News & Commentary

Although it wasn’t mentioned directly by name when state Attorney General Bill Schuette announced the filing of felony charges against four officials connected to the Flint water crisis, Michigan’s controversial emergency manager law was, for many, the target of the harshest indictment handed down Tuesday.

The results of last month’s election sent shockwaves through many communities, not the least of which were transgender communities. For many trans and gender non-conforming people (TGNC) – already at heightened risk from increasingly dangerous policy proposals– the feeling turned from intense anxiety to one of palpable fear.

A little more than a year ago, the ACLU of Michigan’s Racial Justice Project convened an important hearing on law enforcement best practices. At the time, the public’s alarm about police violence was at fever pitch, and to the extent the need for clarity about how to address this problem was not already apparent, the popular demand for answers drove the point home.

Lame duck session in Michigan always brings challenges.  Last week, on the heels of a truly concerning presidential election that will without a doubt have chilling consequences for our most basic constitutional rights, term-limited Representative Lisa Lyons, R - Alto, introduced bills to further restrict and suppress access to the voting booth. 

Originally published on the Michigan Chronicle

Originally published by Todd Spangler for the Detroit Free Press

Coming from a migrant, farmworker family meant, I spent half the year in Florida and half the year in Michigan.  We were nomads traveling in our wood-paneled station wagon up and down Interstate 75 in the late spring and mid fall every year from the time I was 4 years old until we settled in Michigan in the fall of 1987 when I was 15. 

In an effort to stop the unconscionable termination of water service to tens of thousands of Detroit’s poorest residents, the ACLU of Michigan has had the honor of working with a team of distinguished lawyers led by heroic civil rights attorney Alice Jennings. The legal team’s litigation, brought on behalf of a class of water customers who seek an injunction of shut-offs and a plan for water affordability was dealt a tremendous blow recently when the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed decisions by the Bankruptcy Court and the District Court to dismiss the lawsuit.

Cross-posted on ACLU National