Columnist Deb Price tackles the perrenial problem of gay couples being denied entrance into school proms and mentions the ACLU of Ohio’s recent victory in Louisville.

[…]

Last weekend was also prom for Louisville High School in Louisville, Ohio. A gay senior had been told by school officials that “it has always been a tradition that prom is an event made for couples of the opposite sex.” The ACLU intervened, and the school backed down.

If you are a gay teen being told you can’t take the date of your choice to the prom, the ACLU has a letter that you can print out and hand to your principal to explain your legal rights. (Go to aclu.org/lgbtprom.)

[…]

Such prom-like parties are a great idea. But a school prom is a unique rite of passage. No student who wants to go should miss out.

If you are a straight high school student with a scared or shy gay friend, embrace Brittany as your role model: Take the ACLU letter to school officials and insist that gay couples be welcome at your prom.

The GPC reports on a talk by ACLU LGBT Project Director Matt Coles regarding the future of gay rights in America.

“Changing the way people think is as important as changing the law,” according to Matt Coles, who directs the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and AIDS Project.

Coles spoke to nearly 50 future lawyers and community activists on the Ohio State University campus April 16. Most of his audience attends OSU’s Moritz College of Law or Capital University Law School.

The event was sponsored by Moritz Outlaw, the LGBT student group.

Coles is one of the most influential attorneys and strategists in the LGBT movement, having worked at it more than 30 years. He has been at the ACLU since 1995, serving as a lead attorney in the landmark Romer v. Evans case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996–the first pro-LGBT ruling the high court ever handed down, and the basis for the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas.

ACLU Staff Counsel Carrie Davis discusses the growing trend of police departments and schools using social networking sites to profile young people for certain crimes.

Dayton area teens who use the Web to communicate with their friends could be in for a surprise if their postings include activities that break school rules.

[…]

Police need to exercise restraint in developing suspicions on the basis of what is said on social networking sites, said Carrie Davis, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

“Really, what they’re doing is using people’s speech and associations as a basis for suspicion,” Davis said.

It is a challenge for law enforcement because technology has developed at a rate that outpaced the laws, she said.

“They’re dealing with technologies that didn’t exist when the laws were written,” Davis said. “Most of our privacy laws were written in the 1970s.”

The student newspaper at Kent State writes an important editorial on the need to ensure equal pay for all workers.

Pay equity is about more than just men and women being equally compensated for the same amount and type of work.

Pay equity is not about catchy movie montages set to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” or The Pointer Sisters’ “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves.”

And pay equity is certainly not only about doing the legal minimum to avoid discrimination lawsuits.

It’s about men and women - regardless of age, ethnicity, skin color or sexual orientation - being valued as equal members of society, who are rewarded for their contributions. It is about those contributions to our society or our economy being valued higher or lower not because they came from a man or a woman but because they are valuable in and of themselves.

Fox 8 also produced an excellent story on Louisville’s recent reversal of a decision to bar same-sex couples from Prom. Check out their video!

Louisville High School is holding its annual senior prom this Saturday. One student was told he couldn’t go because his date was of the same sex.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio got involved and sent a letter to the school saying the student’s rights have been violated.

Carrie Davis, a staff attorney at the ACLU, told FOX 8: “There have been a number of cases where this has happened before and the courts have said that a student has to be allowed to bring the date of their choice to their prom, that that’s protected under the first amendment right to free association and freedom of expression.”

ACLU of Ohio Staff Counsel Carrie Davis discusses a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that expands Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure.

For nearly three decades, Ohio police officers could routinely rummage through vehicles in search of contraband and evidence after arrests.

[…]

The American Civil Liberties Union had argued that residents’ rights were being violated by unjustified police searches unconnected to concerns about safety or preserving evidence.

The court’s landmark 1981 ruling on vehicle searches had been “stretched beyond reason,” said Carrie Davis, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Ohio. “The searches had gotten well beyond what the Fourth Amendment allows.”

