The Springfield Mass Transit District (SMTD) has issued a ban on wearing "sagging pants" on its buses, local station WICS-TV reports. The ACLU of Illinois has been alerted to similar instances in the past, when a community has attempted to ban pants that hang below the waistline. The First Amendment protects individuals' freedom of expression, and as we have sometimes seen, the attempts to ban sagging pants also have racial profiling implications.

We aked [sic] SMTD's managing director Frank Squires about the policy. He declined our request for an on-camera interview; but told us the flyers to warn riders of the new policy have been taken down temporarily until they're redesigned.

Read more and watch the segment.

Think Progress reports the release of yet another study exposing the government’s negligently supervised immigrant detention program. “Migrant Mistreatment While in U.S. Custody” a joint investigative study by Immigration Policy Center, the University of Arizona, and George Washington University, determined that unsupervised border patrol agents consistently mistreated and even abused immigrants at detention centers. For years the ACLU has advocated that the immigrant lock-up system was not only a waste of tax payers’ money but fostered inhumane treatment of inmates;  that pressure, as the article notes, has led to some minor improvements:

A growing number of studies show that the Border Patrol agency lacks oversight. The agency has vowed to change some of its guidelines for handling immigrants, but it has been painfully slow to take up such measures.  In September, the agency released a statement intending to restructure its training program to ensure that “excessive force is strictly prohibited,” but the move came only after 19 immigrants died at the hands of Border Patrol agents and the ACLU filed a lawsuit.

Read the entire article.

According to The Daily Beast, closing Guantanamo may finally become a reality. Congressional momentum, fed by operating-cost realities, began to rally with Senate hearings in late July, chaired by a frustrated Senator Richard Durbin (D-Il).  Since then, tangible legislative action has been spurred by a focused executive branch push, coordinated by President Obama himself. The ACLU, which has persistently called on Congress and the Administration to close the prison, applauds the momentum:

“It’s as if the president finally decided to flip the on-switch and the White House and Defense Department got up and running to work towards closing Guantanamo,” says Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “And it paid off, with a big Senate vote supporting easing some of the transfer restrictions.”

Read the entire article.