Trans people's ability to work in the US, and our digity, is on the line at the Supreme Court.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard argument on whether it is legal to fire people for being transgender or for being gay. I represent Aimee Stephens, the woman who lost her job as a funeral director for being transgender, and I was sitting at counsel table during the argument. You can read the argument transcript online.

I’m optimistic about our chances. We need five votes, and it seemed to me that Justices Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor were leaning our way, as hoped. Justice Gorsuch certainly implied that he thought our textual argument carried some weight, and that it was at least possible he will vote in favor of the employees. Justice Kavanaugh was almost entirely silent, giving very little clue as to his thinking. While Justices Roberts and Alito to me did not seem favorably disposed toward the employees and Justice Thomas presumably feels the same, we only need five votes. I think it is very possible that we will get them, in both the LGBQ cases and the trans case that were argued yesterday.

Our argument is morally right, of course, but it is also simple and legally sound. The question is whether discrimination against LGBTQ people is discrimination because of sex. It makes no sense to say that discrimination against someone for identifying with a sex other than their assigned sex at birth, or for being attracted to people of the same sex, is not about sex. The other side’s arguments sounded strained, and that’s because their arguments have no real basis in law or logic. The justices would have to warp the statute to exclude trans people and LGBQ people, and I think there is reason to hope that a majority will refuse to do that.

Yesterday’s argument included much discussion about a variety of sex-specific policies, and whether trans people may be forced to comply with them based on assigned sex at birth. While none of those policies are actually at issue in these cases, they were the subject of a lot of questions from the justices. That is because the other side’s strategy—even in the sexual orientation context—is to counter our arguments with anti-trans fear-mongering. I fear that to achieve a majority, the justices will write an opinion that would enable forcing trans women to follow the dress code for men, or to use men’s restrooms. While language like that would not technically be binding, it could make things much more difficult for trans people at work, at school, and in public places. And it could shore up the legitimacy of gendered dress codes that currently are legally dubious because they reinforce stereotypes about women in the workplace.

Now, we wait. The decision may come out as early as January, or as late as June. Before and after, we need full-throated support for complete freedom from sex discrimination in the workplace and beyond.  It should be beyond doubt that women get to wear pants to work (something Aimee Stephens’ employer forbade). It should be beyond doubt that trans people get to work as who we really are. It should be beyond doubt that LGBQ people get to be out at work.

I think Aimee Stephens was right when she told Vox:

[T]he fact that we’re able to bring it forth and hear the case presented is a victory already. Regardless of whether it’s a favorable decision or not, we still have a lot of work to do. When this part’s over, we just work on the next issue, and work hard and keeping going.

In three cases at the Supreme Court, the Trump administration is arguing it’s legal to fire workers for being LGBTQ.

This week the Supreme Court heard arguments in three cases in which the Trump administration is urging the court to rule that it’s legal to fire workers for being LGBTQ.

For the LGBTQ civil rights movement, this is a big moment. These cases will affect more people than the Supreme Court’s decision about the freedom to marry, and they potentially implicate a broader range of contexts in which LGBTQ people may face harm, if the Court green-lights discrimination. Worse still, a bad ruling would strip away protections against discrimination that LGBTQ people have been able to use to protect themselves for two decades. And all this in a context where nearly one in three transgender people has experienced discrimination in the workplace.

In short, the stakes are very high.

One of the cases is about the rights of transgender people and involves Aimee Stephens, who worked for nearly six years as a funeral director at a funeral home near Detroit. Earlier in her life, Aimee had considered going into the ministry, but then found her calling in funeral services, where she could help comfort people in a time of great need. Her employer knew her as a man, but Aimee knew from five years old that she was female. After decades of hiding who she really was, Aimee could bear it no more, realizing that the only way to live was as her true self. She gathered the strength to come out to her family, friends, and co-workers as a woman. When she introduced herself as Aimee to her boss, he fired her. He made no pretense about any performance reason; he openly admitted that it was because she is transgender, saying, “this isn’t going to work out.”

The other two cases both involve men who were fired because they are gay. In one case, Gerald Bostock was fired from his job as a social worker for at-risk youth after his employer found out he was gay. The third case involves is Don Zarda, who worked as an instructor for a skydiving outfit on Long Island, New York. Don had become hooked on skydiving years earlier, and it evolved from being his passion to being his profession as well. He loved introducing others to the sport. Don often took customers on tandem jumps, where they are strapped to him shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip before they jump from the plane. One day, Don told a female customer that he was gay in an effort to make her less uncomfortable with how close they were physically. He thought nothing of the remark, but his boss later fired him for sharing “inappropriate information” with a customer.

