gender essentialism and bodily autonomy is a way both to celebrate the wins at the polls and drive us towards a more expansive and imaginative vision of what’s possible from here. Alok Vaid-Menon is a nonbinary writer, performer, public speaker, activist and artist exploring the themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public, Beyond the Gender Binary, and Your Wound/My Garden. Alok has done a lot of work to interrogate their history, our collective history, and to probe beneath the surface of what we’ve come to accept as the norm. They challenge us all to use our imagination to re-wire what we believe is possible for ourselves and society around us. This is a really special conversation and our team, quite honestly, all felt gob-smacked by Alok’s perspective. We let this conversation run long because we wanted you all to experience it and take it in as we did.

This week, voters went to the polls to elect their representatives at every level of government. Most notably for us at the ACLU, the midterms are the first opportunity to get a national sense of where voters are sitting on abortion access since the June overturn of Roe v. Wade. We are also on guard watching for voting rights violations and are eager to make sure every ballot is counted. So far we are cautiously optimistic and hopeful about the positive progress for civil rights and civil liberties and so today we are checking in with the experts, the morning after election day, to see how they’re feeling about the future of our reproductive freedom and voting rights work. Joining us are J.J. Straight, the ACLU’s Liberty Division Deputy Director and Zara Haq, a Senior Campaign Strategist, both J.J. and Zara sit in our National Political Advocacy Department. Text ACT to 82623 to sign up for ongoing, automated text alerts from ACLU and its affiliates about ways to take action and support the ACLU Organizations. Msg & Data Rates May Apply. Text STOP to cancel or HELP for info. https://www.aclu.org/privacypolicy

The midterm elections are just around the corner. On Tuesday, November 8th, all across the country will vote for our representatives in Congress and in our state government. On the ballot, we have 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats, 27 secretary of state seats, and many more positions to vote for. We know that midterms can be hard to piece through. There's so much information. Down ballot races don't get a lot of airtime, and many states have important ballot initiatives to consider. The ACLU is a nonpartisan organization, so we don't tell voters who to vote for, but we do inform voters about what's at stake in an election. So here is what's at stake. Abortion access is on the ballot, and so are LGBTQ rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, and criminal, legal and criminal legal reform. To help break it all down. We have a special episode today that will arm you with all that you need to know in order to vote your values at the polls. Joining as our resident guide is Kary Moss, the ACLU's Acting National Political Director and the Director of Affiliate Support and Nationwide Initiatives. Additional Resources: https://go.peoplepower.org/signup/vote-your-values/?redirect=volunteer https://www.aclu.org/vote-your-values?redirect=voteyourvalues

On November 9th, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Brackeen vs. Haaland. At the center of the case are the future of Indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty. The case involves the Indian Child Welfare Act, otherwise known as ICWA, an act that was passed in the 1970s to protect native children from removal from their community and culture and to keep families together. Texas, together with individual plaintiffs, allege that ICWA is unconstitutional because they say it violates the Equal Protection Clause and discriminates against non-native families looking to adopt native children. But honoring tribal sovereignty isn't about discrimination or race. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of Indigenous rights. To learn more about the case, the threat to Indigenous rights and the reasons that ICWA was enacted in the first place, we spoke with Jamie Nelson, a Choinumni Yokuts man and a survivor of pre-ICWA separation abuse, and Stephanie Amiotte, Legal Director for the ACLU of South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming.

The Supreme Court is set to hear a case this term that could upend the very foundation of our democracy: free and fair elections. In the case of Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court will decide whether the North Carolina Supreme Court has the power to strike down the legislature’s gerrymandered congressional map for violating the state’s Constitution. The North Carolina legislators are arguing for an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution — known as the "independent state legislature theory” — that would render the state’s other branches of government and their checks and balances powerless in matters relating to federal elections, giving full power to partisan-majority state legislatures to determine how votes are cast and counted. While this all may sound a little weedy, the stakes loom large. If the court sides with the North Carolina State legislature, Moore v. Harper, could change the face of our national elections and the rules that govern them. Joining us today to help break it all down are the ACLU’s National Legal Director David Cole and Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, Ari Savitzky, who also happened to write the ACLU’s amicus brief for the case.

It’s October, which means it’s LGBTQ History Month, a time to remember, look back and celebrate the history of LGBTQ activism and the resulting progress. It’s also a time to acknowledge the work still to be done and understand the roots of systemic discrimination and inequality. To that end, our fight continues. On October 17th, the ACLU is headed to District court in Arkansas to argue the case of Brandt v. Rutledge, where we are challenging Arkansas’s law banning health care for transgender adolescents. Today, we have a special conversation for you. We’re hearing from Gillian Branstetter, communications strategist for the ACLU’s gender justice work in conversation with Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project and Jules Gill-Peterson, an Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Histories of the Transgender Child. Together, they’ll break down the case ahead of us and the history that brought us here.

If you live in a state where abortions have been banned since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, accessing abortion is a huge challenge. But unfortunately, access is not the only challenge -- pursuing an abortion without leaving a trace poses another huge hurdle. If you search for resources online, if you get in your car and travel, who you text, if you ship pills to your house -- will the state find out? In our daily lives, many of our actions are tracked for consumption and utilization by various companies and organizations. That data could now be used against you if you seek an abortion. We are used to hearing people shrug off data surveillance concerns. The saying from digital privacy naysayers goes: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. But now, we maybe have something new to hide, and therefore maybe something new to fear. Today, we are digging into data privacy in a post-Roe world and learning both what we individually can do to best keep our data safe and what we can ask of data collectors and government officials to help us in our pursuit of privacy. Joining us is Jennifer Granick, Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel, for the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Additional Resources: From the Digital Defense Fund, How to Keep Your Abortion Private & Secure: https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy From the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Surveillance Self-Defense: https://ssd.eff.org/en

On October 4th, the Supreme Court is set to hear Milligan v. Merrill, a case that would undermine Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. At question is Alabama’s new congressional map, a map that underwent what is called racial gerrymandering or racial redistricting, diluting Black Alabamans’ voting power. The case’s outcome will determine the future of voting rights in America. Joining us today, our plaintiff in the case Shalela Dowdy, Organizer, Veteran, law student and resident of Mobile and Davin Rosborough, Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project who is on the litigation team for the case.

On August 2nd, voters in Kansas came out in droves to protect abortion access in the state through a ballot measure. It was the first opportunity for voters to cast their support for abortion access since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. For many, Kansas was proof in the pudding: Americans overwhelmingly support reproductive rights. This November, a slew of other states have ballot measures that will similarly allow the people to decide if abortion will be protected in their state. In Michigan, the measure was only just recently added to the ballot after 750,000 people signed a petition to ensure that Michiganders would have a choice to protect abortion access in their state Constitution. To protect abortion access in a post-Roe reality, we need to pursue every avenue possible, including at the ballot box. Today, we’re speaking with Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom who led the ballot measure to a sweeping victory for reproductive rights. And, also, Connie Kross, a retiree-turned-repro-rights-champion who volunteers for Reproductive Freedom For All, the ballot measure campaign in Michigan. These two have rolled up their sleeves and recruited their friends, family and neighbors to do the same. They are not turning back. And neither are we.

It’s back to school season! And, this week we are digging into the wild world of dress codes. Clothes, like most things, have the power we give them. Sometimes they are a way to craft or express identity and sometimes they are just pieces of fabric stitched together to help us get through our days. In school, certain kinds of clothes are given more power and more scrutiny than others. In school, certain kinds of clothes and style can get you in trouble. At the ACLU, we believe that school dress codes are tricky and they can be ripe venues for the discrimination and censorship of young people. In this episode we will hear from Kayla, a track athlete originally from Albany High School who found herself and her teammates suspended for their dress code violation. We’ll also chat with Linda Morris, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project who will break down why we got involved.

It’s September and we’re back! Did you miss us? We missed you. So happy to be back and bringing you a very timely episode for the back to school season. In August, the ACLU along with partner organizations, filed a challenge to Florida's Stop W.O.K.E. Act, a censorship law which restricts educators and students from learning and talking about issues related to race and gender in the classroom. This isn’t the first law we’ve seen like this: education gag orders have been introduced in 40 states, and nearly 20 states across the country have passed these kinds of laws. Florida’s law, we argue, violates the First and 14th Amendments by imposing viewpoint-based restrictions on educators and students that are both vague and discriminatory. Additionally, the laws violates the Equal Protection Clause because it was enacted with the intent to discriminate against Black educators and students. Today we’re digging in and speaking with two of our clients who are impacted by this law as well as one of the ACLU’s lead attorneys on the case.

