After the Rhode Island General Assembly approved a moratorium last year on the use of high-stakes testing until at least 2017, the Council, with support from the Commissioner of Education, proposed to continue the moratorium until 2020 in order to ensure students, parents, and teachers had adequate time to prepare for the new PARCC test. However, in adopting final regulations, the Council reversed itself and instead gave school districts the authority, if they chose, to institute high-stakes testing with the class of 2017. Shortly thereafter, the Commissioner unilaterally advised districts that they could also begin using PARCC scores as a component of students’ grades as early as this coming year. These developments prompted our petition.

Under the Administrative Procedures Act, the Council has 30 days to respond, either by denying the petition or by initiating a rule-making process where the public can testify and the Council can consider whether to accept, modify, or reject the proposal. Accepting the petition would provide the public with its first real opportunity to discuss the Council’s expedited schedule for use of the PARCC.

In the letter accompanying the petition, we pointed out that across the country school districts are encountering problems with the implementation of statewide standardized testing; more parents, teachers, and students are opposing such testing; and the number of states using PARCC had declined from 25 to 13 in just a few years. Waiting until 2020 to use PARCC scores against students was necessary in order to give RIDE and school districts “adequate time to put the instructional and other supports in place to give every student a fair chance to pass the PARCC.”

In addition to the ACLU of RI, the Coalition to Defend Public Education, George Wiley Center, NAACP Providence Branch, National Association of Social Workers/RI Chapter, Parent Support Network of Rhode Island, Parents Across Rhode Island, Providence Student Union, Rhode Island Disability Law Center, Rhode Island Teachers of English Language Learners, Tides Family Services, and Young Voices signed on to the petition.

We emphasized to the Council that it did not need to take a definitive stand on the merits of the petition in order to initiate rule-change proceedings. “Although we hope to ultimately convince you of the merits of this rule change, we trust you agree it is at least worthy of a full public discussion, and of one sooner rather than later,” our letter stated.

Jean Ann Guliano, from Parents Across Rhode Island, said: “Once again, the state has implemented a top down mandate without providing parents a meaningful mechanism to hold districts accountable. Districts are simply not providing students – particularly those living in poverty, or with special needs or limited English proficiency — the supports that RIDE requires districts to provide and that students need to do well on the PARCC. Students should not be the ones held accountable for poor testing preparation.  This policy needs to change.”

For more on the ACLU’s efforts to halt high-stakes testing in Rhode Island, visit our issues page here.

The questions vary in wording, but each asks job applicants about their criminal record–a practice that has been illegal in Rhode Island for over a year. As a result, the ACLU of Rhode Island and Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) have sent letters to those municipalities – from Burrillville to Warwick to Narragansett – asking them to promptly remove these questions.

In 2013, the General Assembly amended the state’s Fair Employment Practices Act to provide that, with a few exceptions not relevant here, questions about a person’s past criminal convictions could not be included on employment application forms and could instead only be asked “at the first interview or thereafter.” This “ban the box” law is designed to ensure potential employees are screened based on their qualifications, not their past.

As the letter explains:

The General Assembly enacted this prohibition in recognition of the fact that employment is a pivotal factor in preventing recidivism and that ex-offenders have faced widespread and unfair discrimination in seeking jobs. Well-qualified applicants – even those with long-past criminal records irrelevant to the job for which they were applying – were often excluded from consideration before even having a chance for an interview to demonstrate their qualifications. However, the inquiry on your application form is directly contrary to, and undermines the goal of, the statute to address this inequity.

This month, the ACLU examined the employment application forms of the twenty-nine municipalities that post those forms online after receiving a complaint about one of them. Of the eleven cities and towns that improperly ask criminal record questions, some inquire whether the applicant has ever been convicted of any crime, some limit the inquiry to felonies, and some ask for conviction information for the past five or seven years. And while some of the forms assure applicants that a criminal record does not automatically disqualify them from employment, all of those questions are illegal, and have been since January 1, 2014 when the “ban the box” law took effect.

We’ve asked the municipalities to revise their forms, online and in any other format, within the next two weeks. The ACLU and DARE will consider taking further steps if any cities or towns fail to comply with the statute.

The municipalities that ask about applicants’ criminal record and were sent letters were: Burrillville, Charlestown, Cumberland, Hopkinton, Jamestown, Lincoln, Narragansett, Newport, North Providence, Pawtucket, and Warwick. The ACLU is filing open records requests with the ten towns that did not have their forms posted online and were thus not reviewed.