When Don called his sister Melissa to tell her he’d been fired, her first reaction was surprise and disbelief. “It’s not legal to fire you because you’re gay,” she told him. And she’s right. Lower courts in both Don’s and Aimee’s cases ruled that their firings violate federal civil rights law, because the employers treated them differently because of their sex. After all, the courts reasoned, if Aimee had been assigned a female sex at birth, her employer would not have fired her for being and living as the woman she is. And if Don had been a woman attracted to men, as opposed to a man attracted to men, he would not have been fired for sharing that information with a customer.

Big picture: it’s hard to see how firing someone for being LGBTQ doesn’t involve the person’s sex. You can’t even describe being trans or gay without talking about the individuals’ sex. At its core, the federal ban on sex discrimination is simple: workers are not supposed to be treated differently because of their sex.

There is an enormous amount at stake in these cases. LGBTQ people could lose protections against discrimination that they have relied on in many cases for two decades. Going back to 2000, federal appeals courts have ruled that anti-trans discrimination is a form of sex discrimination that violates federal law, providing a remedy for trans workers fired for who they are. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, tasked with enforcing the federal workplace non-discrimination law, agrees that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, and has recovered millions of dollars for LGBTQ workers who sued over discrimination.

And a decision in these cases could affect LGBTQ people in contexts well beyond just the workplace. LGBTQ people have relied on federal protections against sex discrimination to redress housing discrimination, to combat discrimination in schools, and to remedy discrimination in health care. All of these protections could be swept away if the court deletes LGBTQ people from the existing scope of the federal civil rights laws.

A ruling in these cases could affect non-LGBTQ people as well. A crucial Supreme Court precedent for Aimee and Don’s cases is that of Ann Hopkins. As an employee at accounting firm Price Waterhouse, Hopkins was passed over for partner and told she could increase her chances if she would "walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry." The Supreme Court ruled that requiring her to conform to stereotypes associated with being a woman demonstrated sex discrimination.

Many federal courts have concluded that firing LGBTQ people because we don’t meet employers’ stereotypes of how women and men should act, identify, and appear is just as much sex discrimination as passing over Ann Hopkins because she was considered “macho.”

But if the Supreme Court says in Aimee’s and Don’s cases that this reasoning doesn’t apply to LGBTQ people, that could spell trouble for everyone. We could return to a world where employers can fire anyone — straight or gay, transgender or not — for not being the “right kind” of woman or man. Scary stuff.

The ACLU is proud to represent Aimee and Don, and to fight alongside Gerald, as we urge the Supreme Court not to roll back the rights of LGBTQ people and not to eviscerate sex discrimination protections for everyone else in the process.

A judge's anti-Semitism towards Randy Halprin is a clear violation of due process, religious neutrality and equal justice.

UPDATE: On Friday, October 4, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, where Randy Halprin had sought relief before turning to the U.S. Supreme Court, granted a stay of execution. We commend this decision.

“A goddamn Kike.”

“That fuckin’ Jew.”

According to pleadings filed yesterday with the U.S. Supreme Court, that’s how Judge Vickers Cunningham referred to Randy Halprin, a Jewish defendant whose trial he presided over. The pleadings ask the court to delay Halprin’s execution—currently scheduled for Thursday, October 10 in Texas—and to review a federal appellate court’s decision denying him the right to seek a new trial.

Halprin’s plea to the Supreme Court is based on substantial new evidence demonstrating that Cunningham, who is no longer a judge, is a virulent racist and anti-Semite who brought his views to bear on Halprin’s case. Based on the evidence gathered by Halprin and his attorneys, it appears that Cunningham hates anyone who is not white and Protestant. For example, an affidavit filed by Tammy McKinney, who grew up with Cunningham and, as an adult, attended the same church and clubs as him, stated that Cunningham regularly used slurs “such as ‘nigger,’ ‘wetback,’ ‘spic,’ ‘kike,’ [and] ‘the fuckin’ Jews.’”

Amanda Tackett, who worked for his campaign to become the Dallas district attorney, similarly attested that Cunningham “said he wanted to run for office so that he could save Dallas from ‘niggers,’ ‘wetbacks,’ Jews, and dirty Catholics.” In addition, she recounted a discussion about a Jewish attorney’s investigation into wrongful convictions during which Cunningham complained that the “‘filthy Jew’ . . . was going to come in and free all these ‘niggers.’”

Cunningham has also repeatedly espoused anti-Jewish stereotypes, according to those who know him. In one instance detailed by Tackett, he warned that Jewish people need “to be shut down” because they control “all the money and all the power.” He reportedly wore a stereotypical banker’s outfit (a green visor and suspenders) at a casino-themed party and declared that he was a “Jew banker.”  Even Cunningham’s mother admitted at one point that her son’s “biggest burden was his bigotry.”

Despite his numerous derogatory comments to friends, family, and acquaintances, Cunningham managed to conceal the extent of his prejudice from the public for years—until a May 2018 article in the Dallas Morning News pulled back the curtain on him. No longer a judge, Cunningham was running for county commissioner when his brother revealed to the newspaper that he was a “lifelong racist.” The article also reported that Cunningham “described criminal cases involving black people as ‘T.N.D.s,’ short for ‘Typical [N-word] Deals.’” And, the article exposed the existence of a trust he had set up in 2010 for his children, with a stipulation that provides a monetary distribution upon marriage but only if the child marries a white, Christian person of the opposite sex.

