At Liberty

The Trump campaign is pursuing legal challenges in battleground states as the pathways to President Trump’s reelection narrow. These challenges involve attempts to stop or challenge the vote count. And because of the record number of mail-in ballots cast during the pandemic, the votes affected are disproportionately those of mail-in ballots. 91.6 million Americans requested a mail-in ballot. And what’s noteworthy about the high volume of mail-in ballots is that any attempt to discount them would not only cast a blow to our democracy, it would disenfranchise communities of color. Joining us to discuss are Lucia Tian, ACLU's Chief Analytics Officer, and Andrea Young, ACLU of Georgia's Executive Director.

Tomorrow's the big day: Election Day! The last day to vote. Here at the ACLU, we have just one closing argument: Everyone should be able to vote, and everyone’s vote should be counted. So, we want to prepare you to know your rights when you head to the ballot box. We've prepared a short and sweet audio guide for you. We'll see you at the polls!

It’s almost half a year since George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer and the country erupted in protest demanding change. It felt like a turning point in many ways, but was it? Since that day, some cities and states have taken steps towards police accountability. The city of Minneapolis voted to defund their police department, Iowa restricted chokeholds, New York repealed a law that kept officers’ disciplinary records secret, and Virginia passed a law making it easier to decertify cops with a history of infractions. That’s just to name a few. But, in many cities and states, the progress has met with resistance like in California where police unions blocked a law that would have allowed officer misconduct to end their service. Given all that still needs to happen to address the systemic injustices of policing in this country, we are re-running a conversation we had shortly after protests erupted with our Policing Policy Advisor, Paige Fernandez.

Over 5 million Americans are kept from the polls by laws that prohibit people with felony convictions from voting. While the intricacies of these laws vary from state to state, people who have been convicted of a felony are blocked from voting in one way or another in 48 states. But why do felony disenfranchisement laws exist in the first place and where do they come from? On this episode, we spoke with Jennifer Taylor from the Equal Justice Initiative, an organizer with Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, Demetrius Jifunza, and the ACLU's National Campaign Strategist for criminal justice reform, Lewis Conway, to find out.

The city of Philadelphia learned in March 2018 that two of the agencies it had hired to provide foster care services would not, based on religious objection, accept same-sex couples as foster parents. The city then told the agencies their contracts with the city were in jeopardy unless they complied with basic nondiscrimination requirements. While one of the agencies agreed to comply, the other — Catholic Social Services or CSS— refused. Instead, CSS sued the city, claiming the Constitution gives it the right to opt-out of the nondiscrimination requirement. After a lower court and a federal circuit court ruled in the city’s favor, CSS appealed to the Supreme Court. The case Fulton v. City of Philadelphia has implications, not only for the future of foster care, but for the protection of all people from discrimination in the name of religion. Arguments in the case are set for November 4th. Louise Melling, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU, joins us to discuss what's at stake.

For the last few months, we've been gathering your voting questions. Hundreds of you have sent in voice messages, videos and emails with your most pressing concerns. These submissions have informed our At the Polls episodes, but we couldn't answer each question with its own episode. This week, we have recruited the best experts to answer your varied questions about the upcoming election, your ballot, and voting rights. Thank you to all who submitted questions. We hope you enjoy!

This week on Monday, October 12th, a growing number of states and cities across the country celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day. It comes as an important corrective after decades of celebrating the, quote, “discovery” of the Americas by Christopher Columbus each year. We know, of course, that no such discovery happened — what did happen was colonization and centuries of subjugation, murder, disenfranchisement, and displacement of Native Americans. As we reflect on our history and on the stories that have been too often excluded, we consider the importance of not just what stories get told, but of who gets to tell them. On this episode, we are joined by Josué Rivas, who’ll help us think through these questions. Josué is a visual storyteller, educator, creative director, and self-described “Indigenous futurist.” He descended from the Mexica Otomi peoples. He aims “ to challenge the mainstream narrative about Indigenous peoples” and to “be a visual messenger for those in the shadows of our society.”

One in four American adults lives with a disability. And that doesn’t even include the fact that about 45% of Americans live with a chronic illness. During a global pandemic, that means that a huge portion of the electorate has health conditions that impact their ability to vote safely. A new act introduced in Congress has the potential to really help. It's called the Accessible Voting Act. In this episode of At the Polls, we're joined by Susan Mizner, Director of the ACLU's Disability Rights Project, and Curtis Chong, a longtime technologist and advocate for digital accessibility for all.

