Last summer, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police Superintendent David Brown both spoke publicly to highlight a 20-person CPD task forced assigned to monitor social media posts by residents of the City. Today, the Chicago Police Department is being sued in state court after refusing to share information about the publicly discussed program. 

The public announcement of the CPD social media task force followed weeks of protests in Chicago aimed at ending police violence against Black people. The protests were spurred by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and turned out thousands of people from diverse communities, including Black and brown people who spoke out against police violence against their communities. Many people used social media to gather together in protest.

Against this backdrop, Mayor Lightfoot declared that the City’s social media monitoring purportedly would “provide the crucial information our public safety agencies need…” This public proclamation raises a red flag in light of the City’s dark history of surveillance and infiltration of organizations disfavored by City Hall.  Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Chicago police’s notorious Red Squad engaged in a widespread program of surveillance of civil rights and racial justice advocates and those opposed to the Vietnam War.  

More recently, CPD for years (2014-2018) withheld the name of Dunami—a software maker the agency used for social media monitoring. The name was only revealed after a settlement of a previous ACLU of Illinois lawsuit. CPD also signed a two-year contract effective January 1, 2020 to use Clearview AI’s powerful facial recognition tool without notifying the public or even the Mayor’s office until after the New York Times ran an exposé on the company later that month.

“CPD’s record on respecting personal privacy is abysmal,” said Ariana Bushweller, Attorney, O’Melveny Fellow at the ACLU of Illinois who was part of the legal team filing the lawsuit today. “With that history, CPD must provide public records that answer basic questions about why the City is monitoring social media accounts, who has access to the information collected, and how the information is being used. The public needs this information to learn whether this latest surveillance is wrongfully targeting Black and Brown people, as has too often been the case across the country, including the surveillance of Black activists.”  

In August 2020, the ACLU of Illinois asked the CPD for basic information on the social media monitoring program, including (among others) the purpose for the program, the use of information collected from social media accounts, any assistance CPD received from state or federal agencies in monitoring social media, the names of those who had access to information collected from social media accounts, and the supervision structure for the social media monitoring program.  

“If the Mayor and Superintendent can boast about this program in public, they can release the public records that explain how it works and let us see whether it disproportionately harms people of color,” Bushweller added. “It is unfortunate that we have to ask a court for this basic information.”  

A copy of the lawsuit can be found here.  

The statement below can be attributed to the ACLU of Illinois:
 
“Like all caring residents of Chicago, we share the shock and sadness at the recent gun violence and loss of life in the City. Our thoughts and condolences are with those killed or hurt as a result of this violence.
 
A group of Chicago City Council members now are calling for action by the Mayor and Chicago Police to stem the shootings. In past summers, similar calls have been met with the implementation of ineffective policies, including police officers flooding Black and Latinx communities  –  often dressed in quasi-military gear  – and arrests of Black and Brown men. This same performative approach has been tried time and time again. And it has failed. Moreover, years of repeating these failed policies has contributed to biased and violent policing in the City and has destroyed trust between police and communities on the South and West sides.
 
This could be a moment for fundamental change. Rather than simply repeating ineffective and alienating practices of the past, it is a moment for adopting evidence-based police strategies that actually address public safety problems, creating real avenues for community input into policing and investing in social services that reach the root causes of gun violence. In short, it is time to be bold and real – and to refuse the same old failed policies. 
 
Leadership requires curiosity and the courage to admit that past approaches have been wrong. Simply flooding communities of color with militarized police and arresting people – strategies that do not change the arc of violence and drive wedges between the police and the community – is not leadership. We can do better.” 

Pride month is a time to step back and appreciate the progress we have seen for LGBTQ+ people in Illinois—and to identity the urgent issues and harms still facing these communities. Lack of access to stable housing affects so many people, and anti-LGBTQ+ housing discrimination has long been a barrier to the safety and welfare of queer and transgender people. And in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, stable housing is more important than ever.

LGBTQ+ people continue to face significant bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing. A study from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that same-sex couples and transgender people both encountered discrimination in rental housing markets based on their identities. According to data from the National Center for Transgender Equality, over one-fifth of transgender Illinoisans report experiencing gender-identity-related housing discrimination.

These patterns are horrifying yet sadly common, even in Illinois. This discrimination affects LGBTQ+ people across all types of housing, from shelters turning away trans people experiencing homelessness to landlords refusing to rent to same-sex couples.

This is why the ACLU has gone to court to bolster legal protections for queer and trans people in all spheres of public and private life. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity constitutes illegal sex discrimination under federal employment law.

Importantly, this recent litigation’s reach extends further. As the Biden Administration recently recognized, the Fair Housing Act’s ban on sex discrimination also necessarily bans discrimination based on someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including their LGBTQ+ status.

This federal antidiscrimination protection provides an important tool to protect queer and trans people seeking housing, especially in places across the country that lack LGBTQ+-inclusive state or local fair-housing protections. Here in Illinois, enforcement of the federal Fair Housing Act adds another set of tools to ensure that LGBTQ+ people who encounter housing discrimination have recourse to challenge that illegal behavior.

As part of our efforts to combat housing discrimination more broadly, the ACLU of Illinois has helped support protections against discrimination based on criminal records. Cook County’s Just Housing Amendment now bans landlords from categorically denying housing to applicants with records and guarantees that applicants receive individualized consideration. These efforts are especially important for queer and trans Illinoisans, because housing discrimination against people with records disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ communities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of challenging unfair discrimination by shelters, landlords, and other housing providers. That is why the ACLU of Illinois will continue to fight against discrimination and all the current barriers that LGBTQ+ communities face to living safely and securely—during this Pride month and year-round.