Last month, the California Reparations Task Force released an interim report detailing California’s history of slavery and its impact on the state. The task force was created in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Its goal is to examine what a reparations program in the state could look like. The idea of reparations for slavery itself is not new. It stems from the value of enslaved labor, which, in 1860, was estimated at over 3 billion dollars. This forced labor built the backbone of the American economy but enslaved people nor their descendants have ever seen the economic benefit from their labor. In fact, Black Americans have systematically been denied opportunities to build and accumulate wealth since the country’s founding.Advocates of reparations argue this is one of the most effective ways to decrease the racialized wealth gap. Joining us today Tammerlin Drummond, a communications strategist at the ACLU of Northern California and Brandon Greene, director of the racial and economic justice program at the ACLU of Northern California, Brandon Greene. Tammerlin is also the host of Gold Chains, a podcast that explores California’s ties to slavery, and Brandon worked with the California Reparations Task Force, helping build the interim report. To learn more about the Gold Chains project, visit: https://www.aclunc.org/sites/goldchains/index.html

Today, we are bringing you a conversation celebrating Disability Pride Month, which is July. This conversation with actress and singer Ali Stroker was recorded last year, but we think it has the same resonance today. We talk to Ali about disability identity and representation in the media. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Roll the tape! Across the top 100 movies of 2019 only 2.3% of all speaking characters had a disability. What’s more, the rare times we do see a character with a disability, they aren’t played by someone with a disability. In fact, one study found that in the top 10 TV shows for 2018 only 12% of disabled characters were played by disabled actors. In contrast, around 133 million Americans live with visible or invisible disabilities — that’s 40% of the public. To put it plainly, there’s A LOT of room for improvement. Enter Ali Stroker, a singer and actress phenom who became both the first person using a wheelchair to perform on Broadway and the first person using a wheelchair to win a Tony award. Ali, in many ways, has put disability on the media map, landing roles in film, television, theater and even writing a children’s book. She joins us on At Liberty to discuss the importance of the representation and celebration of disability in the entertainment industry and beyond.

It was a few days after the overturn of Roe v. Wade when a doctor in Louisiana prescribed a medication to make the insertion of an IUD, a form of birth control, less painful for a patient. The medication has several uses. One of them is to act as the second part of a two-drug protocol used to terminate a pregnancy. The pharmacy called the prescribing physician to ask if the prescription was for an abortion. When she told them it was for an IUD insertion, the pharmacist still refused to give out the medication, leaving the patient without the medication for her procedure. This is one of the ways Roe’s overturn has already impacted access to other kinds of reproductive care. We worry this will not only continue but get worse. Today we are going to dig into the new landscape of reproductive healthcare in a post-Roe world by talking with two physicians who have dedicated their lives to helping people who can get pregnant navigate their vast pool of healthcare needs. From deciding how to prevent pregnancy and how to manage harmful periods to how to recover from a miscarriage and how to deal with infertility, these doctors know better than most, and certainly better than the Supreme Court, that the full spectrum of reproductive care is of vital importance to the lives of millions of Americans. Joining us today are Dr. Colleen Denny, the Medical Director of Women's Health Services at Bellevue Hospital in NYC and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the NYU School of Medicine who provides OB-GYN care that includes abortion, and Dr. Lucky Sekhon, a double board-certified OB-GYN and Reproductive Endocrinologist & Infertility Specialist at RMA of New York, a fertility clinic. She is an assistant clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. To donate to support our fight against the attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow. Please visit aclu.org/keepfighting. To get involved in our people power effort to protect abortion access, please visit aclu.org/abortionactivist.

It’s a precarious time for American democracy. This year, the Supreme Court term resulted in a number of concerning opinions that rollback civil rights and civil liberties across many facets of American life, most notably the decision in the Dobbs case that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. At the same time, the congressional hearings around the violent attack on the capitol on January 6, 2021, have revealed a dangerous and unabashed attempt to subvert our electoral system. When people don’t have trust in their government or its institutions, when our electoral system is riddled with fractures, it can be hard to mount meaningful change. One of our most powerful mechanisms of change is voting. So... we’re at an impasse, and we’re going to acknowledge that today and explore ways to surmount the challenges ahead of us. Joining us to discuss is the ACLU’s Executive Director, Anthony Romero. Anthony has been at the helm of the organization since 2001 and has seen our work through a number of inflection points. He knows, better than most, that progress is possible, even after major setbacks. RSVP to the ACLU’s Abortion Activist Training: www.ACLU.org/abortionactivist To donate to support our fight against the attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow, please visit: https://www.aclu.org/keepfighting To get involved in our people power effort to protect abortion access, please visit: https://aclu.org/abortion-pledge

On Friday, June 24th, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and with it, the constitutional right to an abortion. In the immediate, we spoke with our legal experts Louise Melling, Jen Dalven and Ria Tabacco Mar, about the opinion and the legal concerns ahead. Check out that episode. It’s called Post Roe: The Supreme Court Won’t Stop at Abortion, and it’s worth a listen if you missed it. But today, we are doing something a little different. We are talking with Jessica Arons, senior policy counsel for the ACLU, about all the different avenues we, as individuals, can explore when trying to plug in and do something to help. We know it’s confusing. There’s a lot of information out there. It’s also so easy to feel dejected and disempowered. It’s understandable to feel like our efforts won’t matter when there is so much we are up against, but we need you in this fight. So today we’re going to walk through the different avenues you can use to fight back whether that’s through voting, donating, volunteering, or just talking with your loved ones. You’re going to want to share this episode with your people. RSVP to the ACLU's Abortion Activist Training:  www.ACLU.org/abortionactivist Other organizations mentioned in this episode:  https://keepourclinics.org/ https://www.ifwhenhow.org/ More resources listed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRqbxh96ynlqdYUInUZB5GWrE2GIcW3FEXdtxO_n2BXMAd2HOkNssn3aP77zSXBN43TIJ3Xab2ih9vE/pub?s=04&fbclid=IwAR0OJetoWqvi9lKb-N-OYEuACRuCCOC7WpCZVyIo-Sv47mHVlHB5R9VcSbk

In a landmark decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court has voted to overturn both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, eliminating a 50-year precedent and the constitutional right to an abortion. We expect half of the states across the country to ban abortion either immediately or in the coming days, weeks or months. Pregnant people in these states will now be forced to carry their pregnancies to term. This decision was expected in some ways, a draft opinion for the case was leaked in May, revealing the intent to overturn the right to access an abortion in the U.S. but I’m not sure anything could truly prepare us for the reality we are now facing. So much is at stake. Joining us to help us break down the decision and discuss what we all can do in response are Jen Dalven, Director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, Ria Tabacco Mar, Director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, and Louise Melling, Deputy Legal Director and Director of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty at the ACLU. To donate to support our fight against this attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow, please visit aclu.org/keepfighting. To join our new abortion activist training RSVP at aclu.org/AbortionActivist.

Over the last few weeks, a surge of texts and phone calls have gone out from local politicians. Most of them focus on one issue: crime. Worried about the rising crime? Want to keep you and your family safe? Vote for me. I'll make sure to fund the police and get the riffraff off our streets, direct quote. Crime is being used as a wedge issue this midterm season, and candidates are stoking fears in hopes to mount a meaningful backlash to recent progress in both policing and criminal legal reform. At the same time, state and national leaders are hard at work seeking to criminalize access to healthcare for trans and pregnant folks. This interest in criminalizing new behaviors while holding the line on age old crime and punishment tactics is a worrying trend. Joining us today to discuss is Somil Trivedi, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project. Loyal listeners of At Liberty will remember Somil from his time guest hosting earlier this year.

This week, we are bringing you an important conversation about the state of abortion care in Texas. In September, Texas passed SB8, a bill that banned abortions at 6 weeks of pregnancy and deputized private citizens to enforce the ban. Since then, it’s been an “all hands on deck” operation to provide care to those in Texas still eligible in-state, while also helping shuffle others to states still with broader access. We can look to Texas to see some of what a world post-Roe v. Wade could look like for many other states. To that end, we’re enlisting Cecile Richards, former President of Planned Parenthood and native Texan to speak to folks on the ground in Texas, those mobilizing and creating systems that we can all learn from as we all seek to navigate abortion access in a new legal climate. Joining Cecile we have Anna Rupani, the Executive Director of a Texas abortion fund called Fund Texas Choice, Dr, Bhavik Kumar, an abortion provider in the state, and Reverend Dr. Daniel Kanter, Senior minister of First Unitarian Church of Dallas.

June 12th, 2022 marks the 55th anniversary of the landmark case Loving v. Virginia which made interracial marriage legal across the United States. We also know this day as Loving Day. This year, Loving Day has a bit of a weightier feel to it. In the recent Supreme Court leaked draft opinion on the Dobbs case, the legal reasoning that Justice Alito used to overturn Roe could be applied to undo Loving v. Virginia, signaling a new threat to interracial marriage as we know it. To those who say Loving v. Virginia will never be overturned, be cautious and vigilant. The United States has a long history of criminalizing, surveilling, and controlling Black and brown families and the mixing of races. We must both celebrate and honor our right to marry whomever we want and work to ensure its protection in the future. Today we’re celebrating Loving and discussing its connectivity to the broader attacks on our ability to build our families how we see fit. We’re joined by Dr. Michele Goodwin, a constitutional law scholar at the University of California, Irvine School of Law where she started and runs the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy. She’s the host of On the Issues, a podcast by Ms. Magazine. Michele is also an ACLU Executive Committee member.