OSU senior Magan Strub pens a great article on the Redding case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which will test whether school administrators may conduct strip searches.

When school officials have to strip-search 13-year-olds for prescription Ibuprofen, something very wrong has happened to our educational system.

I’m not talking about curriculum or the deplorable state of public-school funding, or whether charter schools are worth it - I’m talking about the essential trust between students and school officials that seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years.

Savana Redding was strip-searched without the knowledge or consent of her parents by an untrained school official. She was not searched for hard drugs or weapons, or because of any hard evidence of contraband.

The Dispatch makes a case for immediate action on relieving the prison overcrowding problem in Ohio.

Ohio prisons are dangerously crowded, at 132 percent of capacity, and they consume an ever-growing part of the state budget.

Ohio pays $1.8 billion a year for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, most of that to run prisons, and unless someone can find the money and the political will to build more prisons, something should be done to relieve the pressure building in the ones Ohio has.

Senate Bill 22 offers solutions that save money, ease crowding in a way that doesn’t require building new prisons and might even cut down on repeat offenses.

Civil libertarians celebrate the 50th anniversary of the landmark censorship case of Nico Jacboellis.

Each year, law professor Jonathan Entin leads a tour of legal landmarks in Greater Cleveland, including the old Heights Art Theatre at the corner of Euclid Heights Boulevard and Coventry Road.

He doesn’t take the students inside the building, with its gray-brick facade and ancient marquee. The interior has changed too much to have any meaning. It’s now home to Johnny Malloy’s Sports Pub and an upstairs hookah bar.

So Entin and his students just roll by in a 15-passenger van, talking about the events of Nov. 13, 1959, when theater manager Nico Jacobellis showed a French film called “The Lovers” and landed himself in jail — and, eventually, before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lousiville High School officials will now allow same-sex couples to attend prom on April 24.

Under pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, Louisville High School has reconsidered its refusal to allow a gay couple to attend prom.

In a letter the ACLU of Ohio sent to the school Tuesday, it states the school’s principal, two assistant principals and prom adviser refused a student’s request to bring a guest of the same sex to prom Saturday.

“This is a clear case of discrimination simply because these young people are gay,” said Carrie Davis, staff attorney for the ACLU of Ohio. “Many schools permit groups of students of the same sex to attend proms if their relationship is platonic, but Louisville officials have banned this student because he is in a same-sex relationship. Students should be free to bring whomever they choose as a guest to the prom.”

ACLU of Ohio Staff Counsel Carrie Davis suggests a better route to tackle the issue of teen “sexting.”

The recent bills proposed by state Rep. Ron Maag and state Sen. Bob Schuler to reduce penalties incurred by teenagers who electronically distribute nude photos of themselves or others are well-intentioned, but may create more problems than they solve.

The criminal justice system should not be the arena to address this issue. By exposing young people who simply made a foolish decision to criminal charges, officials may stigmatize those youth and could cause them to fall deeper into the court system. Instead, we must work to create strong educational programs to help teens cultivate better judgment and respect for others.

If a young person is upset that another person distributed his or her nude picture without permission, his or her parents should instead utilize the civil courts and sue the person for violating one’s privacy rights. Those who disseminate personal photos would still have negative consequences, but would not be labeled as a criminal and processed through the justice system.

While no one will argue that teens should be sending nude photos of themselves to others, the remedy is not to simply punish the children in criminal court. If we hope to prevent these unfortunate incidents in the future, parents and educators must engage in open and meaningful discussions with children about respect for others’ privacy and how to cope with pressure to engage in dangerous activities.

The Toledo Blade speaks out regarding the recent revelations about the U.S.’ use of torture.

THE memos detailing the brutal interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11 are equal parts banality and sadism.

Prompted by a Freedom of Information request by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Obama Administration last week released memos about the CIA’s methods and the rationale for them of the Justice Department under former President Bush.