By discriminating against anyone with a criminal record, these cities and towns are turning away able and qualified applicants. This unhelpful and illegal practice must promptly end–as it should have when it was prohibited last year–so qualified Rhode Islanders have the opportunity to lead productive lives regardless of their past actions.

Fred Ordoñez, executive director of DARE, the organization that led the push for passage of the “ban the box” law, said: “It’s sadly ironic that these municipalities can break a law with little consequence, yet regular people’s criminal record turns into a life sentence of unemployment.”

That’s why last week the ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal district court on behalf of a North Smithfield resident, who is seeking the return of lawfully-possessed weapons that were seized from him over six years ago by the local police department. The lawsuit, filed by RI ACLU volunteer attorney Thomas W. Lyons on behalf of Jason Richer, argues that the North Smithfield Police Department has violated his right to due process and his right to keep and bear arms by retaining his property without just cause. The ACLU successfully filed a similar lawsuit against the Cranston Police Department three years ago.

In September 2008, police responded to Richer’s house when his now ex-wife called to express concern that he had tried to harm himself by taking pills. Although Richer explained that he was not suicidal and that his wife had misconstrued a conversation they had, police forced him to submit to a mental health evaluation at Landmark Hospital. The doctor who saw him there discharged him shortly after his arrival, and no charges were ever filed or any other action taken. In the meantime, police seized “for safe keeping” three lawfully registered guns from a locked case in Richer’s garage. Two months later, when Richer tried to retrieve the guns, police refused to return them, telling him he would need to obtain a court order.

Both his ex-wife and a psychologist provided letters to the Department in support of returning the guns to him, but the Department still refused to do so. Over the years, Richer has repeated his request for the return of the weapons, but he has been consistently rebuffed. He most recently pressed a captain at the department for their return in January of this year. The Captain said he would talk with the town solicitor about it, but Richer never heard back from anybody. In March, the ACLU wrote a letter to the police chief on Richer’s behalf, but also received no response, prompting the filing of today’s lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims that the police department’s practice of requiring “weapons owners who are not charged with a crime to engage in formal litigation in order to recover their seized property” violates Richer’s due process and Second Amendment rights. The suit seeks a court order declaring the police department’s practice unconstitutional and requiring the return of his weapons, as well as an award of monetary damages.

“I am resolved to do all I can to end the unconstitutional practices and procedures employed by the North Smithfield Police Department. From the moment my firearms were seized, I have been asked to prove that I am fit to have them returned, and all the proof I have provided has been dismissed and ignored. This flies in the face of the presumption of innocence we enjoy as Americans. This practice must be stopped,” Jason Richer said when the suit was filed.

In 2012, the ACLU filed a virtually identical suit against the Cranston Police Department, which settled the case by returning the weapons that had been unlawfully held, agreeing to make any necessary repairs to the weapons while they had been confiscated, and paying monetary damages and attorneys’ fees.

Mr. Richer has been extraordinarily patient, yet the police have done nothing but make excuses about returning his property to him. Police departments must learn that the Constitution simply does not allow them to arbitrarily keep the property of innocent residents.

Whether police seize lawfully owned firearms as part of an emergency investigation, use civil forfeiture laws to impound a car from a person who is suspected of drug dealing, or confiscate medical marijuana from somebody alleged to not be a registered patient, the principle should be the same: people have a right to have their property returned – promptly – once officials conclude that no criminal activity has occurred or the basis for the seizure has been found wanting.

The lawsuit, against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), seeks a court order to release the documents, a declaration that the DEA has wrongfully withheld and redacted documents, and an award of attorney fees. Filing the suit were ACLU volunteer attorneys Neal McNamara and Jessica Jewell, from the law firm of Nixon Peabody.

The request in question involves the evidence used to convict Dr. Paul Volkman, whom the Department of Justice has called the “largest physician dispenser of oxycodone in the United States from 2003 to 2005.” Volkman was indicted on 22 drug trafficking-related counts in 2007, and, in 2011, after an eight-week federal court trial in Ohio that included 70 witnesses and more than 220 exhibits, he was convicted of, among other charges, prescribing medications that caused the overdose deaths of four patients. In 2012, Volkman was sentenced to four consecutive life terms in federal prison — one of the lengthiest criminal sentences for a physician in U.S. history.

Volkman attended college and medical school with Eil’s father, and, in 2009, Eil began conducting research and reporting for a book about the case. After Volkman’s trial ended, Eil requested access to the trial evidence from the clerk of the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. This request was denied, as were Eil’s subsequent requests to the Ohio U.S. Attorney’s office, the U.S. District Court judge who presided over the case, and the clerk of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

On February 1, 2012, Eil filed a FOIA request with the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, which eventually transferred the request to the DEA nine months later. The DEA still has not completely fulfilled the request, despite numerous efforts by Eil to expedite a response. Pending with the DEA for more than 800 days, Eil’s request is eight months older than what the federal government-operated website, FOIA.gov, reports as the agency’s longest pending request.