This year brings an unprecedented surge of anti-trans legislation banning everything from sports participation to healthcare access. So far, we’re tracking roughly 280 state bills that have been filed ahead of or during this legislative session. At the same time, the Supreme Court is on the precipice of delivering a final decision that will likely overturn Roe v. Wade, blocking people who can get pregnant from abortion care. These attacks are actually all part of the same movement, a movement against bodily autonomy and our ability to live freely no matter our model or make, a movement to re-entrench gender hierarchy and binary thinking. To that end, we’re bringing you a conversation with Alok Vaid-Menon, a nonbinary writer, performer, public speaker, activist and artist exploring the themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public, Beyond the Gender Binary, and Your Wound/My Garden. Alok has done a lot of work to interrogate their history, our collective history, and to probe beneath the surface of what we’ve come to accept as the norm. They challenge us all to use our imagination to re-wire what we believe is possible for ourselves and society around us. This is a really special conversation and our team, quite honestly, all felt gob-smacked by Alok’s perspective. We let this conversation run long because we wanted you all to experience it and take it in as we did. To donate to support our fight against the attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow, please visit: https://www.aclu.org/keepfighting To get involved in our people power effort to protect abortion access, please visit: https://aclu.org/abortion-pledge

Supreme Court decision season is upon us, and with that, we wait for the final opinion in the Mississippi abortion ban case that could overturn Roe v. Wade. The idea of living in a post-Roe world is terrifying, the impacts will be broad and almost everyone will feel them in one way or another. This is the truth that activists and organizers on the ground in states like Mississippi, Florida, and Texas know all too well. They’ve been warding off anti-abortion attacks for decades, all while mounting a resistance focused on community conversation and education. They are, in many ways, the leaders of the reproductive rights movement. Amidst all the reasons to quit, they continue to fight -- individual action turns into collective action turns into political action. We can learn a lot from activists and organizers like Tyler, Crishelle, and Vienna, which is exactly why we are having them join us today. We’ll discuss how they have weathered the hardest of times on the ground in their own communities and highlight their work as a playbook for us all moving forward. To donate to support our fight against the attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow, please visit: https://www.aclu.org/keepfighting To get involved in our people power effort to protect abortion access, please visit: https://aclu.org/abortion-pledge

May marks Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month. To mark the importance of this month and how it intersects our work at the ACLU, we are bringing you this conversation with Malaysian American award-winning writer and audio producer, Stephanie Foo. Stephanie is the author of the new book, What My Bones Know, a memoir about intergenerational trauma and complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or c-PTSD. In the book, Stephanie details her path of healing from the physical and emotional abuse she endured from both of her parents and explores the kind of trauma that she says had a widespread impact on her immigrant community growing up. She joins us to discuss how learning her ancestors’ history and the history of her community helped her reconcile her individual struggles.

Last week, the draft opinion for the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked. Justice Alito wrote the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Everything about what has happened is remarkable: the leak, the decision, and the reasoning. The repercussions for what it means for people who can get pregnant are dire, and if that wasn’t enough, the repercussions may extend far beyond. Last week, we focused our conversation on what the draft opinion would mean for reproductive access. Today, we’re going to focus on the second tier of impact: what this precedent could mean for other civil rights and civil liberties and what this means for the institution of the court itself. For this episode, we’re bringing in our resident constitutional expert, David Cole. David is the national legal director of the ACLU and has argued a variety of cases before the Supreme Court himself.  To donate to support our fight against the attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow, please visit: https://www.aclu.org/keepfighting To get involved in our people power effort to protect abortion access, please visit: https://aclu.org/abortion-pledge

This is “Ask an Expert,” a special mini-series where our constitutional experts answer your civil rights and civil liberties questions. For our first edition, we are diving deep into Free Speech, and talking to expert Ben Wizner, the Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology project. We have been sourcing free speech questions from you over email, social media, and our phone line. We’ve sorted through the questions and categorized them into a few episodes. So far, we've found our free speech footing and also logged in to how speech plays out online. For our final episode, Ben is back to educate us on the speech that happens on school grounds, education and book bans, student speech and more.

On Monday night, the news publication Politico leaked a draft of a majority Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Alito. The draft details the highly anticipated decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, known to the public as the case that could overturn Roe v. Wade. Supreme Court decisions typically don’t come out until June, but this leaked draft, confirmed by Justice Alito himself, has sent early shockwaves across the country. In the draft majority opinion, Justice Alito writes that both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, decisions that have been on the books for up to 50 years, are overturned, making access to abortion no longer a legally protected right. Should this draft hold, this decision would turn back the clock on progress for people who can get pregnant and call into question much more than access to abortion. Joining us to help us understand is Brigitte Amiri, the Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. We have a long fight ahead of us—but the ACLU was made for moments like this. To donate to support our fight against this attack on reproductive autonomy and all the attacks that follow, please visit aclu.org/keepfighting. Thank you for stepping up and working together with us.

This is “Ask an Expert,” a special mini-series where our constitutional experts answer your civil rights and civil liberties questions. For this edition, we are diving into free speech and talking to expert Ben Wizner, the Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology project. Last week for our first episode, we established our free speech footing, defining exactly what free speech is and isn't. This week, Ben is back to break down free speech as it exists online and on social media in 140 characters or less, just kidding. Social media has undoubtedly presented new free speech challenges to consider, and consider them we will. We have been sourcing free speech questions from you over email, social media and our phone line. We've sorted through the questions and we're ready to dive right in.

For years now, pain has been the leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting more than 50 million Americans annually. This isn’t the kind of pain you endure when you trip onto the pavement, scab, bruise and heal. It’s the persistent gnawing, aching, throbbing that happens over a long period of time. This is chronic pain. One of the most powerful and effective forms of treatment for pain is the safe use of opioids. Opioids in combination with other therapies have allowed those hindered by pain to live full and vibrant lives, but the stigma around opioid use was exacerbated in 2016 due to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, that both seriously discouraged doctors from prescribing these drugs and also over attributed the prescription of them as the cause of addiction and overdose. While opioids are not a one-size fits all pain reliever, the rollback on prescriptions has disproportionately impacted people with disabilities, people of color, women, and incarcerated folks. Kate Nicholson, founder of the National Pain Advocacy Center, believes now is the time to course-correct. Pain relief, in her view, is a civil right. Listener Note: There is still time to submit a question for our “Ask an Expert” podcast series on all things free speech. To submit a question for our final episode on education and book bans, call us and leave us a message at 212-549-2558 or email us at [email protected].

This is "Ask an Expert," a special mini-series where our constitutional experts answer YOUR civil rights and civil liberties questions. For our first edition, we are diving deep into Free Speech, and talking to expert Ben Wizner, the Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology project. Free Speech is widely considered the bedrock of democracy, but still, many Americans feel both conflicted and confused by what actually constitutes free speech, what we can say, where we can say it, and who can stop us. We have been sourcing free speech questions from you over email, social media, and our phone line. We’ve sorted through the questions and categorized them into a few episodes. On today's episode, we’re getting back to the basics with Free Speech 101 addressing hate speech, misinformation, government regulation of corporate speech, cancel culture, and why we defend free speech.

On June 1, 2020, Black Lives Matter protesters gathered in Lafayette Square Park near the White House to protest against police brutality and the police killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In a violation of civil rights and what the New York Times named “one of the defining moments of the Trump presidency,” then President Trump and his administration called upon law enforcement to use force and violence to remove protesters from the area, without warning. A short while later, President Trump walked across the street to a nearby church St Johns for a photo opp. Protesters were hurt, media personnel were attacked, and church volunteers and clergy were pushed off the patio of St. Johns and tear gassed. In response, the ACLU of DC filed to sue President Trump, Attorney General Barr, Secretary of Defense Esper, the D.C. Metropolitan Police department and numerous other federal officials on behalf of Black Lives Matter D.C. and other plaintiffs affected. And while what happened on June 1st shocked many of us, for civil rights activists it was a very familiar story, something to add to a long list of similar incidents. Freedom of speech and assembly are important tools in the fight for civil rights, but these rights, when exercised by Black Americans, are frequently met with violent pushback from authorities. Today, we are looking back on this event in light of the ACLU of DC’s case against federal officials and in light of the Biden administration’s new policy changes meant to ensure that this never happens again. Case Update: https://www.acludc.org/en/press-releases/civil-rights-groups-push-appeal-hold-federal-officials-financially-accountable-attack Listener Note: We’re launching a three-week “Ask an Expert” podcast series about all things free speech: online censorship and deplatforming, campus speech and cancel culture and education and book bans. So here’s where you come in. We want to answer your questions! What does the law say about social media companies deplatforming users? Does our constitution support cancel culture? If you have a question you’d like us to answer, call us and leave us a message at 212-549-2558 or email us at [email protected].