Despite CIA Director Leon Panetta’s objections, memos listing 14 approved techniques - including waterboarding - were made public with minimal redaction. The CIA argued that opening any documents would reveal too much about its methods while providing a propaganda boon to the nation’s enemies.

The Dispatch discusses a crucial students’ rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court this term and its local implications.

The U.S. Supreme Court wrestled yesterday with questions of when it is appropriate for school officials to strip-search students. The case could have bearing on at least one similar Ohio lawsuit.

[…]

Gary Daniels, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, said it’s worrisome that the high court decided to hear the case.

“The 9th Circuit Court struck it down as unconstitutional,” Daniels said. He added that if the Supreme Court was to rule in a way that allowed for more strip-searching of students, it could make future litigation more difficult.

The ACLU reached a settlement with the Bucyrus school district this month over the search of five middle-school students suspected of having cigarettes. The five students were awarded a total of $24,000, and the district was instructed to redraft its policies on searches and conduct staff training.

Some Ohio legislators propose pulling sentencing reform out of the state budget. Opponents argue this would delay much-needed changes, endanger prisoners and correctional officers, and wreak havoc on the budget.

Sentencing reforms that the Strickland administration has touted to reduce prison crowding by nearly 7,000 inmates a year and save about $30 million might be pulled out of the proposed biennial budget.

Strickland’s sentencing plan, along with a counterproposal by the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association that focused primarily on relaxing drug-law penalties, may be shifted to another legislative committee to be considered separately — and later.

That could spell trouble, both for the proposed sentencing overhaul and the state budget, which would spring another leak with the removal of cost savings, according to prisons chief Terry Collins.

[…]

WTOL, Channel 11 news in Toledo, Ohio, posted a press release written by the ACLU of Ohio urging the Toledo Public School Board to increase student privacy protections.

[…]

“As technology grows, so does the potential for people to abuse it to gain access to private information. Students may be even more vulnerable than adults and must be protected by our schools and well-informed parents. While Toledo schools have made an effort to respect students’ privacy, they must be proactive and take these steps towards ensuring greater security of personal information,” concluded Link.

The Akron Beacon Journal urges lawmakers to act in the best interest of Ohioans when reforming prisons rather than out of fear of looking “soft on crime.”

Fearful of the criticism ‘’soft on crime,” state lawmakers are unlikely to include Ted Strickland’s sentencing reforms in the next two-year state budget.
State Rep. John Carney, a Columbus Democrat and a key voice in this debate, admitted this week that constituents’ fears about rising crime are overwhelming the hard evidence presented by the governor and Terry Collins, the director of the Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, about rapidly rising prison costs.

Carney and colleagues on both sides of the aisle are in danger of succumbing yet again to the tough-on-crime reflex. The trouble is, decades of harsh sentencing laws are pushing Ohio and other states to the edge of fiscal disaster, with voters also demanding cost-cutting in government. The common-sense plan advanced by Strickland and Collins would meet both demands. It would reduce the likelihood of repeat offenses and save the state the cost of housing and caring for a rapidly rising prison population.

[…]

Given the current budget squeeze, state lawmakers should consider leading rather than fanning fears. They should keep the governor’s proposals in the budget bill.

[…]

The Department of Justice has begun investigating the disturbing circumstances surrounding the death of Mark McCullough, Jr. while in police custody.

The U.S. Justice Department has obtained stacks of records and autopsy evidence from last year’s criminal case against five Summit County sheriff’s deputies indicted in the 2006 death of a jail inmate.

Federal prosecution is possible, authorities said.

The sheriff’s office also is investigating the deputies’ conduct.

ACLU of Ohio Executive Director Chris Link weighs in on the recent troubles at the Mansfield Correctional Facility and actions the Ohio General Assembly must take in order to alleviate Ohio’s overcrowded prisons.

