Just 16 years after DOMA's passage, striking it down can be seen as conservative
ACLU of Massachusetts Legal Director Matthew R. Segal wrote this guest blog.
A federal appeals court in Boston ruled today in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional because it denies married same-sex couples the same federal benefits available to opposite-sex married couples. The unanimous 3-0 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit represents the first time a federal appeals court has struck down DOMA. This is wonderful news--particularly for same-sex couples married in Massachusetts--because it rules that all married couples must receive the same federal benefits regardless of sexual orientation.
FULL ENTRY“Show me your papers” comes to Massachusetts
ACLU of Massachusetts Legal Director Matthew R. Segal wrote this guest blog.
Starting on May 15, the federal government will effectively force Massachusetts--that’s right, force--to participate in “Secure Communities,” an immigration dragnet that risks pushing Massachusetts toward an Arizona-style “show me your papers” regime.
This is bad news for all Massachusetts residents. S-Comm promotes racial profiling, jeopardizes public safety, and inhibits economic growth. Although the federal government seems intent on implementing this flawed program anyway, Massachusetts officials should try to limit the havoc that it wreaks.
In schools with hammers, guess what kids become
To a person wielding a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. So it's no surprise that when you put a bunch of armed cops into public schools, they start arresting kids for behaviors such as swearing, banging lockers, and throwing tantrums--behavior that is nothing new but that, once upon a time, parents and school officials used to handle.
That's what our report Arrested Futures: The Criminalization of School Discipline in Massachusetts' Three Largest School Districts found. In this study of three comparable Massachusetts cities--Boston, Worcester, and Springfield--researchers for the ACLU and Citizens for Juvenile Justice found that where schools deploy uniformed police officers in the hallways, kids are handcuffed, booked, and locked up for committing "public order" offenses at a far higher rate than at schools where social workers are hired to walk the halls instead. The cops are the hammers; the kids are the nails. Wham.
FULL ENTRY