Although Cunningham acknowledged that he had established the discriminatory trust, he told the newspaper that his views “never translated into unfairness on the bench or discrimination in any way.” But as we all know, that’s not how prejudice works. This sort of lifelong, deep-seated bigotry simply can’t be switched off just because an individual puts on a judge’s robe and takes the bench.

The Dallas News piece immediately garnered the attention of Halprin’s attorneys. As the presiding judge at his 2003 trial, Cunningham knew that Halprin was Jewish: His faith came up several times during the proceedings. On investigating further, the attorneys discovered that not only was Cunningham prejudiced against Jewish people generally, but he used anti-Semitic slurs when talking about Halprin. Moreover, according to McKinney, he “took special pride in the death sentences” of Halprin and his co-defendants (known as the “Texas Seven”) because “they included Latinos and a Jew,” boasting, “From the wetback to the Jew, they knew they were going to die.” 

Like all criminal defendants, Randy Halprin was entitled to a fair trial with an unbiased, neutral arbiter. Instead, key rulings that helped determine his fate—including the decision to prohibit him from presenting evidence to the jury mitigating his guilt—were made by a judge who denigrated him as a “goddamn kike” and “a fucking Jew” and who took pride in sentencing “the Jew” to death. That’s not due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Nor is it religious neutrality under the First Amendment. And it’s certainly not equal justice under the law.

CBP officers are forcibly returning pregnant asylum-seekers to Mexico in violation of their own rules.

The view from the Matamoros, Mexico side of the Rio Grande — just across from Brownsville, Texas — reveals an unsettling scene.

Young women and children bathe openly in the murky green water, while others wash their clothes on the bank of the river that has claimed so many lives – most recently those of Idalia and her 21-month-old son Iker. This is the new painful reality of seeking asylum in the United States.

These families are not at the river by choice. They are being forced to wait in perilous conditions as a result of the Trump administration’s forced return to Mexico policy, which it perversely calls the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). 

Under the policy, which the ACLU and partners are challenging in a federal lawsuit, people fleeing persecution and legally seeking asylum in the U.S. are forced to wait in Mexico for months on end while their cases proceed in U.S. immigration courts. The Trump administration wants people to think that the policy is benign, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Since going into effect earlier this year, MPP has been actively putting the lives of asylum-seekers in grave danger. For the most vulnerable people, including pregnant women, young children, and babies, this danger is particularly acute.

Women, children, and men bathing on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, just across from Brownsville, Texas.

Recently, an 18-year-old Ecuadoran woman named Carolina,* who is more than four months pregnant, was sent to Mexico for a second time after attempting to legally claim asylum in the U.S. She was immediately placed into MPP and returned to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, a city which according to the U.S. State Department is as dangerous as Afghanistan or Syria. A foreigner to Mexico, she had no safe place to go or community to which to turn. Alone, pregnant, and vulnerable, she was kidnapped and threatened with being sold or killed unless her family paid a ransom.

Carolina was eventually released by her kidnappers. Traumatized, she again returned to the international bridge in Laredo, Texas seeking safety that she believed only the U.S. could provide. But the kidnapping and fear of death was not enough for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. They instead sent her to the same city where she had been kidnapped, failing even to refer her to an asylum officer to have her fear of returning to Mexico evaluated. 

In Mexico, Carolina fearfully stayed close to the gates of the port of entry, terrified that local cartel scouts were waiting to kidnap her again. Thankfully, Carolina’s family had contacted advocates who tried to get her released from MPP. They were unsuccessful, but were able to help Carolina flee to Mexico City for safety. There, she is currently waiting for her next immigration court date — set to occur in an ad hoc “tent court” in Laredo, Texas — hundreds of miles from Mexico City and just across the river from where she almost lost her life.

Hundreds of heartbreaking stories, just like Carolina’s, began to surface immediately after this policy went into effect in January 2019, and more so after the rapid expansion of the policy to Laredo and Brownsville, Texas in July. Nearly 50,000 people have been placed into MPP so far. One woman interviewed by attorneys described a CBP officer telling her she should abort her unborn child because “Trump didn’t want any more pregnant people here.”

A young pregnant mother holds her toddler in a makeshift migrant encampment created to house asylum seekers sent back to Mexico as a result of the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

MPP is part of a consistent pattern of xenophobic and racist efforts by the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials to prevent people from lawfully being granted asylum in the U.S. Instead of welcoming asylum-seekers, as the U.S. has successfully done for decades, the Trump administration has engaged in a campaign of misinformation to provide cover for unlawful policies against people fleeing persecution. 