The recent turmoil at the Mansfield Correctional Institution illustrates that lawmakers cannot wait any longer to initiate meaningful prison reform (”Mansfield guards say prison riot looms,” Dispatch article, April 1). As we have learned from the past, the combination of prisoner overcrowding and inadequate numbers of guards can lead to disaster and must not be ignored.

The prison population has risen steadily for years with no end in sight. A large portion of the inmates are low-level offenders who are only incarcerated for a short time. In previous years, these people would have received rehabilitation in order to keep them out of the prison system and increase the likelihood they would not commit future crimes.

Unfortunately, our misguided prison policy from recent years has slashed many of these programs and relied solely on punishing prisoners.

As a result, many prison facilities have far exceeded their maximum occupancy. Coupled with overcrowding are the drastic cuts the state has made in personnel. Not only is this an obvious security risk, the lack of guards means that there will be fewer opportunities for inmates to be away from their cells.

This often causes psychological stress for prisoners and raises tensions in the facility. Legislation is pending in the General Assembly to reform our broken sentencing policies and direct more funds toward rehabilitation. If the prison population is reduced, there will be more resources to hire guards and fewer prisoners to monitor. This issue must be addressed now before another tragedy occurs.

CHRISTINE LINK
Executive director
American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio
Cleveland

The Butler County Prosecutor correctly identifies the inherent problems with favoring married people over unmarried people in adoptions.

State law doesn’t allow for a proposed Butler County Children Services policy that would give preference in adoption placement to married couples, according to an opinion from the Butler County Prosecutor’s Office.

State law outlines the preferential order to be given to potential adoptive parents. It gives preference first to adult relatives of the child or someone named by the birth mother, then the child’s foster caregiver, then other suitable prospective families.

The local policy — created by former agency director Michael Fox then suspended by commissioners pending legal review — mirrors this list, with one exception.

Another article on the continuing saga over whether Butler County will have a policy that favors married couples in adoptions.

More than a month after a controversial Butler County adoption policy surfaced that gives preference to married couples, the fate of that rule remains in limbo.

Since news of the policy emerged in early March, an emotional debate has erupted between those who adamantly support the rule and others who say it’s unfair.

An Oxford man brought an 88-signature petition in favor of the policy to commissioners last month. A week later, a Liberty Township woman collected more than 400 names of people she said opposed the rule.

The ACLU was victorious in its lawsuit against Bucyrus City Schools for strip searching several middle school students.

Bucyrus City School District parent Christy Shaffer is relieved a lawsuit over a strip search has been settled against the district.

“I am happy that the district will be adopting a new policy regarding strip searches that will be in accordance with Ohio laws,” Shaffer said. “The school agreed to the policy change, and will be retraining staff members to enforce the rules appropriately.”

[…]

“We are gratified to have resolved the case and to have achieved a change in policy and compensation for our clients. It is our hope and expectation that strip searches in the Bucyrus schools will be a thing of the past,” said Carrie Davis of the Ohio ACLU’s Cleveland office.

Officials in Cuyahoga County continue on the path of investigating racial discrimination in their justice system.

Cuyahoga County is one step closer to identifying possible racial inequities in the county’s criminal justice system and bringing transparency to what some judges call a culture of secrecy among the court’s players.

Five research groups from across the country have submitted proposals to analyze the impact of race on every aspect of case processing from arrest to sentencing.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason has assembled an advisory committee to help choose which firm is best qualified to slog through tens of thousands of court files, interview players at every level of the system, draw conclusions and recommend possible changes.

A victory for online free speech out of Columbus!

Ohio State University said Monday it will allow postings on its Facebook page that don’t always paint the university in a positive light.

Last week, the university deleted comments by a graduate student who asked about OSU President E. Gordon Gee’s service on the board of an energy company criticized by environmentalists.

After deleting the postings, Ohio State then blocked comments of any kind from appearing on the wall of the university’s Facebook page.

The university, the country’s largest, reopened the wall Friday to all posts.

