News & Commentary

By Mansuda Arora, ACLU-MN Intern

Within a few days of sending a letter and blogging about how Greenway High School had blocked an email from us with the word "gay" in it, we received a letter back from the High School saying the problem was corrected immediately and providing assurances that this instance does reflect Greenway's values of inclusion and anti-discrimination. 

A short while ago, the ACLU of Minnesota received a request via a form on our website to have a speaker go to a Greenway Student Pride event to talk about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights. Greenway High School is in Coleraine in northern Minnesota.

It may come as a surprise, but your emails and other electronic communications that are over 180 days old are not protected under federal or state law from warrantless access by the government. This means that law enforcement does not need a warrant to request and read any emails that you may have saved on an account, such as Gmail, for over six months.

As part of their celebration of a Day of Silence (a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools) students at Morris Area High school donned t-shirts with the slogan "Look Beyond".  The same day a group of anti-LGBT students wore shirts that said "Loud and Proud", the dark blue shirts had an image of an American flag and a pickup truck on the front. Students who were a part of the Gay Straight Alliance efforts said that they were shouted at and harassed by the students wearing the Loud and Proud t-shirts, but school officials did nothing to stop the harassment that day.

This session a bill was introduced that would allow the government to hold demonstrators liable for all costs related to an “unlawful assembly”.  Demonstrators could be forced to pay for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, just for participating in what has been deemed an “unlawful assembly”.

By Nekima Levy-Pounds, Esq., President, Minneapolis NAACP

By Evan Thomas

After the shooting death of Jamar Clark, Black Lives Matter demonstrators began camping out in front of the 4th precinct in Minneapolis to demand Justice for Jamar. In the wake of complaints from demonstrators, and videos showing excessive force, the ACLU-MN sent a letter to Police Chief Harteau calling on her to tell her officers to use more restraint.