This inhumane policy is not aimed at any national security interest or protecting us from serious criminals; it’s an attempt to make it nearly impossible for anyone, no matter what terror they’re fleeing from, to enter into the U.S.

MPP’s impact has been made even worse due to how federal agents are executing it. DHS is well aware that there are populations with special needs that should be exempt from MPP. In fact, it has written guidelines that outline the exemption of vulnerable people — specifically pregnant women — from being forced back into Mexico.

And while DHS knows that northern Mexican border cities are incredibly unsafe, particularly for migrants and asylum-seekers who are unable to defend themselves from being victimized, it continues to send the most vulnerable back to danger. In fact, it has been well documented that asylum-seekers subjected to MPP have faced rape, kidnapping, assault, extortion, and death after being forced to return to Mexico

The policy has also forced migrants and asylum-seekers to live in squalid conditions without access to proper housing, food, or sanitation. This has caused outrage in the medical community. Physicians for Human Rights has publicly warned that the health and lives of mothers and babies are at risk due to grossly unhygienic living conditions, insufficient nutrition, lack of medical care, and inadequate access to potable water at makeshift encampments of people forced into MPP.

The safety and health conditions that pregnant women are forced to endure while languishing in Mexico are abhorrent and unacceptable. And it is happening right at our doorstep.

That is why the ACLU of Texas and ACLU Border Rights Center interviewed 18 pregnant women, including Carolina, and filed an official complaint with the DHS Office of Inspector General, demanding a return to safety inside the U.S. for all pregnant women in MPP. 

Each of the women listed in the complaint have their own harrowing story of legally seeking refuge in the United States, and instead being cruelly denied protection and sent to Mexico without any regard for their safety.  

MPP must end. Every day it is in effect, lives are in imminent risk. In the meantime, the special exemptions for pregnant women and other vulnerable groups must be followed by U.S. immigration authorities. Because what happens along the Rio Grande and the entire borderlands reflects on the conscience of our entire nation. 

*Carolina is a pseudonym used to protect the asylum seeker from reprisals.

Abortion could become inaccessible in entire states even without an explicit abortion ban.

Update: On October 4, 2019, the Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments June Medical Services v. Gee, the case challenging Louisiana's TRAP law, this term. 

Abortion rights captured the nation’s attention earlier this year when seven states passed early abortion bans. With the changes in the Supreme Court, and President Trump’s promise to appoint justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the concern about whether these new abortion bans would be upheld by the Supreme Court understandably reached a fever pitch.

But banning abortion outright isn’t the only way to eliminate abortion access in a state.  For decades, anti-abortion politicians have been quietly trying to push abortion out of reach by passing abortion restriction on top of restriction.  The new Supreme Court term started this week, and several challenges to such restrictions are pending in the Supreme Court. The Court could thus issue a ruling that would affect the future of abortion access this year without ever taking up a case involving an outright abortion ban.

Many of the abortion restrictions passed in recent years are called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws. They serve no medical purpose, and are passed with the sole intention of making it difficult — if not impossible — for people to access abortion.  A TRAP case from Louisiana, brought by our colleagues at the Center for Reproductive Rights, is one of the cases that SCOTUS could take up this term.

The TRAP law in question in the Louisiana case requires doctors who work at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. If it stands, it would shutter all the clinics in the state except for one.

A district court struck down the law after finding that it would serve no medical purpose and would decimate abortion access in the case. The state appealed, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law. While it agreed that the law had limited-to-no medical utility, the court inaccurately found that the law wouldn’t cause clinics to close.

If you are experiencing déjà vu, you are not alone.  In 2016, the Supreme Court heard Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, and found that a nearly identical law in Texas, which also required abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, served no medical purpose and would unnecessarily force clinics to close.  The Court ruled that the law was therefore unconstitutional. The Whole Woman’s Health decision should have controlled the outcome in the Louisiana case too, but the Fifth Circuit failed to follow it.

Louisiana is not alone in trying to use TRAP laws to effectively ban abortion.  In Kentucky, we represent the last abortion clinic in the state, EMW Women’s Surgical Center, in several lawsuits, including a challenge to a TRAP law that requires abortion facilities to have a written transfer agreement with a local hospital. EMW had a transfer agreement with a local hospital for years, but Governor Bevin’s administration rejected it because it was signed by the head of the OB/GYN department rather than the hospital’s CEO. To prevent the state from shutting EMW down and eliminating abortion access in Kentucky, we went to court.  The law was struck down after trial, but the state’s appeal is now pending in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Ohio, a TRAP law is also being used to quietly and gradually close abortion clinics.  The law creates a complicated obstacle course for clinics: it says surgical facilities must have a written transfer agreement with a hospital, but the state department of health can waive that requirement if the clinic has one or more backup doctors with hospital admitting privileges.  The health department previously said that two backup doctors are insufficient for a waiver, and have arbitrarily demanded three instead.  Now – for no medical reason – they are requiring four back-up doctors. In states where doctors are subject to harassment for simply being associated with abortion access, finding that many back-up doctors can be next to impossible.