One of the 133 slides released to Mr. Eil. The substance of nearly every slide was redacted.

In addition to the time it has taken to process the request, the DEA has withheld 87 percent of the 12,724 pages it has thus far processed for Eil’s FOIA request, and stripped most of the substantive information from the remaining 1,600 pages it has “released.” For example, as the lawsuit notes, one of the nine installments of releases to Eil included “a 133-page slide show where the substance from nearly every single slide is redacted.”  In another one of the “partial releases” of information, the DEA withheld 1,225 of 1,232 pages it processed.

“You can’t have a true democracy without a transparent court system, and this case represents an egregious failure of judicial transparency,” Eil said. “The right to a public trial is a basic tenet of our society, and it’s scary to think that any trial in the United States, especially one of this magnitude, would be retroactively sealed off from public view, as this case has.”

All too often at both the state and federal level, agencies address the public’s right to know as they would an exceedingly unpleasant chore – reluctantly, with some disdain, and with little care for the finished product – instead of as the fundamental and essential engine of democracy that it is. Mr. Eil’s efforts and this lawsuit are a reminder of the importance of persistence in holding government agencies accountable to the public.

Eil is an award-winning freelance journalist who, most recently, was news editor and staff writer of the Providence Phoenix until the paper’s closing in 2014. He has taught classes on writing and journalism at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he will return as an adjunct lecturer in September. He has conducted more than 100 interviews, across 19 states, for his book about the Volkman case.

The DEA’s actions in Eil’s case follow a disturbing pattern of FOIA-related behavior from the agency in recent years. In 2012, reason.com reported that DEA FOIA rejections had increased 114 percent since 2008, and earlier this year, the agency told a FOIA requester it would cost $1.4 million to process his request.

The lawsuit was filed in the middle of Sunshine Week, a week designated to educate the public about the importance of open government.

The ACLU of Rhode Island has been a constant presence at the State House this legislative session as we testify, monitor, and weigh in on hundreds of bills that could impact your civil liberties. Now, we need your help.

Whether you want to repeal voter ID, end the school-to-prison pipeline, or strengthen privacy rights, your legislators need to hear from you. Join us this Saturday, March 14, at 2 p.m. at the Rochambeau Library for the ACLU Advocate Training Day to learn how you can become an effective advocate for civil liberties and play an active role at the State House. Our policy associate and other local advocates will offer advice on tracking legislation, crafting arguments, meeting with your legislators, writing and delivering testimony, and working with fellow advocates. Afterwards, you’ll be ready to make your voice heard at the State House and to protect the civil liberties of all Rhode Islanders.

The ACLU Advocate Training Day is free and open to all, and no experience is needed to attend. Join us in making Rhode Island a better place for all.

That’s the finding of a report issued by the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, based on a survey of 40 elementary schools in 16 school districts. The report, “Girls Just Wanna Darn Socks,” states that the schools’ promotion of these parent teacher association (PTA) and parent teacher organization (PTO) activities reinforces outdated stereotypes of gender roles in Rhode Island’s youngest residents.

“Rhode Island girls, routinely sent to dances, are fed the same tired stereotype that they must look pretty and be social, while boys are given access to magic and science shows and physical activities – their own and others – like PawSox games and trampoline parks,” the report stated. Through open records requests, the ACLU found that during the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 school years, 80% of  “girls’ events” at the 40 elementary schools studied were dances. The few other events held for girls generally encompassed pajama parties, yoga nights, and blanket sewing. The activities for boys, on the other hand, were much more diverse, and included attendance at baseball and hockey games, science and magic shows, and outings for laser tag, bowling, and arcade games.

Although these extracurricular activities are hosted by PTAs and PTOs, the ACLU’s investigation found that the schools regularly promote these events in various ways, through posting on school websites, use of school listservs, and by otherwise offering the parent-teacher groups special access to school resources to promote the events. The report argues that the use of these school resources to support such stereotypical and discriminatory events undermines Title IX, the landmark anti-discrimination law that has helped break down the barriers between girls’ and boys’ education over the past four decades.

Great progress has been made by women in education in the years since Title IX’s passage, but girls and women continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. By supporting these gender-exclusive events, the ACLU report argues, “Rhode Island’s schools, however unintentionally, support the sort of stereotyping that helped discourage girls from those fields for so long.”

