News & Commentary

EXCERPTED FROM THE METRO TIMES

Monday will go down in history as day of celebration. In a total victory for reproductive freedom, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decisive ruling on Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, the most important abortion rights case before the high court in over 20 years. 

ACLU at the Michigan Capitol – June 27, 2016

The number of Americans who say they know a transgender person is on the rise but, “knowing” a transgender person and being familiar with their lives and the challenges transgender people face every day are two vastly different things. To make that difference tangible to non-transgender people and especially to those who make policy and report about us in the news, transgender people must effectively engage with lawmakers, the media and the public around them.

If, as expected, the Detroit Public Schools legislation recently passed by the Michigan House and Senate is signed into law by Gov. Rick Snyder, the hijacking of democracy that has been underway since the district was taken over by the state in 2009 will continue with no foreseeable end in sight.

A while back, the ACLU of Michigan joined with other organizations and law firms to challenge the constitutionality of the discredited emergency manager law. The emergency manager law, also known as Public Act 436, is at the root of the poisoning of Flint’s water supply as well as a variety of other evils across the state. The ACLU of Michigan’s participation in this case is only natural given its commitment to the eradication of all forms of discrimination and the political disenfranchisement of communities. The case is now pending before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals because the trial court dismissed all but one of the claims raised in the lawsuit.

UPDATE: On July 5, 2016, the Michigan Court of Appeals officially made it more difficult for same-sex co-parents to have parental rights with their children after a break-up. The Court reversed a favorable decision in Lake v Putnam, where our client Michelle Lake co-parented her son with her former partner, Kerri Putnam prior to marriage equality being available in Michigan.  After the parties broke up, Putnam took their son away and refused to allow Michelle to have any contact.  She filed a petition for parenting time arguing that she was an equitable parent and had legal standing to do so.  The trial court agreed and Putnam appealed.  Without even considering the best interests of their son, the Court of Appeals majority stated that because the parties were not married (even though Michigan law unconstitutionally prohibited them from doing so), Michelle had no parental rights nor legal standing to be able to see her son. 

Britain's Guardian newspaper deserves kudos for two recent articles dealing with the issue of testing for lead in municipal water supplies. Although one is national in scope, both stories have direct links to Flint, and both build on reporting done last year by the ACLU of Michigan.

It was Monday, May 9, 2016 and the week began with a press conference. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, were to announce a legal challenge to North Carolina’s anti-transgender House Bill 2. Lynch in her remarks compared laws like HB2 to Jim Crow laws of the past and as the nation’s first female, African-American woman attorney general her words directly confronting discrimination against the transgender community held special weight.