Lawmakers, parents, think tanks, and conservative pundits have waged a war over how to teach students about systemic racism. As a result, school board members have been ousted, and some educators have resigned over the death threats, social media bullying, and harassment they’ve received from those who are adamant that teaching a more inclusive history harms students. These activists and lawmakers have centered much of their anger on a framework called Critical Race Theory. Though they’ve used it as a catchall for wokeness, political correctness, and leftist indoctrination, the term actually refers to a body of legal scholarship from the 70s and 80s that says racism is not just a result of individual prejudice, but something embedded in the legal system and in government policy. Kimberlé Crenshaw was among the scholars who developed the theory. She also coined the term “intersectionality,” a framework that takes into account how a person’s identities combine to create unique forms of discrimination or privilege. She is a Distinguished Professor of law at Columbia University and at UCLA, co-founder of the African American Policy Forum at Columbia, and host of the podcast “Intersectionality Matters.” Listener Note: We’re launching a three-week “Ask an Expert” podcast series about all things free speech: online censorship and deplatforming, campus speech and cancel culture and education and book bans. So here’s where you come in. We want to answer your questions! What does the law say about social media companies deplatforming users? Does our constitution support cancel culture? If you have a question you’d like us to answer, call us and leave us a message at 212-549-2558 or email us at [email protected].

April marks Sexual Assault Awareness Month and with that, we are bringing you a conversation today about Title IX. One of the protections against sexual assault within our education system and in our workplaces. In May of 2020, then Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos gutted Title IX protections for schools, particularly as they pertained to sexual assault adjudication, giving schools the leeway to evade accountability procedures and disempower victims. This action was fueled by conservative backlash and men’s rights groups who consistently claim that there is lack of “due process” when it comes to allegations of sexual assault. But is that really true? Or do we have a public misconception of due process? What does it mean for universities and employers to employ systems that are both fair and restorative? Alexandra Brodsky, Staff Attorney at Public Justice, asks these questions and offers up meaningful answers in her new book Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash. Alexandra believes there is a system available to us all that empowers survivors and values due process, a process outside of the criminal legal system that can provide both accountability and reduce harm. She joins us today to break it all down. Listener Note: We’re launching a three-week “Ask an Expert” podcast series about all things free speech: online censorship and deplatforming, campus speech and cancel culture and education and book bans. So here’s where you come in. We want to answer your questions! What does the law say about social media companies deplatforming users? Does our constitution support cancel culture? If you have a question you’d like us to answer, call us and leave us a message at 212-549-2558 or email us at [email protected].

For over half a century, Affirmative Action has woven its way into the fabric of our society through nondiscrimination policies and initiatives aimed at establishing equal opportunity for women, people of color, and other minorities across schools and the workplace. Over the years, courts and colleges have repeatedly clashed over the role of race in admissions policies. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld Affirmative Action programs - most recently in 2016, and this year, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases on the question of whether race-conscious admissions programs are lawful. And with a conservative majority on the bench, there is a real risk that Affirmative Action will be found unconstitutional. Joining us today is Amber Hikes, the ACLU’s Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, to talk about the potential impact of this decision on culture and practice, the importance of moving beyond “checking boxes," and how they’ve developed and lived these values in their own life. Listener Note: We’re launching a three-week “Ask an Expert” podcast series about all things free speech: online censorship and deplatforming, campus speech and cancel culture and education and book bans. So here’s where you come in. We want to answer your questions! What does the law say about social media companies deplatforming users? Does our constitution support cancel culture? If you have a question you’d like us to answer, call us and leave us a message at 212-549-2558 or email us at [email protected].

This week, we’ll be talking about something that’s on everyone’s mind: Ukraine. After weeks of building forces on the border, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Since then, the UN has reported that nearly 700 civilians in Ukraine have lost their lives - although the true figures are likely much higher. Over 3 million refugees have fled the country, while more than 2 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced from their homes. There has been an incredible outpouring of support for Ukrainian refugees, with many European countries opening up their borders and setting up systems to process the large influx of refugees. And the Biden administration recently granted Temporary Protected Status (or TPS) against the deportation of Ukrainians living in the United States. At the same time, many immigrants’ rights advocates and organizers have pointed out that these same protections and supports have NOT been extended to refugees and asylum-seekers from other majority-Black and Brown countries ,like Cameroon, Ethiopia, and up until very recently, Afghanistan. This contrast has been a startling reflection of the anti-Black racism and white supremacy embedded in our systems. There is no question that Ukrainian refugees must be given access to the protections and support that they need. And, those same protections and supports must be provided to all migrants - to all people who are fleeing dangerous conditions - regardless of their race, their religion, their language, or their nationality. Joining us today to talk about these disparities, how they came to be, and their impact is Omar Jadwat, Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. Along with Omar, we are delighted to be joined by Daniel Tse who founded the Cameroon Advocacy Network and who works for the Haitian Bridge Alliance, and leads the Black Immigrants Bail Fund. Daniel also has firsthand experience with the asylum system - having come to the United States from Cameroon as a refugee, and having spent one year in ICE detention before finally gaining asylum.

This week, we’re bringing you a conversation about the recent surge of anti-trans bills that have been levied in state legislatures. 2020 saw 79 different anti-trans state bills dealing with everything from education to athletics, and healthcare to bathroom access. In 2021, that count nearly doubled, with 147 proposals aimed at trans people, and especially trans kids. And this year, in 2022, we’re tracking roughly 280 bills that have been filed ahead of or during this legislative session. Now, let’s be clear: Transphobia is not new, and neither is the rhetoric that fuels it. Anti-trans legislation has often been framed as necessary for the safety and protection of “women and girls” - and in particular, white women and girls. This weaponization of white womanhood and femininity has deep roots in this country’s history, and is prompting unprecedented consequences for the trans community. Joining us to share the history behind this crisis and what we can do about it, is Nikita Shepard, who studies and works at Columbia University. Their work explores histories of LGBTQ+ communities, gender and sexuality, and racial and social movements in the United States and beyond.

Today we’re speaking with music legend Jon Batiste. He’s an Oscar-winning composer, pianist, bandleader and singer who is going into the 2022 Grammy Awards with 11 nominations – the most of any artist this year. You may have seen him on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” where he’s been the music director and bandleader since 2015. You may have heard him on the soundtrack of the Pixar-animated film “Soul” where he performed and composed the jazz portion of the score. Or you may have experienced his live performances in the streets of New York City with his band Stay Human during the pandemic lockdown, the protests of 2020, or during one of his “love riots” – a spontaneous show in the streets where the musicians stand among the crowd and exchange in the energy of the music and the moment. We’ll talk to him about his New Orleans roots, his most recent album “We Are,” and his commitment to creating music that celebrates his culture and aims to unite us all.

For some of us, simply living in our bodies is a daily act against oppression, against marginalization, criminalization and hate. This work is exhausting…most justice work is. That’s why finding what brings us joy is so central to both our individual and our collective liberation. While seemingly simple, when put in practice, pleasure can be revolutionary. This is the idea that Adrienne Maree Brown puts forth in her book, “Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good.” Taking inspiration from Black feminist writers like Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler, the author, activist and doula demonstrates how we can tap into our desire to organize against oppression. Adrienne’s work is a gift for so many who don’t feel that pleasure is an accessible reality including: women, people of color, trans and non binary folks, queer folks, disabled folks, and survivors of sexual violence. Adrienne joins us today to share why finding pleasure should be centered in our justice work.

Our guest today is Imani Perry. Her latest book is “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.” In it she writes that understanding this country starts with the South. Imani challenges the idea of the South as a backward place, a repository for the U.S.’s shame over slavery, white supremacy, and poverty. To cast away the South, she writes, only props up a heroic self-mythology of the U.S. that fogs up the mirror of history. Imani is based at the department for African American studies at Princeton University as an interdisciplinary scholar of law, literary and cultural studies. In addition to South to America, her books include “Breathe: A Letter to My Sons,” “Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry” and other titles. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama and while she’s lived much of her life elsewhere, she still considers Birmingham home.

Just weeks ago, Justice Steven Breyer announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, opening the door for President Biden to nominate a new judge to the bench. Keeping his campaign promise, Biden confirmed that he will be nominating a Black woman to replace Breyer, a historic move for a field that has not always welcomed Black women with open arms. Joining us to discuss the impact of this future nomination is Ria Tabacco Mar, Director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and one of At Liberty’s most frequent guests. Ria leads the project that was founded and led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It should be noted before we begin this conversation that as a matter of policy, the ACLU does not endorse or oppose particular candidates for the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances.