The report concludes:

In the 21st Century, however, it should be simply unacceptable for public schools to be fostering the notion that girls belong at formal dances, yoga or sewing while boys should be offered baseball games, bowling and science. Not every girl today is interested in growing up to be Cinderella; many enjoy participating in and attending sports events and playing arcade games. Similarly, not every boy makes sports his obsessive pastime or cringes at the thought of going to a dance. Such gender-segregated programming – based on gender stereotypes about the talents, capacities and preferences of children – is harmful to boys and girls alike, and fails in any meaningful way to provide “reasonably comparable” experiences.

The report called on school equal opportunity officers to halt school support of these types of discriminatory extracurricular events, and instead discuss with PTO/PTAs the need to promote gender-inclusive activities. The ACLU also called on the state Department of Education to intervene by providing guidance to school districts on the illegal nature of their promotion of these gender-discriminatory activities. The General Assembly enacted a law in 2013 authorizing gender-exclusive extracurricular activities, but required them to be “reasonably comparable.” The ACLU and numerous women’s rights groups opposed the legislation.

It is heartening to see a robust discussion on the imminent use of the PARCC test in Rhode Island’s public schools, but the state Department of Education seems to have made up its mind before the test has even gotten off the ground. It is already actively encouraging school districts to use the PARCC to penalize students as early as next year.

Before having any chance to meaningfully examine how this untried test is working, or to determine whether, like the NECAP, it will have a disproportionate and devastating impact on poor and minority children, English Language Learners and students with disabilities, Commissioner Deborah Gist has already advised school districts they may “use PARCC results as a component in determining students’ grades” beginning as early as the upcoming 2015-16 school year. The Commissioner, with the backing of the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, has also encouraged school districts to consider using the PARCC as a high stakes graduation requirement for the Class of 2017.

In light of this push by RIDE, the biggest concern isn’t necessarily whether testing should be delayed for a year or even whether children should be able to opt out – it is whether the test results should be used punitively against students rather than as a supportive accountability tool to help them and their schools succeed. RIDE likes to claim its goal is the latter, but as we know from the NECAP debacle, it operates more like the former.

RIDE’s desire to punish kids by allowing the test to be used in this high stakes fashion so quickly is extremely troubling, especially since education officials know full well the importance of time in getting a new test like this off the ground. Last August, before changing course, the Commissioner gave good reasons why PARCC should be used as a high stakes test beginning in 2020, not 2017. As she noted then:

“We need to make sure that everyone has adequate time to prepare for the implementation.  That means students having adequate support and time, families and teachers and school and district leaders need adequate time to make the changes to their support and interventions for individual students.”

By instead giving school districts the option to use the test results against students a year from now, RIDE is actually doing everything it can to make sure students are not fully prepared. To make matters worse, the local implementation of such testing places pressures on students of particular school districts who embrace PARCC in this fashion, while protecting students who happen to live in more skeptical school districts.

We all want students to succeed, but this approach spells disaster and will inevitably lead to a repeat of the fiasco surrounding the NECAP. Opting out of the PARCC test means little if students face a reduction in grades or denial of a diploma in a few years for failing to take it. Nor is it fair if students who opt in find their grades lowered because of their scores on the test. Whether one agrees or disagrees that PARCC can be a useful support tool, parents and others concerned about punitive standardized testing should be demanding first and foremost that this test not be used for high stakes graduation or grading decisions in the way that RIDE is, sadly, so hastily determined to use it.

The ACLU of Rhode Island on Tuesday sued the DMV for implementing its Uninsured Motorists Identification Database without first establishing any regulations to prevent the improper disclosure of drivers’ personal information, avoid mistaken registration revocations, or to otherwise ensure that the program is properly administered by the private out-of-state vendor contracted to run the program. The database is designed to compile information from insurance companies about the identities of insured drivers and information from the DMV about registered motor vehicles. The vendor matches the information to identify and notify vehicle owners who do not appear to have insurance. The lawsuit, filed by ACLU volunteer attorney Albin Moser, noted that insurance companies and the DMV had begun sending personal information about drivers to the vendor without any regulations whatsoever to address key issues over implementation of the database.

The ACLU’s successful settlement of this suit comes as the first wave of notices to drivers who purportedly didn’t have insurance was supposed to be sent out by the vendor. Residents must obtain or prove they have insurance within a specified period of time or else their registration will be revoked. Under this agreement, the DMV must now established regulations in accordance with the Administrative Procedures Act before any notifications are sent.

