News & Commentary

NOTICE ABOUT FOOD LOST DUE TO POWER OUTAGES:  If you lost food purchased with back benefits you received from this lawsuit, you must file a claim with DHHS WITHIN 10 DAYS OF WHEN YOU LOST THE FOOD.  Write out a statement about what food you lost, when you lost it (which could be several days after the storm was over) and include the language: “I understand that there are penalties for intentional misrepresentation of facts, including but not limited to, a charge of penalty for a false claim.” Make sure to date your statement and make a copy of it before you take it to DHHS. Please call the Barry Call Center at 313 578 6826 and let us know that you have filed a claim. 

The good news is that lead levels in Flint’s water continue to drop.

The verdict is in, it seems: LGBT co-parents can have their kids unilaterally taken away from them by their former partner (the legal parent) - and the highest court in Michigan has essentially said it doesn't give a damn.

Recent tragic police-related shootings have demonstrated yet again that sudden, violent deaths at the hands of police can capture headlines and public attention. But out of sight and forgotten are thousands of victims of illegal racially discriminatory encounters with police who survived, but who nevertheless ended up in prison cells.

It isn’t really about bathrooms, is it?

Two important cases involving the ACLU of Michigan--one involving water shutoffs in Detroit and the other a challenge to Michigan’s emergency manager law--will be heard by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati next week.

Rohit Rajan is a summer intern at the ACLU's West Michigan office. A rising second-year law student at Harvard Law School, Rohit says his journey into civil-rights activism started in high school while doing research, and he expects it continue for many years to come.

Like a coroner conducting an autopsy, economist and Wayne State University Law School professor Peter J. Hammer recently performed a highly detailed dissection of the Flint water crisis, laying bare the various pathologies that led to the poisoning of Flint's water supply.

Meet Jessica Lewis, a rising 3L at Harvard Law School and current ACLU of Michigan summer law intern.