It’s election season again and, in America, sadly, that means it is voter suppression season. Starting in 2020, 49 states proposed over 440 bills to make it harder for Americans to vote, and many of them have passed. In 2021, state lawmakers started using the newly released census data to draw state maps that lock up their political power – often at the expense of communities of color. And now in 2022, these tactics are almost certain to impact the midterm elections for Congress, as well as local and state elections nationwide. Federal legislation that would have addressed these tactics and reversed some of the Supreme Court’s gut punches to the Voting Rights Act has stalled. And Republican lawmakers in at least eight states are trying to strip away power from secretaries of state, governors, and nonpartisan election boards over how elections are run and counted–effectively giving political operatives the power to cancel your vote. My guest today, lawyer Janai Nelson, has spent her career battling these issues. At the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where she currently serves as Associate Director-Counsel and will soon take over as president and Director-Counsel, she has overseen court challenges to racial and partisan gerrymandering, to overturn harsh voter ID laws, and to re-enfranchise folks who have lost their right to vote because of felony convictions. As a professor of law at St. John’s University School of Law, she has also taught classes on election law and political participation and has written extensively on the dismantling of the Votings Rights Act at the expense of communities of color. We’re catching Janai at a heady time, just as she is ascending to the helm of one of the nation’s foremost civil rights organizations, and just as those rights face threats we haven’t seen in decades, if not centuries. She joins us today to talk about all this and more.

February marks Black History Month, a time to recognize the significant achievements and culture of Black Americans–from bell hooks to Beyonce–and also to honor an accurate history about them, a history that we know is rife with discrimination and abuse -- think: slavery, Jim Crow, and the structural racism we’re still infected with today. Sadly, more and more, this history is being challenged and even erased in our culture and, right now, in our schools, through tactics like curriculum restrictions and book bans. Truths we once considered hard but self-evident are now being erased before our eyes. Over 30 state legislatures across the country have introduced bills to limit the discussion of racial history in a wave prompted by the emergence of critical race theory as a subject of political fear-mongering. But that’s just the beginning:, over 300 books by predominantly Black authors discussing race, gender, and sexuality, were also banned in the last year alone. Yes, you heard me right. We’re banning books again. When your history is banned, how do you learn about your ancestors? How do we learn from what’s happened in the past and how it affects our present? When your culture is banned, how do you see yourself? How do you belong? How do you celebrate the stories, music, food, and family that made you? At the ACLU, we believe that the first amendment is so fundamental because it should stop this kind of erasure in its tracks. That’s why we’re meeting this surge of censorship with new litigation and fierce advocacy. Joining us today to share more is Emerson Sykes, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and longtime listeners will remember Emerson as one of At Liberty’s former hosts.

This week we’re going to talk about families, and a uniquely American hypocrisy surrounding them. On the one hand, politicians are always talking about supporting strong, nuclear families, and in some ways, we do. We give tax breaks to people who get married and have children. Kids eat free at Denny’s on Tuesdays. Yet, also in America, government officials at the federal, state, and local levels are tearing families apart by the thousands under the cover of our laws. For example, in the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security forcibly separated more than 5,000 migrant parents from their children – some as young as 4 months old – under Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy. To this day, a thousand children and maybe more are yet to be reunited with their families. They remain stranded and alone. Candidate Joe Biden had called the policy “criminal. But in December the Justice Department walked away from settlement talks with lawyers representing those families. And immigration enforcement isn’t the only way we destroy families. The criminal justice system and the child welfare system do it too, in astonishing numbers, and usually to the most vulnerable among us. To discuss this double-standard–propping up some families while destroying others–the and the continued trauma and ongoing battle of separated families is Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, who has steered the border separation litigation from the beginning. Joining him is Shanta Trivedi, assistant professor at the University of Baltimore Law School and faculty director of the Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children, and the Courts – a foremost expert on the law around family trauma.

Content warning: This conversation mentions sexual abuse. January 22nd, marks the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case granting the right to an abortion "without excessive government restriction.” Year after year, Roe has weathered legal attacks, but this year, due to the conservative majority on the bench, the threat to Roe v. Wade is at an all-time high. A case heard by the Supreme Court on December 1st addressing a Mississippi abortion law posed a direct challenge to the precedent set by Roe. The decision will come out in June, but scholars who listened to the arguments are deeply concerned that this could be Roe’s last anniversary. Back in 1973, Roe was an important step towards granting reproductive autonomy to people who could get pregnant. However, Roe itself, was never enough to address the long history of government surveillance over the bodies of the most marginalized. In her book, Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, law scholar, Michele Goodwin, examines “the reproductive health and rights debate and explores how legislators increasingly turn to criminalizing women”, predominantly black women, for both proceeding with a pregnancy or for ending one. Today, Michele Goodwin, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, the founding director of the U.C.I. Law Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy and its Reproductive Justice Initiative, and one of the ACLU’s very own Executive Committee Members joins us to discuss the lived experience of reproductive control and Roe v. Wade’s impact.

Joel Castón was incarcerated when he was 18 years old. He’s now 45 and in November of last year, just two months ago, Joel was released after serving over 26 years. While incarcerated, he received a degree through the Georgetown Prison Scholars Program and started a mentorship initiative called Young Men Emerging. And, because D.C. changed the law to allow incarcerated people to vote, he ran for office, and he won: he is now an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in Washington D.C. representing the 7th Ward including the jail that he just walked out of. He’s the first incarcerated person in D.C. history to win elected office. Joel joins us today to talk about his experience, what he’s focusing on as a newly elected commissioner in D.C., and how he’s changing the public narrative about incarcerated people.

Today, we’re checking in with LaTosha Brown, Co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund and the Black Voters Capacity Building Institute. We first spoke to LaTosha a year ago after her work in expanding voting access in Georgia proved so successful. But that was then, and this is now. Challenges abound this year, likely as a direct reaction to her work. New restrictions making it harder to vote, so-called election reforms, and redistricting will have a direct impact on the 2022 midterms. It’s why we are so focused at the ACLU on expanding and protecting access to the ballot and stopping restrictions in their tracks. LaTosha Brown joins us to discuss.

For our 2021 holiday special, we are taking you through the holiday food traditions of ACLU staffers and their families. Food is often the glue holding families and cultural identity together. We wanted to celebrate that and share it with you. Listener note: you may find yourself unusually hungry during this episode. We recommend you have something tasty on hand. We are joined by ACLU staffers Blanca Gamez, our Deputy Organizing Director, Zara Haq, a Senior Campaign Strategist, and Rotimi Adeoye, one of our Communications Strategists.

On the podcast, we’ve chronicled some of the year’s biggest stories: the insurrection, the rescinding of the Muslim ban, devastating police brutality, state after state attacks on the rights of trans kids, the abusive system of conservatorships, and the rollback of abortion access, just to name a few. Today we’re going to follow up with guests on some of this year’s most popular episodes to see what progress there’s been since we last spoke, and where there is still work to be done. Zoe Brennan-Krohn of the ACLU's Disability Rights Program, Haya Bitar of the podcast team, and Somil Trivedi of the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project join us.

As we near the end of the year, we are bringing you an episode of reflection. A lot has happened in the world, in our country, and in our work at the ACLU. We all felt the high stakes of last week's oral arguments at the Supreme Court on abortion. And while that has left us with concern, there is still so much to celebrate this year from our work across the organization. We’ve made meaningful strides fighting for better COVID policy, criminal legal reform, immigration reform, free speech, disability rights, and voting rights. So today we are regrouping with the ACLU’s National Legal Director, David Cole, to talk through where we can find hope this year and also where we can continue to press forward.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that challenges a nearly 49-year-old precedent protecting a pregnant person's right to an abortion established in the landmark case Roe v. Wade. The law in question is a Mississippi law that prohibits nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, violating the 1992 precedent set in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where the ruling said that a state may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability. This law, in this case, is the latest in a long line of repeated attacks on reproductive freedom we've seen this fall. Jennifer Delvin, director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, joins us to discuss what we heard in the oral arguments and what we can do moving forward.

This week, we are stepping back in time and re-visiting our conversation with author and activist, Glennon Doyle. In this conversation, Glennon talks about how to bring our loved ones into understanding of equity and justice through the use of storytelling, imagination, and conversation. On this podcast, we learn a lot about history, about civil rights issues, and about how we can use the law to move the needle. Today, we are going to spend time talking about how we can best share that knowledge with others. It’s an episode fit for such a time as this and we hope you enjoy.

I’m Paige Fernandez, the ACLU’s Policing Policy Advocate and I’m so excited to be taking the At Liberty reins for the next month. I have a confession to make: I have had a true crime obsession most of my life. My job at the ACLU and my organizing work and personal beliefs may make this surprising. I spend my time working to help communities divest from their local police forces and I talk openly about how abolition, to me, feels like the best solution to ending our carceral punishment system and police violence. These two interests feel at odds with each other, but I can’t quite figure out what it is about true crime media that has me so hooked. It’s made me wonder what its popularity has on the American psyche, particularly as it relates to our views on the criminal legal system and policing. That’s why I’m so thrilled to have Kelli Boling joining us today. Kelli is an Assistant Professor of Advertising and Public Relations in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. After 12 years as a marketing and advertising executive in North and South Carolina, Boling received her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina in Mass Communication. Her research focuses on the audience reception of media, specifically media depiction and reception by traditionally marginalized audiences based on race and gender.

