News & Commentary

State Departments Prepare to Extend Benefits to 323 Gay Couples Married in Michigan (Mlive) Jay Kaplan, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan who worked on the marriage recognition case, said it is "hard to enumerate" all of the state benefits that those couples - whose marriages were already recognized by the federal government -- will now be entitled to. A lot of the new benefits are "practical things," said Kaplan, such as the ability to easily change a last name on a driver's license or qualify as a beneficiary on a spouse's state pension. (ALSO: Detroit Free Press, Detroit News)

With a history of civil liberties stretching back almost a century, the ACLU has got plenty of amazing cases for #TBT. Every Thursday, we'll be sharing updates on cases pulled from our archives of work in Michigan and beyond. Just yesterday, Governor Snyder announced $2 million in grants to help Flint improve its water system after months of residents complaining about undrinkable water. We covered this issue on Democracy Watch months ago, and will continue to follow the issue. 

In Michigan, our current approach to school discipline is driving far too many public-school students—especially students of color—out of the classroom. In many cases, these children wind up booted out of state public-school districts altogether. Far too often, they also wind up in handcuffs. And in most cases, the discipline policies do little to actually make schools safer. A new report released today from Michigan State University professor Christopher Dunbar warns that the problems will only worsen—and the flow of children into the school-to-prison pipeline will only increase—unless leaders change their misguided notions about school discipline and overhaul related state laws. In For Naught: How Zero Tolerance Policy and School Police Practices Imperil Our Students’ Future, Dr. Dunbar takes an uncommonly deep dive into public school suspension and arrest data, finding that about 137,000 students were suspended from Michigan schools in one school year. The report also found that black students in the state are more than four times as likely as white students to be suspended from school. Equally as troubling, his research reveals that the disturbing rise in suspension and expulsion rates has far more to do with inappropriately harsh responses to child behavior—such as the enactment of draconian “zero tolerance” laws— than with effective preservation of school safety. As a way of reversing this trend, Dunbar’s report offers some key recommendations for better addressing student misconduct and reducing the number of exclusions and arrests:

The rights to free speech and assembly are indispensable in a functioning democracy, but private public partnerships (PPPs), often constitute states of exception. Two organizations in Detroit – Women in Black and Moratorium NOW! – have been denied the right to leaflet and petition along Detroit’s RiverWalk and in Campus Martius as a result of their PPP status as public spaces managed by private entities. Campus Martius and the RiverWalk are managed by the Detroit 300 Conservancy and the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, respectively. Both are private non-profit organizations that use their own security forces to monitor these popular spots in the heart of Detroit. Cheryl Labash, a member of Moratorium NOW!, a coalition that seeks to foster economic justice in Detroit, is pursuing legal action on the matter with the ACLU. Labash was stopped by a private security guard and unable to freely protest and make public her organization’s concerns last year. Though public spaces, private security is at liberty to prevent activists and organizations from protesting and speaking in support of their cause as it sees fit. Labash said, in an interview with the ACLU, “Downtown has basically been sanitized and that’s not what this country says that it’s about...We want to make sure that these opposing views or different views or different narratives of what’s happened in Detroit and the things that are important do have a place in downtown Detroit.” Campus Martius and the RiverWalk’s private management and security guards can choose, rather arbitrarily, when they object to a protest. It may be worth noting that, Moratorium NOW!, which seeks to bring light to foreclosures, evictions, and utility shutoffs in Detroit. Their mission and interests effectively run counter to the increasing private influence of the city at large. Similar questions of who is allowed protest in PPPs have arisen elsewhere. Black Lives Matter Minneapolis, a group whose mission it is to fight institutional racism and police brutality, gathered in protest on December 20th at the Mall of America. Mall authorities and the Bloomington police disbanded the protest and stated days later their intentions to pursue criminal charges and seek payment for lost revenue. Though the mall was created in part by and continues to thrive on millions of dollars in public subsidies, its private ownership allows it to criminalize protesters deemed unfit. For instance, 7,000 protestors were allowed to gather in order to honor the life of a man who had passed as a result of cancer, yet half that number was met with riot gear while mourning the life of Eric Garner. The denial of public space as a locus for free speech and assembly experienced by Labash and the Women in Black stands to represent the increasing privatization of Detroit - whether it be in the form of water shutoffs, private security, or through the withdrawal of workers’ pensions funding - and the lack of accountability that too often follows when profit and property are privileged over people. Minneapolis and Detroit are hardly the sole victims of this; the private commandeering of public spaces is becoming an increasingly flagrant phenomenon for urban America at large. The ACLU has worked in Maine as well as New York, as well to ensure that public space can be relied upon as a place of free and unencumbered protest and assembly. The private management and policing of public spaces puts First Amendment rights in a truly dire position, discounting the potential public dissent has in remedying injustice. By Sarah Goomar, ACLU Fellow

Last week, a federal judge ruled that Michigan must recognize the marriages of more than 300 couples who legally wed after Michigan’s marriage ban was struck down in March.

At 33 years old, my biological clock isn’t just ticking any longer—its clamoring at me.

The ACLU of Michigan and all those who treasure civil liberties lost a giant last week, when ACLU of Michigan cooperating attorney William Street died.

The Supreme Court ruled decades ago that it is unconstitutional to jail a person for failure to pay a debt that she or he cannot afford. However, the ACLU of Michigan has documented through repeated court watching efforts since 2011 that numerous judges throughout Michigan are jailing poor people on “pay or stay” sentences—sentences where individuals who are found guilty of a crime are given the “choice” of immediately paying their fines and costs or going to jail.

While we’re certainly not shy at the ACLU of Michigan about making our voice heard, there are still many instances in which our work doesn’t always get widespread public recognition we hope for.