In Missouri, the state’s last clinic is facing a similar fight.  Earlier this year, the health department threatened to shut down that clinic, which is a Planned Parenthood affiliate, over disputes about its license. Planned Parenthood’s lawyers ran to court, and were able to get a court order prohibiting the state from closing the clinic—for now.

These states have followed up their restrictive TRAP laws with legislation that effectively bans abortion (although none are currently in effect). The agenda of these anti-abortion politicians is clear: TRAP laws have nothing to do with public safety, and everything to do with hostility to abortion. They are part of a strategy to do anything that eliminates abortion access.         

As the Supreme Court starts its new session this week, all eyes should be on the Louisiana case.  If the Court allows the Louisiana law to take effect, it will not only be devastating for people in Louisiana, it could also pave the way for courts to uphold other TRAP laws and abortion restrictions that will push abortion out of reach even more so than it already is.  TRAP laws hide their true intention under complex regulatory requirements that obscure what they are meant to accomplish, which is an end to abortion access. We must remain vigilant against all attempts to ban abortion, including both explicit as well as more subtle attempts.                   

With a whistleblower under attack by the president, now is the time to strengthen whistleblower protections.

The @realDonaldTrump Twitter handle was on overdrive this weekend, assailing the anonymous whistleblower who reported that President Trump used the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. Like clockwork, President Trump tried to attack the whistleblower’s credibility, questioned the meager whistleblower protections currently in place, labeled those who provided information to the whistleblower as spies, and suggested such “spies” should be treated as they were in “the old days” — presumably referring to execution.

President Trump’s attacks are deeply troubling and should provide lawmakers fresh motive to strengthen whistleblower protections, particularly for the intelligence community. But, the attacks aren’t unprecedented. We’ve seen them before, and for decades have fought to protect whistleblowers from them.

Joining us on ACLU’s At Liberty podcast with ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero, NSA surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden discusses how the president’s latest antics fit a larger, bipartisan government playbook to delegitimize and intimidate whistleblowers and those who expose government wrongdoing to the media. He also details what it means to be a whistleblower and the enormous risks they assume in order to disclose information vital to the broader public.

Below is a partial transcript of Romero’s conversation with Snowden. It has been edited in places for length and clarity. The full podcast episode is here.

SNOWDEN:

The whistleblower that's in the public right now I think will actually come out of this okay. They're going to be attacked. They're going to face retaliation. But I think they'll be protected because they're not indicting the system. They're indicting a man.

But that man who has been indicted by this complaint is already out there saying, “Who is this person? You know they're acting like a spy. You know what we used to do with spies?” — implying, ‘I don't like that this person exposed me. It would be better if these people were killed.’ Right?

It's the proof that matters, not where it came from. It's, what are the facts? Is this a violation? Is it not? Whenever power faces some kind of opposition, they immediately try to change the conversation into: Who are you? How dare you? And get people talking about who brought this forward instead of what was brought forward. And that's why we need processes to account for that right.

ROMERO: 

Right. I think the part that I think is so relevant for today is what you said on the bottom of 238 [of your new memoir, Permanent Record], when you said, “A whistleblower in my definition is a person who through hard experience has concluded that their life inside an institution has become incompatible with the principles developed in and their loyalty owed to the greater society outside it. This person knows that they can't remain inside the institution and knows that the institution can't or won't be dismantled. Reforming institution might be possible, however, so they blow the whistle and disclosing information to bring public pressure to bear.” It's relevant not just for what you did in 2013, but relevant today. 

Talk to me about the decision to go to journalists. 

SNOWDEN:

Yeah. So I mean this is the thing that we are struggling with right now. And we have struggled within this country for 50 years. I mean Daniel Ellsberg back in the 1970s when he was revealing the secret history of the Vietnam War. He was accused of all the things you see whistleblowers accused of today. He was charged under the precisely the same Espionage Act that I have been charged under. He believed he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison and he would have if Nixon hadn't pooched up the investigation.

But what you have to realize in all of these things is what drives a person to abandon the safety of their office? What drives a person to abandon the safety of the system? Whistleblowing is never rewarded. That's just not how it works. And the CIA, the NSA, the intelligence community broadly sees itself as kind of a paramilitary organization. They see following orders as equivalent to morality. You don't question the lawfulness. You don't question the propriety of what you're doing. If you question it, you end up with problems.

But what happens when the system fails? And what happens when your organization can't respond to it? What happens when you are required by the process to report the wrongdoing that you've witnessed to the people who are responsible for that wrongdoing? What if you're supposed to be going to Congress and Congress is the one who's directing the wrongdoing? What if you're supposed to go to the head of an agency and the agency's director is the one whose name is on the order that is violating the law or the Constitution?

