Stories from the ACLU of Washington

I returned, very happily, from the Department of Justice press conference this morning. The DOJ’s in-depth report confirms what the ACLU has been saying and what many people of color and others have experienced – that the Seattle Police Department has engaged in a pattern and practice of excessive use of force.

Teen marijuana usage rates have risen slightly in recent years, while tobacco and alcohol usage rates have declined. Alarmingly, 12th-graders across the nation and in Washington state are now more likely to have used marijuana in the past 30 days than to have smoked a cigarette.

The Washington Department of Transportation announced today that tolling will start on the SR 520 bridge on December 29. This will be Washington’s first all-electronic toll bridge—meaning there will be no toll booths—and by far the highest volume all-electronic toll facilities in the country. There are lots of advantages to eliminating toll booths (e.g., less congestion, greater safety), but there are also drawbacks, potentially including a loss of privacy. 

Gov. Chris Gregoire and a group of farm-group representatives recently made headlines when they returned from Washington D.C., where they had sought to persuade Congress to oppose a bill requiring employers to use a system called E-Verify.  In stern words, Gov. Gregoire criticized the measure and its likely detrimental effect on our state’s agriculture industry. 

In 2010, the ACLU of Washington was instrumental in the passage of the nation’s second “911 Good Samaritan” law. New research from the University of Washington’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute shows that the 911 Good Samaritan law works.

On May 10, 1970, a Washington state college student joined a chorus of anti-war voices by waving his version of the American flag. It featured a peace symbol – and it got him arrested under Washington’s flag-desecration statute. The student was convicted. The Washington Supreme Court did not grant his appeal. But in a landmark case (Spence v. Washington) won by Seattle attorney Peter Greenfield, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision as a violation of the First Amendment.

Racial discrimination in housing has been illegal in the United States for over 40 years. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it a crime to discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin in all housing-related transactions.  But a recent study conducted by the Seattle Office of Civil Rights demonstrates that housing discrimination is far from dead.

One disturbing consequence of the Patriot Act, which just marked its ten-year anniversary, is how it has been used for law enforcement actions not related to combating terrorism -- the rationale for the Act's passage. A glaring example can be seen in the use of "sneak and peak” searches for drug crimes.

On October 22, the Minority Executive Directors Coalition (MEDC) of King County presented the ACLU-WA its Founders Award for our work calling for a Department of Justice investigation of the Seattle Police Department and advocating for communities of color.

In the early months of 1986, my parents bought my sister and me our first computer, an Apple IIe, and all of a sudden I was playing Oregon Trail at home, in color no less! That summer, I watched in awe as Ferris Bueller effortlessly hacked his way into the school computer to change his absences. He was indeed a righteous dude, and thus began my ill-fated campaign to acquire a modem.