The Daily Kent Stater writes about the struggle for equal rights in the United States.

This editorial is about civil rights. It’s about equality. It’s about compassion.

The Vermont legislature voted yesterday to make gay marriage legal, becoming the fourth state to allow it. Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled it legal Friday, and it was already legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

People are finally coming to their senses. They’re beginning to recognize that denying a United States citizen any right that the rest have is unacceptable. That just four out of 50 states allow a right most of the population takes for granted is a crime. It’s plain discrimination.

Following Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa, Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage.

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Vermont has become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature’s vote.

The Legislature voted Tuesday to override Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto of a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.

New Journal columnist Steve Goble outlines the many flaws with our capital punishment system.

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray thinks the appeals process for death penalty cases is far too lengthy.

I can solve the problem in four words: Dump the death penalty.

The long appellate process sometimes defeats the possibility of justice being served, Cordray said last week. Long waits make it difficult when, after a dozen years in the courts, a retrial involving a new prosecutor and new police officials is required, he said.

“If it does lead to a retrial, it’s very difficult to feel that fair justice can be achieved on a redo because so much changes over time, particularly in presenting factual evidence to juries,” he said.

It is interesting Cordray mentioned things that change over time. One thing that often changes is the quality of forensic evidence. Better science and investigative techniques come along, and sometimes show the wrong people are on death row.

A sensible editorial on the dangers of allowing the government more leeway to pull people over for not wearing a seat belt.

State lawmakers - Senate Republicans, in particular - last week kept alive some glimmer of individual choice for Ohio drivers. A conference committee’s transportation bill removed Gov. Ted Strickland’s proposal to make Ohio a primary seat-belt enforcement state.

New Hampshire remains the only state in the union where drivers don’t run the risk of a ticket for not wearing seat belts, but Ohio lawmakers at least kept police from pulling over drivers just for seat-belt violations. Stripping the transportation bill of that was no small matter. Ohio would have received $26.7 million in federal funds if it would have gone to primary seat-belt enforcement. Lawmakers were right not to further strip Ohioans of their freedom (even to make bad choices) to gain the federal money.

USA Today covers the ACLU’s challenge to the government labeling a Toledo-based organization as supporting terrorists without providing any kind of due process.

The Treasury Department faces a legal challenge over its use of an emergency power to freeze the assets of U.S. charities based on suspicions — and without formal charges — that their money aids groups tied to terrorism.
Four charities have had operations “blocked pending investigation” by Treasury under authority granted by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. The authority, provided under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, lets Treasury freeze a charity’s operations indefinitely if officials have “reasonable basis” to suspect its money or activities benefit terrorists.

[…]

“The government is saying it can take a U.S. corporation and shut it down indefinitely … without any due process,” says Hina Shamsi, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing KindHearts. “No one’s saying ‘don’t go after terrorist financing’ … but this has the opposite consequence. It has a tremendously chilling effect on humanitarian aid in areas where the United States has a strong interest in changing public opinion about itself.”

In a unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court held that the state’s statute barring same-sex marriage violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.

Read the decision here.

Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage, saying the provision violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples.

[…]

The decision makes Iowa the first state in the Midwest and the third in the nation to legalize gay marriage. Massachusetts and Connecticut permit same-sex marriage; California did briefly before voters passed a ban in November.

[…]

Teens who take and share nude or semi-nude photos should be treated as kids - not criminals.

 […]

At a Columbus news conference, lawyers from the ACLU and Ohio State University said that no Ohioan has been convicted of a felony yet, but lives could be ruined if underage youths have to register as sex offenders for sharing nude or semi-nude photos or video.

Known as “sexting,” teenagers also have been charged with pandering obscene material and other pornography crimes for transmitting or posting photos on Internet sites like Facebook or MySpace.

The ACLU of Ohio urged officials to stop prosecuting juveniles, claiming that the damage from criminal trials far outweighs the act of sexting. They sent letters Thursday to all 88 Ohio county prosecutors and members of the Ohio General Assembly, urging them not to pursue criminal charges.