Today we are running a conversation between Amber Hikes, the ACLU’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and disability rights icon Judy Heumann on CVS v. Doe, a case that the Supreme Court was set to hear on Dec 8. The case threatened to attack the very foundation of disability rights laws, specifically by threatening Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. If CVS had pursued the case and won, people with disabilities would no longer have the ability to sue for discrimination that is based on ignorance as opposed to animus, or actual intent to harm. In this conversation, Judy discusses the disability rights laws we’ve fought for and won and explains why disability discrimination is consistently questioned by both the general public and the courts. Yesterday CVS reached a settlement likely thanks to the pressure of disability advocates over the past few weeks. Though this case will no longer be heard by the Court, we’re running this conversation, recorded late last week, because the argument that CVS presented has been seen in copycat arguments in different cases across the country. This issue is likely to get to the Supreme Court in some form soon. For more information on these kinds of cases, follow the ACLU across social and subscribe to our email list. We’ll keep you updated.

This week, we are bringing you a story about an upcoming Supreme Court case: FBI v. Fazaga, set to be argued on November 8th. This case will have big implications on the ability for private citizens who have been wrongfully surveilled by the U.S. government to seek redress for the infringement on their personal privacy and the damages associated. There’s a lot to dig into here, both about the case itself and also about the backdrop of the case, the 20th anniversary of the Patriot Act, an act that made it easier for Muslim Americans to be surveilled after 9/11. Joining us on this episode are Sheikh Yassir Fazaga, our client in the case, and Patrick Toomey, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s National Security Project.

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases challenging Texas’ ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy known as SB 8 -- one case brought by the ACLU and our partner organizations on behalf of abortion providers, Whole Women’s Health v. Jackson, and a separate case brought by the Department of Justice, United States v. Texas. The rulings will determine whether or not abortion providers and the Department of Justice are entitled to challenge SB 8 as the law was written purposefully to skirt federal judicial review. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court declined to rule on an emergency request to block SB 8, allowing the ban to take effect on September 1st. Since then, the majority of Texans seeking abortions have been unable to access them in the state. What does this all mean for the future of SB 8 and abortion access in the U.S. at large? That remains to be seen. There are so many unanswered questions. Brigitte Amiri, Deputy Director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project joins us to help break it all down. Plus, we hear from demonstrators Kenya Martin and MJ Flores rallying right outside of the Supreme Court building. If you’d like to support our right against forced pregnancy, you can donate at www.aclu.org/access. We really appreciate the support.

Last month, horrifying images hit the news: border patrol agents on horses were seen whipping Haitian migrants. This was the latest in a long line of anti-immigrant practices that have emboldened border patrol over the last few years. Some of these practices include the invocation and overuse of Title 42, a policy that closed the borders due to public health concerns and the transmission of COVID, Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy that forces asylum seekers to wait for their hearings in Mexico, and the vast expansion of privately owned ICE detention facilities. Biden campaigned on fixing the immigration system and his administration has consistently touted their disapproval of Trump-era immigration policies. Even Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has been honest about the state of immigration affairs, calling it a “completely broken system.” But when we look critically at the administration's positive immigration reform, we see that words and actions aren’t lining up. What’s it going to take to move the needle on immigration reform during the Biden era? Have we made any headway since Trump left office? Here to answer these questions and more is Cecillia Wang, Deputy Legal Director here at ACLU and the Director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy.

More than 100 anti-trans bills have been levied in states across the country this year. These bills range from blocking trans youth from seeking healthcare to banning trans students from participating in school sports. In Texas, lawmakers are getting ready to move forward House Bill 25, the law that will change the landscape of sports for trans people in the state. For Schuyler Bailar, former division one NCAA swimmer, these threats and discrimination are familiar. As the first openly transgender man to compete at his level in college athletics, he’s had to break boundaries both within institutions and within public opinion to be allowed to compete and be seen as a competitor. Those trying to ban trans students from school sports often center the debate on trans women with claims rooted in transphobia — and refuted by scientific experts — that trans women have an unfair advantage. One of the additional consequences of the focus on this argument is that we hear less from athletes who are trans men. This gap in perspective is one of many reasons we are excited to have Schuyler with us.

Imagine you’ve forgotten once again the difference between a gorilla and a chimpanzee, so you do a quick Google image search of “gorilla.” But instead of finding images of adorable banana-obsessed animals, photos of a Black couple show up. Is this just a glitch in the algorithm? Or, is Google an ad company, not an information company, that’s replicating the discrimination of the world it operates in? How can this discrimination be addressed and who is accountable for it? Our guest today, UCLA professor, MacArthur Fellow, and best-selling author of “Algorithms of Oppression,” Dr. Safiya Noble answers some of these questions. This week's episode comes from the At Liberty archive.

2021 is shaping up to be one of the most devastating years for abortion access in decades. State legislatures have enacted a blitz of new anti-abortion legislation. As of September 1st, when Texas’s six-week abortion ban went into effect, abortion has become functionally illegal in the state. The law, which deputizes citizens to sue anyone involved in abortion care, has emboldened other states to introduce copy cat bills, threatening to make it near-impossible to access an abortion in parts of the country. The Supreme Court is gearing up to hear challenges to some of these state laws including a case from Mississippi that directly challenges the 1973 precedent set in Roe v. Wade. Given the court’s conservative super majority, many legal experts are warning that access to abortion may hang on Congressional action. The Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that could legally enshrine the right to abortion care, passed the House on September 24th but faces a battle in the Senate. To discuss the state of abortion rights and to preview what’s to come this fall, we’re joined by 3 experts leading the legal dialogue: Melissa Murray, constitutional and family law professor at NYU Law and co-host of Strict Scrutiny, Imani Gandy, senior editor at the Rewire News Group and co-host of the podcast Boom! Lawyered, and our very own Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project.

Over the last couple of months, climate disasters have erupted around the world. In the US alone, we’ve seen wildfires in the west, tornadoes in the midwest, and hurricanes pummeling the Gulf and East Coasts. The environments we live in have become hostile to our health, our livelihood, and our community. Many have been forced to leave their homes and some will never be able to return. Globally, nearly 24 million people have been displaced due to climate effects since 2008. But this issue, both in the U.S. and around the world, isn’t impacting everyone equally. Black, Brown, and Indigenous people are disproportionately impacted by climate change. This is a racial justice issue, an immigration issue, and an indigenous rights issue. Shamyra Lavigne and Devi Lockwood talk to us to better understand how climate change intersects with other forms of injustice.

As the political divide deepens through disinformation campaigns about the election results, vaccines, 9/11, and more, it can feel like unity and consensus are shrinking on the horizon. And yet, the only way to address the pandemic or the fault lines in our democracy is if we can bridge the divide and find an enclave of common ground. Our guest today has decades of experience finding common ground and, in some cases, persuading people to change their minds about deeply held beliefs. Daryl Davis is a Blues musician by profession, but has devoted a lifetime to reaching out to KKK members and starting a dialogue. Since he began the work, he has persuaded over 200 KKK members to leave the organization. He joins us to discuss how he manages to persuade people to abandon long-held beliefs and how these tactics might help the national crisis of polarization.

As millions of children head back to school, some states have banned mask mandates on school grounds. As of this recording, school districts in eight states cannot require students to wear a mask in school; if they do, many risk losing crucial state funding. This ban ignores national recommendations by the CDC to wear a mask indoors for those who are unvaccinated or in an area of high COVID transmission. For children with disabilities or families with high-risk medical conditions, the ban makes in-person learning perilous. Many children are forced back into remote learning even though studies have shown students -- particularly students of color and those with disabilities -- fall behind when they can’t attend school in person. Excluding these children from in-person learning violates federal law which is why the ACLU’s Disability Rights Project is suing on behalf of groups of parents with vulnerable children in both South Carolina and Iowa. Joining us to talk about the case is Samantha Boevers, one of the parents in the case, and Susan Mizner, the director of the ACLU's Disability Rights Project.

As we pass the 20-year mark since September 11th, we are following up with the clients and the attorney of one seminal ACLU lawsuit on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, a program that ended in 2010 but that continues to haunt its survivors and to stain the U.S.’s international human rights record. The lawsuit Salim v Mitchell was filed in 2015 against James Elmer Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, two psychologists contracted by the CIA to design, implement, and oversee the agency’s post-9/11 torture program. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three of the program’s victims. All three were kidnapped by the CIA, and then tortured and experimented on according to Mitchell and Jessen’s protocols. One of the men died as a result of his treatment. The other two men continue to endure the effects of their detention. In 2017, the psychologists agreed to a settlement — a first for a case involving CIA torture. We’ll speak with ACLU Staff Attorney Steven Watt about what the litigation achieved and what still needs to happen to help prevent any future use of torture. We’ll also have a chance to listen in on Steven’s own recent conversations with our three clients as they rebuild their lives and navigate the continued effects of the torture program.

Over the coming weeks, kids will be heading back to school – over a million of them to preschool. And while many of these preschoolers will learn about colors, shapes, and the ABC’s, thousands will learn what it’s like to be suspended for the first time. On average 250 preschoolers are suspended each day of the school year. Compared with K through 12 students, preschoolers are suspended at nearly 3 times the frequency of older students. Our guest today has spent decades raising awareness about this trend and its effect on a child’s long-term outcomes. Dr. Rosemarie Allen is an associate professor at the School of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver where she teaches students about power, privilege, and the education system. She joins us today to discuss the preschool to prison pipeline, the punitive culture in educational spaces, the mental health care of students, and alternative approaches that teach rather than punish.