Over the last months, we’ve explored different conversations on the subject of policing: abolition, violence and accountability, protest and activism. Today, we’re exploring a topic that has gained more attention in the wake of Daniel Prude’s death in March at the hands of the Rochester Police Department: the startling connection between mental health 911 calls and police brutality. Studies show that nearly 50% of police victims are living with a disability, predominantly a mental health disability. In many ways, 911 has become the only option for people looking for mental health crisis intervention. And police often arrive at the scene armed with deadly weapons and a lack of mental health training. The results are devastating. But there is hope. There are new alternatives to policing that can provide real care if we invest in them. Joining us on this episode to break down the issue is Gregg Bloche, a professor of law at Georgetown University and a mental health care policy expert, and Ellie Virrueta, an organizer with Youth Justice Coalition.

American voting rates have hovered in the mid-50s for most of recent history. As these things go, that is not great. But it’s even worse with younger voters. In the 2014 midterms, less than 20 percent of voters under 30 cast a ballot. We saw a shift in the 2018 midterms and now the question is how do we sustain the influx of young voters? As of this year, millennials and Gen Z make up approximately 37% of the national electorate. The full participation of America’s younger voters could radically shift the political landscape. Michael McDonald, professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, and David Hogg, March For Our Lives Co-Founder and Board Member, join to discuss.

This past June, many breathed a sigh of relief when the U.S. Supreme Court rose above partisanship in controversial cases involving abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, the rights of DREAMERS, and the president’s tax returns. In those cases, conservative justices relied on legal reasoning, rather than party loyalty, to guide their decisions. But lurking in the shadows is a concerning new trend in the Supreme Court to grant an unprecedented number of emergency orders with little transparency and no opportunity for recourse. These cases fall under the Court’s aptly named “shadow docket.” And under the Trump administration, this shadow docket has grown exponentially with the Supreme Court disproportionately ruling on the side of the administration. Here to tell us about this trend and why it’s so concerning is the ACLU’s legal director David Cole. We spoke with David before Justice Ginsberg's death and before President announced Amy Coney Barrett as his pick to replace Justice Ginsberg. It is safe to say that the trends we discussed with David are unlikely to shift course – and could even worsen in the wake of these events.

Ahead of this year’s election, we have seen an unprecedented amount of election litigation between both political parties. The Republican National Committee, at the direction of President Trump, has amassed a $20 million war chest for voting rights cases across the country. In every case, they are working to suppress votes. The litigation ahead of the election is setting the stage for how votes are cast and counted on Election Day. But this isn't the only concern. Once Election Day comes to pass, many are worried that litigation will follow and that the results and final decision will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Joining us to discuss are Dale Ho, Director of ACLU's Voting Rights Project, and Leah Litman, a law professor and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast. They break down what's going on in the Courts and what we can all do to help.

September is in full swing, and millions of students across the US are returning to school, though for many, this year looks like none other. As school districts across the country grapple with how to resume classes during a pandemic, many districts and their trans students are facing additional hurdles. The Department of Education is now threatening to withhold funding from Connecticut schools that allow trans girls to compete on girls sports teams. Elsewhere, in spite of recent high profile victories affirming trans students’ right to use restrooms that match their gender, attacks on this right continue. And in state legislatures across the U.S., we’ve seen an alarming spate of bills attacking the rights of trans youth. Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice for the ACLU’s LGBT Project, last joined us on At Liberty back in June, after a historic Supreme Court victory affirmed that employers cannot fire or discriminate against someone simply because they are LGBTQ. A few months later, that victory and his amazing career fighting for trans rights have landed him on TIME magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2020. Now, with students heading back to school — whatever that looks like — Chase joins us to talk about the battle for trans rights in and out of schools.

It’s no secret that the postal service has been under attack. Earlier this year, President Trump appointed one of his supporters to serve as Postmaster General. Then, just a few months from the election, that appointee, Louis DeJoy, ordered changes to how the postal service operates. Here’s the problem: it appears those changes could be politically motivated and could impact our ability to access the polls through vote-by-mail this fall. Joining us this week to discuss are Bobby Hoffman, ACLU's Voting Rights Advocacy and Policy Counsel, and Joyce Harris, a postal worker.

As many Americans stare down the end of their sixth month of social distancing, we are re-running a conversation we recorded back in April, that still has relevance to our lives today. For some people, the advent of social isolation came long before the coronavirus. At the ACLU, we work with many communities that deal with the long term impacts of social isolation. People living with disabilities who often experience accessibility issues, people held in detention, and people imprisoned in solitary confinement, just to name a few. We'll hear from folks impacted by chronic isolation as well as professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, Dr. Julie Holt-Lunstad.