And this is where we have seen time and time again that when you go through these proper channels, as you call them, they don't resolve the problem. Rather, they're a kind of trap where whistleblowers go into and then they're flushed from the system. The complaints are buried, the programs are shored up and made even more secret. And the person who reported them has their life destroyed. They lose their career. In some cases, they lose their freedom, their family. These are not hypotheticals – we can cite names if you want them. 

But this is where we go. All right. There's all this risk. How do we ensure that the public's interest is what's actually served? I mean this is where the whistleblower takes an enormous amount of risk stepping outside of that system to tell the public what they need to know.

The ACLU is in court fighting to block cruel anti-asylum policies, but we need your help.

In June 1939, a passenger ship named the St. Louis approached the coast of Florida, planning to dock in Miami. The boat was packed with nearly a thousand refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe. Most were Jewish, and they thought they’d find a safe haven in the United States.

They were wrong. President Franklin Roosevelt denied their pleas for help, and the U.S. Coast Guard prevented the St. Louis from reaching our shores. By the end of World War 2, nearly a third of the people on board had been killed by the Nazis.

As Europe emerged from the inferno of war and the Holocaust, nations across the world resolved that people fleeing violence and persecution, like those on the St. Louis, would no longer be met with indifference by other nations. In 1951, the Refugee Convention was signed, and by 1980 Congress enshrined the principle of asylum for refugees in domestic immigration law. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, America has been a leader in providing humanitarian protections to people fleeing persecution, torture, and genocide.

For decades, these protections have been the law of the land in the U.S. We have sheltered people from across the globe, enriching our communities and proudly standing as a beacon of hope in the process.

Today, the U.S. government under President Donald Trump is doing everything it can to destroy those protections. And although the ACLU and our partners have managed to block some of their efforts, the administration is currently being allowed to implement key aspects of its ruthless agenda on the ground.

In the past few months, nearly 50,000 vulnerable asylum-seekers have been placed into a cruel program that forcibly returns them to Mexico before their applications are even processed by U.S. immigration authorities. The program was designed for one purpose: to make it so difficult and dangerous to apply for asylum that people will simply give up and return to the persecution they fled. Cartels and criminals in the border cities where asylum-seekers are stuck have learned they are easy prey for extortion, kidnapping, and sexual assault.

And that’s not all. Another new policy bans virtually all asylum-seekers from receiving asylum if they arrived at the border after transiting through a ‘third-country.' This regulation is especially vicious, given the dangerous overland journeys many asylum-seekers make, and the inability of most to arrive directly in the U.S. from their home country without passing through another one first.

The stories emerging from the border right now due to these policies are horrifying. Border Patrol agents giving pregnant women medication to stop their contractions so they can be dumped in Mexico without shelter. Children kidnapped after being placed into the program, with their assailants threatening to kill them and sell their organs. Vulnerable young women raped and assaulted in cities where they don’t know anyone and can’t rely on the authorities for protection. Entire families stuck in squalid tent camps just a stone’s throw from safety in the U.S.

What we know of the dangers these people are facing on our doorstep is just the tip of the iceberg. Because advocates, journalists, and lawyers have limited access to them, most of their suffering is unheard and unseen by people in the U.S. After harrowing journeys fleeing gang violence, political persecution, domestic abuse, and ethnic targeting, they’ve found only indifference at our hands.

The Trump Administration can’t be allowed to unilaterally strip people of humanitarian protections created by Congress.  A majority of the judges who have considered our challenge to the forced return to Mexico program have found it has serious legal flaws, but the government has been permitted to implement it during the initial stage of litigation anyway. It has thus become part of a virtual border wall being built by Trump as he builds his physical one. And no degree of cruelty goes too far for its architects.

They want you to believe that the asylum system was broken before they took office, and that these policies were created to stop people from “gaming the system.” In fact, the opposite is true: the administration's policies are causing chaos and making the system unworkable for people who need – and are legally entitled to – our protection. In 2017, for example, it ended a program that had assisted asylum-seekers in attending 99% of check-ins and court dates while claiming that it needs to radically expand the immigration detention system because asylum-seekers don't show up for hearings. Government asylum officers themselves call Trump’s new asylum policies a “supervillain plan” and immigration judges have described the newly created “tent courts” as something that might exist in “China or Russia.”

The president and his appointees are the ones breaking the asylum system, and they are hoping that you won’t notice or be outraged. They want the people pleading for help at our border to stay out of sight and out of mind, and for you to assume they’re someone else’s problem. We can’t let that happen.

We’re in court tomorrow challenging two of Trump’s most ruthless anti-asylum policies. The stakes could not be higher. If these policies are allowed to stand, tens of thousands of people will remain in danger, with few options other than to return back to the persecution they're trying to escape. Make no mistake, that’s exactly what this administration wants.