In this episode, we are diving into the At Liberty archive and returning to a conversation with historian Jill Lepore. We are on the brink of a once-in-a-generation change: Congress is considering a plan to create a pathway to citizenship for up to 8 million people. This September, the ACLU is urging Congress to pass a reconciliation package which includes a path to citizenship for Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status holders, farmworkers, and other essential workers. But what does it mean to be an American citizen? And how did we get here, to a place and a time when we deny so many the ability to become an American? These are the questions that Jill Lepore explores in her book, “These Truths” which tells the story of how our nation has evolved from its origins. Jill is a professor of American history at Harvard, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and a prolific thinker and writer on history and contemporary politics. In this conversation, Jill speaks to former At Liberty host Lee Rowland. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

One in 12 American children, more than 5.7 million kids, have experienced parental incarceration at some point during their lives. Black Americans are 50 percent more likely than white Americans to have a family member who is formerly or currently incarcerated. At the ACLU, we are working to reform the criminal legal system in order to significantly reduce its footprint in the United States, because we know the ramifications of incarceration are broad, complex and damaging. Incarceration doesn’t *just* impact the person incarcerated, but we don’t often engage in that conversation. The American jail and prison system pulls apart entire families and communities, predominantly those of color. Our guest today understands all of this on a visceral level. Ashley C. Ford is a writer, podcaster and educator who deals with topics including race, sexuality and body image. This June, Ashley released her debut memoir called Somebody’s Daughter, where she details her experience growing up with a single mom and an incarcerated dad as a Black kid in Indiana. When released, Somebody’s Daughter became an instant New York Times bestseller. Ashley joins us on the podcast today to talk about her book, mass incarceration, and what “justice” means to her from where she stands today.

Every two years the Olympic Games promise to be historic. Athletes defy odds, break records, and achieve feats unimaginable to most of us. But the 2020 games have consistently made headlines for the wrong reasons, particularly for the US Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee’s poor treatment and discrimination of athletes, especially Black women athletes. From Sha’Carri Richardson’s pre-Olympic suspension for smoking legal marijuana to the International Federation’s ban on swim caps designed for natural Black hair, or from the testosterone testing of two Namibian runners to the decades long abuse, lack of accountability, and disregard towards the mental health of athletes. The stories are almost too many to keep track of, but thankfully Ria Tabacco Mar, the Director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project helps us parse through what we’ve watched unfold.

Lawmakers, parents, think tanks, and conservative pundits have waged a war over how to teach students about systemic racism. As of this recording, 27 state legislatures and 165 national and local organizations have made efforts to restrict education on racism. As a result, school board members have been ousted, and some educators have resigned over the death threats, social media bullying, and harassment they’ve received from those who are adamant that teaching a more inclusive history harms students. These activists and lawmakers have centered much of their anger on a framework called Critical Race Theory. Though they’ve used it as a catchall for wokeness, political correctness, and leftist indoctrination, the term actually refers to a body of legal scholarship from the 70s and 80s that says racism is not just a result of individual prejudice, but something embedded in the legal system and in government policy. Our guest today Kimberlé Crenshaw was among the scholars who developed the theory. She also coined the term “intersectionality,” a framework that takes into account how a person’s identities combine to create unique forms of discrimination or privilege. She is a Distinguished Professor of law at Columbia University and at UCLA, co-founder of the African American Policy Forum at Columbia, and host of the podcast “Intersectionality Matters.” She joins us to help us understand the true meaning of Critical Race Theory and how it became a political flashpoint in schools and beyond.

On July 12th, Texas House Democrats boarded two planes headed for Washington DC in a last-ditch effort to deny Republicans the quorum they would need to pass restrictive voting measures during a special legislative session. The Democratic exodus not only stalled the GOP-led election bills, it also delayed Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s longer agenda for this special session, including legislation to ban trans youth in sports, further limit access to reproductive healthcare, and dictate how U.S. race history can be taught in school. The Texas Democrats who fled said they aren’t returning until the special session expires on August 6, but Governor Greg Abbott said he will continue calling special sessions into next year. Joining us to talk about this legislative stand off is Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director at the ACLU of Texas.

In this episode, we continue our celebration of Disability Pride Month with a conversation about representation. Across the top 100 movies of 2019 only 2.3% of all speaking characters had a disability. What’s more, the rare times we do see a character with a disability, they aren’t played by someone with a disability. In fact, one study found that in the top 10 TV shows for 2018 only 12% of disabled characters were played by disabled actors. In contrast, around 133 million Americans live with visible or invisible disabilities — that’s 40% of the public. To put it plainly, there’s A LOT of room for improvement. Enter Ali Stroker, a singer and actress phenom who became both the first person using a wheelchair to perform on Broadway and the first person using a wheelchair to win a Tony award. Ali, in many ways, has put disability on the media map, landing roles in film, television, theater and even writing a children’s book. She joins us on At Liberty to discuss the importance of the representation and celebration of disability in the entertainment industry and beyond.

In 2021, the U.S. experienced over 200 mass shootings. Americans are more likely to be killed at the hands of firearms than in vehicles. This years-long gun violence epidemic continues to spark debate about the 2nd Amendment and who has the right to bear arms.  But often absent from the debate around gun violence is the anti-Blackness at its core. In her latest book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, our guest, historian Carol Anderson, counters the elegiac worship of the Second Amendment by tracing how anti-Blackness determined the very decision to include the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights and has informed its unequal and racist enforcement over the last several hundred years.  Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Her previous books include White Rage and the 2018 One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy.

In honor of Disability Pride Month, we’re devoting a few episodes to disability rights, starting with a look at conservatorships. Conservatorships are a court-sanctioned way to strip people with disabilities of their civil liberties. The system of conservatorships has gained media attention through the case of Britney Spears. What many have learned through Britney’s story is that under conservatorships, you often can’t spend your own money; you can’t choose your own doctors; you can’t control your medical care. You can’t even choose where you live or whom you spend your time with.  And while Britney’s case has catapulted conservatorship into public consciousness, Britney’s case is not the exception. Over one million other Americans with disabilities live under some form of conservatorship or guardianship.  Zoe Brennan-Krohn, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Disability Rights Project, joins us to discuss the implications of conservatorship, for Britney and for many others.

The end of the Supreme Court’s term is always a momentous time of year for our guest and At Liberty regular David Cole. David is the ACLU’s legal director and our resident Supreme Court expert. In this episode, he’ll help us answer how the court’s new conservative supermajority has impacted its decisions on the term’s civil rights and civil liberties cases. We’ll also take a peek at the upcoming term, which is set to be a nail-biter. The court could decide on the fates of reproductive rights, affirmative action, and gun rights.

Just two months ago, Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis, was the backdrop of yet another incident of police brutality when 20-year-old Daunte Wright was fatally shot by an officer during a traffic stop. The incident happened just ten miles from the courthouse where Derek Chauvin was on trial for the death of George Floyd. Outraged community members gathered in front of the Brooklyn Center Police Department for consecutive days demanding change. And this time, their calls were answered. One month after Daunte Wright was killed, the city council passed a resolution that created an alternative to police response for both mental health calls and some traffic stops. The resolution is called The Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler Community Safety and Violence Prevention Resolution, named after the two people killed by local police in the last two years. One of the driving forces behind the resolution was Brooklyn Center Mayor, Mike Elliott. Mayor Elliott came to the US at the age of 11, fleeing from civil war in Liberia. Before running for mayor, he had started a mentoring program, working with Brooklyn Center schools to serve low-income students. He joins us along with Taylor Pendergrass, the Deputy Director of Campaigns for the ACLU’s Smart Justice program, to talk about what other communities can learn from the example of Brooklyn Center.

It’s that time of year again: Supreme Court decision season. Today, we are bringing you a breakdown of the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a case that touches on whether the city can enforce a nondiscrimination policy with its contractors. Here, Catholic Social Services, a contractor with the city, refused to sign an agreement that would have forced them to stop excluding same-sex couples and unmarried people from being foster parents. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held that Philadelphia's refusal to contract with the foster care agency violated the Constitution's First Amendment Free Exercise Clause. James Esseks, the Director for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, joins to break down the decision.

Over the years, the ACLU’s commitment to the First Amendment has come under attack – both for the cases we take on and for those we don’t. At the ACLU, we are committed to protecting free speech for all – not just those with whom we agree. And that commitment can come into tension with the other work we do defending civil rights and civil liberties. In this episode, we are pulling the curtain back on our history of defending free speech, on the choices we make, and on the conversations that went into those choices. For this episode, we are handing the mic to At Liberty’s former host and current ACLU free speech attorney Emerson Sykes. He speaks with former ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier, who led the organization during the controversial time in the 1970s when the ACLU defended the rights of Neo Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. They address how a multi-issue organization can balance defending the rights of free speech even as it defends the other rights and liberties guaranteed in the constitution.

