News & Commentary

Hopeful but wary.

Unfortunately, it’s increasingly a common story. A woman who is expecting a baby rushes to the hospital knowing that something is going horribly awry. Her heart rate is elevated, and she is bleeding. Sadly, the pregnancy is doomed. Crying and upset, she realizes she needs an abortion because she knows the pregnancy won’t make it to term. And she knows she is getting sicker.   

ACLU at the Michigan Capitol – May 16, 2016

In September 2015, when the state of Michigan was still adamantly denying that the water in Flint was contaminated with lead, Hurley Medical Center pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha unveiled a study of Flint children that proved conclusively that the state’s denials were false and that Flint was enmeshed in a full-blown public-health disaster.

For decades transgender people have been fired or turned away from jobs just because of who they are. Courts and federal agencies are finally starting to recognize this for what it is — illegal sex discrimination — and they’re holding employers accountable.But now, a Michigan funeral home is trying to turn back the clock by claiming that this country’s religious freedom protections give it a license to discriminate against transgender employees. As we explain in our recently filed friend-of-the-court brief, religious freedom doesn’t give employers a free pass to evade our civil rights laws, whether those laws are being used to remedy discrimination against women, people of color, or transgender individuals.

ACLU at the Michigan Capitol – May 2, 2016

Near the end of March, legislators and the governor of North Carolina jammed through the now infamous HB2 “bathroom bill” mandating that transgender people use only those restrooms that match their assigned sex at birth.  Immediately, there was uproar from business, LGBTQ advocates, constitutional law scholars and everyday ordinary people, who saw through the ridiculous idea that transgender people are somehow dangerous and need to be swept into segregated spaces.

In 2015, to mark the first anniversary of Flint’s fateful switch to river water, about 100 Flint residents marched through their city’s downtown in protest.

ACLU at the Michigan Capitol – April 21, 2016