There is no way to sugar-coat the reality of what’s happening at the border. Our government is waging a war on asylum-seekers, and it's counting on the American public to stay silent and not pay attention. We’re doing what we can in the courts and in Congress, but we need you to get informed, get angry, and generate public pressure on our elected officials – as well as all the presidential candidates – to demand an immediate reversal of these policies.

We need your help, and so do the vulnerable families in danger at our doorstep within arms reach of the safety they deserve. It’s time for us to look at ourselves in the mirror and decide who we want to be. Are we going to protect those families and welcome them onto our shores, or will we be like those who turned the St. Louis away and condemned hundreds of its passengers to death?

Another attack on Muslims and communities of color seeking safety.

The Trump administration yesterday announced its plan to admit 18,000 refugees this fiscal year, taking another step in its agenda to dismantle the program that has long provided protection for people and families seeking safety from persecution. This sickening announcement is consistent with Trump’s attacks on refugees, Muslims, and immigrants across the board — particularly those who are Brown or Black.

The U.S. has long been a global leader in refugee admissions. By the end of the Obama administration, the United States’ annual refugee admissions ceiling was 110,000 — and many felt it should be higher in light of multiple international crises that were causing many people to flee their homes. Given that many of these crises were in Muslim-majority countries like Syria, and that some Muslim communities, like the Rohingya in Myanmar, were being specifically targeted for persecution, nearly half of refugees admitted to the U.S. at the time were Muslim.

While crises around the world continue, the Trump administration has consistently and significantly reduced refugee admissions, lowering the previous 110,000 admissions ceiling to 45,000 in fiscal year 18; 30,000 in FY 19; and now to 18,000 in FY 20. This is consistent with their targeting of Black and Brown people, including Muslims whose admissions dropped to 17 percent in the first half of FY 18 (as compared to the then 63 percent Christian admissions). In addition, only 62 Syrians were admitted in FY 18 — a 99.05 percent decline from FY 17 to FY 18.

These attacks on those seeking our help through the refugee program have extended to individuals seeking asylum. The asylum program, like the refugee admissions program, is intended to help those seeking refuge from persecution. While those applying for refugee status apply from abroad, those seeking asylum apply in the U.S. In fact, many are making claims at our southern border and others are already living in the United States.

The substance of the claims is the same — people in need, calling for our help, asking that we welcome them so that they may survive. These humanitarian programs are a part of our immigration laws and are the country we strive to be.

But the administration disagrees, and is trying to unilaterally erase these protections.  Just recently, for example, the administration abruptly announced that individuals, other than Mexicans, at our southern border can’t get asylum here unless they apply for protection in a third country and are rejected there. This directive could virtually shut down a large part of the asylum system. It has been challenged in an ACLU lawsuit and found unlawful by multiple courts, but is currently being implemented while the litigation continues. 

With that policy and yesterday’s announcement, Trump continues the legacy he began with the Muslim ban, betraying communities and implementing discriminatory and hateful policies. The original Muslim ban included a ban on refugees. Even once the administration split the Muslim and refugee ban into two orders, the targeted countries for the refugee ban were almost entirely Muslim-majority countries. And now, the administration’s minimal number of  refugee admissions is another part of Trump’s systemic effort to dismantle our humanitarian programs and further eliminate admissions of Muslims, Black, and Brown people.

Trump is doing everything he can, whether through policy or early morning Twitter rants, to send people back to the “places from which they came” or prevent them from coming at all. His rhetoric and his policies are consistent — spreading the message that Congresswoman Omar, a U.S. citizen, is less than American, while simultaneously dismantling the refugee process through which she came to the U.S. 

There is a Muslim ban in place, the administration has slowly but surely put forward policies to dismantle the asylum process, and visa numbers for Brown and Black immigrants have dropped significantly in the employment and family-based system. The agenda is clear.

The implementation of these discriminatory policies and processes are as revolting as Trump’s rhetoric and attacks on people of color and other marginalized communities. These attacks are part of the fabric of this administration and cannot be viewed in isolation. They are part of his anti-immigrant agenda to turn our backs on those in need. That may be Trump’s version of America, but it’s not ours. And we won’t stop fighting until our country reflects the humanity, diversity, and justice for which we strive. This is our America.

We're demanding the administration end its politicized investigation into Duke-UNC's Middle East Studies program, and turn over all related records.

In a move that would make even Senator McCarthy blush, the Trump administration is threatening to pull federal funding from a Middle East Studies program for failing to toe the government’s line on Islam and Muslims.

Last week, Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education sent a letter to administrators of the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies — a jointly run program that receives federal funding under Title VI of the Higher Education Act — warning that the department would cut the Consortium’s federal aid unless the Consortium submits plans to remake its Middle East studies program and curriculum to the department’s satisfaction. Among other complaints, the department demanded that the Consortium temper its portrayal of “the positive aspects” of Islam and cease “advancing ideological priorities.”