ACLU attorney Moser said: “Thanks to the ACLU’s analysis, the Superior Court and the DMV were made aware of several privacy and due process concerns that were best addressed by a public rulemaking process before the program’s implementation. The ACLU will be an active participant in that process in order to make sure that these concerns are adequately addressed.”

The lead plaintiff in the case, ACLU of RI policy associate Hillary Davis, added: “A number of questions remain about the implementation of the UMID, from ways to protect Rhode Islanders’ privacy to how drivers whose registrations are erroneously revoked may have them reinstated without punishment. We commend the DMV for recognizing the need to move forward on answering these questions, and look forward to testifying on the proposed rules.”

A state law enacted in 2013 established the database, designed to compile information from insurance companies about the identities of insured drivers and information from the DMV about registered motor vehicles. A third party vendor matches the information in order to identify and notify vehicle owners who do not appear to have insurance. Residents must obtain or prove they have insurance within a specified period of time or else their registration will be revoked. Despite being explicitly required to do so under the statute, however, the DMV has proposed no regulations whatsoever to address key issues over implementation of the database.

Today’s lawsuit, filed by ACLU volunteer attorney Albin Moser, notes that while insurance companies and the DMV are already sending personal information about Rhode Island drivers to the third party contractor, the DMV has yet to draft, publicly share, or hold a public hearing to discuss regulations establishing privacy safeguards, notification procedures, and other necessary procedures. The failure to establish these regulations is a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act and the state law that established the database, according to the complaint. The suit asks the court to stop the implementation of the Uninsured Motorists Identification Database until appropriate regulations are adopted with public input.

The ACLU will be seeking a temporary restraining order this week against implementation of the program, as the first wave of notices to drivers who purportedly don’t have insurance is supposed to be sent out by the contractor as soon as next week.

The lead plaintiff in the case is ACLU of RI policy associate Hillary Davis, who often testifies on state regulations and civil liberties issues relating to privacy and technology. She said: “Any use of personal information must be thoughtfully and publicly examined. That the DMV has failed to engage in a public rule making process about this database, flouting the responsibility put upon them by the General Assembly, is alarming in its carelessness. Though the impact on Rhode Island drivers can be tremendous, the only discussions as to the database’s use and security precautions have been between the DMV, the insurance companies, and the third-party vendor that stands to profit from the use of Rhode Islanders’ personal information. This oversight must be corrected before the program goes into effect, not after Rhode Islanders find their information compromised or their vehicle registrations revoked.”

ACLU attorney Moser added: “The DMV needs to explain to Rhode Island residents how it and the private contractor are going to keep residents’ personal information secure.  The DMV also needs to explain to how it and the contractor are going to manage the program so that it is accurate and does not result in residents’ motor vehicle registrations being jeopardized by administrative error.”

The ACLU’s concerns about implementing the program without any public standards are not without justification, as it has sued the DMV a number of times in the past over regulatory lapses that have adversely affected motorists. In 2012, for example, the ACLU successfully sued the DMV after it refused to reinstate a person’s driver’s license based on a “policy” that appeared nowhere in the agency’s rules and regulations. In 2010, the ACLU successfully settled another case after the DMV advised thousands of motorists that their license and registration would be suspended due to alleged unpaid fines that were the result of incidents occurring on “00/00/0000.”

The Commissioner issued this guidance in a “field memo” Friday despite the fact that just last week the Council tabled a RIDE proposal that would have given school districts the 2017 testing option. In addition, without any public discussion, the Commissioner’s field memo also told superintendents they could begin using students’ PARCC scores as a component of their school grades—and could do so starting in the next school year.

In a letter sent to the Council, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, R.I. Disability Law Center, R.I. Legal Services, R.I. Teachers of English Language Learners, and five other community organizations raised serious concerns about the guidance and urged the council to bar school districts from using PARCC as a high stakes testing requirement until 2020 and from using the test’s results as a factor in students’ grades.

Our letter stated: “We would expect that before allowing PARCC to be used for such consequential and punitive purposes, RIDE would be spending the coming five years monitoring the test’s implementation to ensure there was adequate teacher preparation and curriculum development, equitable computer training and access for all, and fair implementation for English Language Learners and students with disabilities. Instead, the Commissioner’s memo is encouraging school districts – many of whom, by RIDE’s own standards, failed to meet basic accountability standards with the NECAP – to be demanding accountability from the students (not themselves) on this new test in a manner that can only be described as exceedingly premature.”

We also noted that the Commissioner’s unilateral decision to allow school districts to establish their own high-stakes testing requirements for graduation and for grading is “extraordinarily significant” and creates a two-tiered system for students based solely on their address.

You can read the full letter here and learn more about high-stakes testing and students’ rights here.