News & Commentary

Over the weekend, the State of Illinois announced that it too would impose a mandatory quarantine on health care workers who return to Illinois after providing professional care to those suffering with Ebola in West Africa.  In response to this announcement, ACLU of Illinois Executive Director Colleen Connell issued the following statement:

ACLU of Illinois’ LGBT and HIV Project Director John Knight appeared on the WBEZ program Afternoon Shift to discuss discrimination against transgender individuals in employment and other contexts. The discussion was generated by the case of Tamara Lusardi, a civilian Army employee who is also transgender, after she experienced discrimination in the workplace. According to a recent study by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National LGBTQ Task Force, 90 percent of transgender individuals report discrimination in the workplace. John Knight spoke about the ruling in Tamara's case and the challenges faced by transgender persons in our society:

One of the proudest areas of work for the ACLU across the nation over the past several decades has been our efforts to expand the right to vote. In recent years, the ACLU has led the fight against voter suppression efforts, including recent litigation in neighboring Wisconsin to challenge that state’s discriminatory “voter identification” law.

A recent New York Times article tells the story of Angelica Valencia, who asked her employer to accommodate her high-risk pregnancy based on her doctor’s orders. Since Ms. Valencia was 39 years old and had miscarried last year, her doctor recommended that she limit work to a full-time eight-hour shift, with no overtime. Even though her co-workers volunteered to handle the lifting and heavy machinery duties, and the busy season at her job was about to end, Ms. Valencia’s employer insisted that she work overtime without restrictions. After she gave her manager a doctor’s note explaining why she needed the accommodation, Ms. Valencia was forced to leave the job where she’d worked for three years.

After nearly three decades working in public policy, it remains a mystery the way in which some set priorities. This was reinforced recently at a hearing for the State Task Force on Civic Education. The Task Force, created by the Illinois General Assembly, is charged with reporting back to the legislature by the end of the year on the ways in which Illinois can bolster and strengthen the teaching of civics and government in our public schools.

When you go to the polls on November 4th, you have a chance to support unfettered access to birth control. A question on Illinois' ballots for 2014 is straightforward: Shall any insurance plan in Illinois that provides prescription coverage be required to include prescription birth control as part of that coverage?"

Brittany Maynard--a 29 year old woman who was recently diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor--has chosen to move to a state where she will have access to medication that will allow her to end her life on her own terms. The so-called "right to die" movement is slowly gaining traction around the country. Oregon, which is where Maynard relocated with her family, is one of five states that allow people with terminal illnesses access to life-ending medications in order to avoid suffering until their final breath.

The debate over the NFL’s botched handling of Ray Rice’s brutal assault on his now wife threatens to divert our nation’s attention from the real issue: the need to treat seriously incidents of domestic violence and to enact laws and policies that aid survivors in their attempts to escape violence. Time and again, those who suffer intimate partner violence are victimized – not only by the partner who abuses them but by society at large.  Sadly, our laws often are complicit in this victimization.

As police departments nationwide, including the Chicago Police Department, move swiftly to adopt body cameras to record interactions between officers and civilians, we should pause. It would be unwise to deploy this new technology without instituting some basic privacy protections for the man on the street.