[…]

A sensible editorial from the DDN on the need to extend voting opportunities to more people in Ohio.

In 2008, Ohio voters had their first chance to vote early — without swearing, say, that they were going to be out of town or in the hospital. The experiment was a wild success, overall.

Many thousands of people voted in person in the month before the election.

The result was not any great increase in voter turnout over 2004. But turnout was good, and, after all, in 2004, there was an extraordinary increase. That increase was basically sustained.

Conditions are becoming dangerous at the Mansfield prison because of overcrowding and increasing tensions between inmates.

Ohio officials say a series of fights among inmates at Mansfield Correctional Institution last week is symptomatic of overcrowding.

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Director Terry Collins told the Columbus Dispatch on Friday that he is monitoring the situation at MANCI, which remains on partial lockdown. He said he’s not worried the flare-up in Mansfield will spread throughout the state’s overcrowded prison system.

“I’m not alarmed, but as director of the state prison system, I continually want to assure that things are as secure as they can be for the inmates, the staff and the public,” Collins told the newspaper.

Exonerees are pushing for changes to current law to make it easier to obtain DNA testing for those charged with a crime.

A Senate committee was smacked with a sobering dose of reality yesterday from three Columbus men who were improperly imprisoned for a combined 53 years and now want to prevent the same thing from happening to others.

DNA evidence eventually led to the release of Joseph R. Fears Jr., Robert McClendon and Walter D. Smith, but not until each was forced to endure years in prison and the unjust label of “convicted rapist.” In all, eight Ohio inmates have been freed through post-conviction DNA tests.

As free men, the three are pushing lawmakers to pass Senate Bill 77, which would give more inmates access to testing and strengthen requirements on the retention of biological evidence. It also requires that interrogations be recorded and that lineups be administered blind, with officers in charge kept unaware of which person or photo is the actual suspect.

The Register writes an outstanding editorial on the negative effects of censorship on our communities.

Artist James Parlin has stirred up a controvery at BGSU Firelands with one of his works of art.

But you won’t be able to see it. Firelands Dean James Smith reacted to objections to the piece by ordering it removed from the Little Gallery. In protest to this censorship, the gallery shut down the entire exhibit.

The trouble with censorship is someone else is deciding what you can hear, see or read. It supposes you are not intelligent enough or moral enough to decide for yourself and must be protected.

An Ohio appeals court decided not to override a previous decision by Judge Jaames Burge that lethal injection was unconstitutional.

Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge’s controversial ruling that found the state’s lethal injection protocols unconstitutional remains intact — for now.

In a 2-1 ruling Monday, the 9th District Court of Appeals ruled that it could not review whether Burge’s order was proper because neither of the two accused killers who challenged the state’s execution methods have been convicted and sentenced to death.

Burge ruled that if Ruben Rivera and Ronald McCloud, who could get a death sentence if convicted in separate Lorain murders, do go to Ohio’s death house, the state must execute them using only a powerful sedative.

U.S. District Judge James Munley placed a temporary restraining order blocking a Pennsylvania prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against teenagers for “sexting.”

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against three northeastern Pennsylvania teenagers who appeared in racy photos that turned up on classmates’ cell phones.

U.S. District Judge James Munley ruled against Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr., who has threatened to pursue felony charges against the girls unless they agree to participate in a five-week after-school program.

[…]

“We are grateful the judge recognized that prosecuting our clients for non-sexually explicit photographs raises serious constitutional questions,” Witold Walczack, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.

“This country needs to have a discussion about whether prosecuting minors as child pornographers for merely being impulsive and naive is the appropriate way to address the serious consequences that can result” when teens send sexually suggestive photos of themselves and others to one another, he said.

[…]

Munley’s decision to grant the teens a temporary restraining order prevents Skumanick from filing charges while the lawsuit proceeds.