The department’s attempt to inject the Trump administration’s long pattern of anti-Muslim bigotry and discrimination into higher education represents a significant threat to academic freedom at colleges and universities like UNC and Duke. In response, the ACLU sent a letter today urging Secretary DeVos to end the department’s investigation into the Consortium and to prevent future attempts to politicize federal funding for higher education. We also filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records related to the department’s decision to investigate the Consortium as well as any similar investigations the department may have undertaken at other educational institutions that receive Title VI funding.

The origins of the Education Department’s investigation are as troubling as the letter itself. In June, Secretary DeVos ordered an inquiry into whether the Duke-UNC Consortium misused its Title VI funds to sponsor a conference on the Gaza conflict, after a member of Congress accused the conference of “radical anti-Israel bias.” As it turned out, less than $200 of federal funds were spent on the event. When this allegation didn’t stick, it appears that the department — not content to let the matter rest — scoured the Consortium’s programming to ferret out other objectionable viewpoints and purported deficiencies.

The department identifies a number of ways in which the Consortium supposedly violates the Title VI funding requirements, not only complaining about the curriculum’s inclusion of “positive aspects of Islam” but also accusing the Consortium of inappropriately “advancing ideological priorities.” As we explain in our letter to Secretary DeVos, however, it is the Department of Education — not the Consortium — that inappropriately attempts to advance ideological priorities

Although the government may attach certain conditions to the use of federal funding — such as compliance with statutory and constitutional requirements — the proud boast of our universities is that they are free from the ideological micromanagement of the government censor. Title VI does not, and cannot, authorize the government to require federal funding recipients to de-emphasize the “positive aspects of Islam” to the Department’s satisfaction. The Department’s assumption of such authority threatens core constitutional principles protecting freedom of speech and freedom of religion. 

This ham-fisted attempt to wield funding authority over the Consortium’s academic programming illustrates yet again the Trump Administration’s deep-seated anti-Muslim bias. It should also be alarming to anyone who cares about academic freedom, a bedrock principle of higher education.

Higher education institutions throughout the country are now on false notice that federal funding requires conformity to the Trump administration’s ideological standards. The Department’s ultimatum issued to the Consortium will no doubt have a chilling effect on these institutions as they determine the curricular content of federally funded programming. That’s why we’re asking Secretary DeVos to terminate the Department’s investigation into the Duke-UNC Consortium and to take affirmative measures to prevent similar politicized investigations in the future.

Colleges and universities are under no obligation to further the administration’s anti-Muslim agenda. The government has a constitutional obligation to respect that.

H.B. 2 is cruel, offensive, and the Supreme Court should strike it down.

I’m a doctor at the only abortion clinic in Kentucky. Providing safe, compassionate medical care has been my life’s calling, and my patients’ well-being is always my first priority. But Kentucky politicians — determined as usual to interfere with access to reproductive healthcare — are trying to force me to harm and humiliate the patients who entrust me with their welfare. That’s why I’m joining with the ACLU today to ask the Supreme Court to keep Kentucky lawmakers’ insulting, anti-abortion political agenda out of the exam room. 

H.B. 2, the law we’re asking the Supreme Court to review, is cruel and offensive. It mandates that I display an ultrasound to every abortion patient, describe it in detail, and play the sound of the fetal heartbeat — even if the patient does not want it, even if in my medical judgment I believe that forcing it on them will cause them harm. The law forces me to do this to a patient who is half-naked on the exam table, usually with their feet in stirrups and an ultrasound probe inside their vagina. With my patient in this exposed and vulnerable position, the law forces me to keep displaying and describing the image, even when the patient shuts her eyes and covers her ears. 

Take a moment to imagine what this must be like. To tell your doctor, “thank you, but I don’t want to hear you describe the ultrasound,” and to have your doctor tell you that you have no say in the matter — that you must lie there, undressed, with an ultrasound probe inside of you, and have the images described to you in government-mandated detail over your objection. Even if the patient has already had one or more ultrasounds performed. Even if the fetus has been diagnosed with a condition incompatible with survival. Or even if the patient is pregnant as a result of sexual assault, and having to watch and listen to the ultrasound over their objection forces them to relive that trauma. 

We have had patients burst into tears when we tell them that they must undergo an unwanted narrated ultrasound and that they must close their eyes and cover their ears if they want to avoid the speech Kentucky politicians insist we force upon them. I’ve had patients sob through the experience, and others pull their shirts up over their faces to cover their eyes. 

As physicians who have dedicated our professional lives to providing compassionate medical care, being ordered by politicians to force this unwanted and harmful experience on patients who have sought our help is appalling. It goes against the very fundamentals of our role as healers and violates the trust at the heart of the physician-patient relationship. 

My patients’ health and well-being come first, and if there is anything I can do to protect them from politicians trying to barge into the exam room, I will do it. Today, that includes asking the Supreme Court to put an end to this insulting political intrusion.

Enough is enough.