In the U.S., it’s easy to think we’re in the final chapter of this global pandemic. Baseball stadiums have replaced cardboard cutouts with screaming fans, and the aroma of fresh popcorn is wafting once again from movie theaters’ open doors. As of this recording, more than 60% of US adults have now received at least one dose of the vaccine, and unused doses are available to anyone over the age of 12. But the U.S. is, in many ways, an outlier. The entire continent of Africa accounts for 1% of the world’s vaccine administrations, and countries in Asia and South America still lack meaningful access to vaccines. Added to this, variants have made COVID-19 more contagious and, in some cases, more deadly. This is the global vaccine gap. The global vaccine gap is both a human rights and a racial justice issue. Many of the communities left vulnerable are communities of color. The scale of the problem has united activists and organizations from around the world, including at the ACLU, to identify solutions and fast. For many of the human rights activists and experts, the urgency is part of their lived experience on the ground. This episode, we’ll hear some of their stories and learn from one of the ACLU’s human rights experts what needs to be done. Special thanks to the International Network for Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO) for helping make this podcast happen, especially Colin Gonsalves, Nersan Govender, Vivian Newman, and Lucila Santos. To support our INCLO partners featured in this episode, please see below. Human Rights Law Network in India: https://www.hrln.org/. Legal Resources Centre in South Africa: https://lrc.org.za/ Dejusticia in Colombia: https://www.dejusticia.org/ INCLO: https://www.inclo.net/

There were only 18 days last year that did not see a police officer kill a civilian in this country. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Walter Wallace Jr, Daniel Prude, and Rayshard Brooks, were among the 1,127 people killed by police last year. And we know that Black people are more than three times as likely to be killed during a police encounter as their white peers. A year after the murder of George Floyd, systemic, transformative change is still desperately needed at every level of government, but too often police unions and their lobbying efforts obstruct that change. Joining us today to talk about all this is Dr. William P. Jones, a history professor at the University of Minnesota and the president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association, whose work focuses on the relationship between race and class, as well as on the history of unions and organizing in the U.S.

In the early 1920s, Black Americans were under the siege of direct and indirect racial violence with widespread lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and race riots across the country. And yet, the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma was thriving. Its streets were lined with successful Black-owned businesses and Black professionals. The businesses were so successful the area was dubbed “Black Wall Street.” But one hundred years ago today, on May 31st, 1921, a white mob of several thousand murdered up to 300 Black residents, and destroyed almost every Black business, church, and home in the 35-square-block neighborhood. What followed the massacre was a national forgetting: no reckoning, no justice, and no accountability. Black property owners were never compensated, and neither the city nor the state committed money toward rebuilding Greenwood in the aftermath. In fact, up until recently, the massacre was hardly taught or discussed at all. Tulsa historian and prolific author and lawyer, Hannibal B. Johnson, joins us on At Liberty to mark the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre and break down its legacy.

Here at the ACLU, we’ve been working remotely from home since the pandemic closed our offices in March 2020, which means this podcast is produced, recorded, and edited, using high-speed internet; even our guests’ participation depends on it! Covid-19 has underscored just how crucial an internet connection is to participate in society. But many people like you and me may take for granted having efficient and affordable broadband access, a privilege that tens of millions of Americans are without. This is the digital divide, and it disproportionately impacts people of color and people living in rural communities. Joining us on this episode are Baltimore high school students and organizers of SOMOS, Kimberly Vasquez and Yashira Valenzuela-Morillo, and data science and equity expert, Dr. Brandeis Marshall.

Three million Americans currently suffer from Opioid Use Disorder, or an addiction to opioids. Today, adults between the ages of 25 and 44 are more than twice as likely to die from opioid overdose than from COVID-19, yet this epidemic isn’t making the same headlines. When we zoom in on the prison population, the numbers are even more jarring. 85% of people in prison or jail have some kind of substance use disorder, compared with 9% of the general population, yet these Americans are less likely to get access to the care they need to treat their addiction. Most prisons and jails don’t let people take prescription medications like methadone to treat their disorder while serving time. This kind of treatment has been shown to reduce deaths from opioid overdose up to 50% by preventing withdrawal symptoms during recovery. In this episode, we’ll take a look at the devastating impact of denying these treatments in our prisons and jails. We're joined by Christine Finnegan, Louis Lamoureux, and Beth Schwartzapfel.

1 in 4 Americans are unbanked or underbanked. That’s because banks across the country are closing branches or they’re penalizing those who don’t have large savings. This means that 64 million Americans -- disproportionately Black and Brown -- can’t easily access basic financial services and are forced to pay thousands a year in fees for alternatives. But one solution to this disparity is within our reach, it’s actually just down the street from you: the post office. The Postal Service has the infrastructure to provide basic financial services at all of its branches. With an office in every ZIP code nationwide and trust within the community, banking at the most accessible institution in America could create a public option needed to put millions of families in greater control of their finances. Joining us today to break down the specifics of Postal Banking is Rakim Brooks. Rakim is a Senior Campaign Strategist at the ACLU and is managing our new Systemic Equality campaign.

On April 28th, the Supreme Court will hear arguments for a case that has big implications for student free speech. The case involves then 14-year-old Brandi Levy, a cheerleader at Mahanoy Area High School in Pennsylvania, and her post on the social media platform, Snapchat. One of her cheerleading coaches saw the post, which used an expletive, and suspended her from the team for a year – even though Brandi had posted on a weekend and off school property. Brandi and her family sued the school for violating her First Amendment rights. Brandi has prevailed in two lower federal court rulings but now, the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to uphold the win or rule for the school. Brandi and her father, Larry, join us on this episode, as well as Vera Eidelman, Staff Attorney at the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology project, who is working on Brandi's case.

Last year, the world watched Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kill George Floyd in plain sight after arresting him for an alleged counterfeit bill at a convenience store. The footage released from the encounter sparked an international movement as protesters took to the streets for months calling for racial justice and an end to police brutality. On Tuesday, after weeks of arguments, the jury released a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial: guilty on all three counts. In this episode, we hear from Minneapolis demonstrators Sierra, Osman, and Broderick who react to the verdict as it's happening and then we call the ACLU's Policing Policy Advisor, Paige Fernandez, to hear her reaction.

On Sunday, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed by a police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota after being pulled over for traffic violations. The violations? He had expired tags on his license and air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror of his car. This story is heartbreakingly familiar. Just a year ago the country erupted in protest over the death of George Floyd after police arrested him for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store. Police interactions with citizens shouldn’t end in death, and yet hundreds are dying at the hands of police every year. In order to protect and serve Black Americans, we need immediate solutions. Joining this episode are protesters Aja, Melina, and Emilaysia in Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park, as well as the ACLU’s Policing Policy Advisor, Paige Fernandez, and Senior Staff Attorney of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, Somil Trivedi.

This week, we are revisiting one of our favorite episodes featuring a conversation with the filmmakers of the documentary, “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution.” Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham use archival footage and interviews to tell the story of a summer camp that seeded a disability rights movement, a movement whose history few know well even though almost 50 percent of Americans live with at least one disability. The film was just nominated for an Oscar in the category of best documentary feature. Enjoy this gem from the At Liberty archive.

The Arkansas legislature just passed HB 1570, a bill that would ban gender-confirming health care for trans youth in the state. This comes just one day after Arkansas’ Governor Asa Hutchinson, vetoed the bill amidst pleas from doctors, social workers, and parents of transgender youth. Arkansas is the first state in the country to pass such a bill. We spoke with Chase Strangio, ACLU’s Deputy Director for Transgender Justice, to get his take on what happened.

From a Capitol insurrection to multiple mass shootings, recent violence is prompting an old debate: Does the U.S. need a domestic terrorism law? And if not, how do we quell this violence? Our guest today, Hina Shamsi, the Director of the National Security Project at the ACLU, says we don’t need to look far to see how existing laws that claim to target domestic terrorism, in reality, grant the government unprecedented power to surveil and criminalize communities of color. These laws have been weaponized to harm some of the same communities that are suffering disproportionately from violence in America. She joins us today to break down the debate.

This week, we’re rounding out our Women’s History Month series with writer and artist, Chanel Miller. Chanel jumped into the spotlight back in 2015, first through a pseudonym, Emily Doe, known in the context of the crime committed against her, a sexual assault that took place on Stanford University’s campus perpetrated by then student, Brock Turner. The victim statement she wrote and delivered at the trial went viral, receiving over 11 million views on Buzzfeed. Chanel’s words helped set off the #MeToo Movement, but her name was nowhere to be found. In 2019, Chanel stepped out from under anonymity and into authoring her own story. She published the New York Times Bestselling memoir, Know My Name. She is now known as a leading voice for survivors of sexual violence and as an emerging artist, currently debuting work in San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum. Behind every social issue are survivors, often of discrimination, of atrocity, and of violence. Everyone has had an experience that has made them feel nameless and faceless. But Chanel knows that in owning our own power, we can be powerful for both ourselves and those around us. She joins us today to share more about her own journey.