As a special note, the ACLU of Maryland mourned the absence of Sen. Gwendolyn T. Britt, a true civil rights champion for all Marylanders, during this session of the General Assembly. Sen. Britt passed away unexpectedly in January, just days before she planned to formally introduce the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, for which she was to be lead sponsor. Click here to learn more about Sen. Britt’s legacy.

Click the following issue links to learn more:

CIVIL MARRIAGE EQUALITY
LGBT RIGHTS
PUBLIC EDUCATION
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
DEATH PENALTY REPEAL
CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM
DUE PROCESS
PROTECTING PRIVACY
SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE           
REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM
ELECTION INTEGRITY
FREE SPEECH
CIVIL RIGHTS
IMMIGRANTS
OPEN GOVERNMENT
HEALTH CARE AND AUTONOMY

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CIVIL MARRIAGE EQUALITY
ACLU of Maryland extends its heartfelt thanks to Equality Maryland for its leadership in bringing civil marriage equality to the front and center of the 2008 Session.

“Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act”.
ACLU of Maryland worked alongside Equality Maryland to promote the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, SB 290/HB 351. The Act would have established full rights and protections for same-sex couples and their families while confirming the freedom of religious groups to define and recognize religious marriage consistent with their beliefs and practices without state interference.

In September 2007, the Maryland Court of Appeals issued a devastating decision denying committed same-sex couples the right to marry. The Court of Appeals’ decision left it to the legislature to amend the state’s discriminatory marriage statute, so ACLU helped to take the fight for civil marriage to the General Assembly. Same-sex couples in Maryland have been shut out of hospital rooms during the illness of a partner, lost their home after the death of a partner, and lacked health insurance and security for their children’s future because civil marriage is denied to them.

For the first time in decades, the Maryland legislature considered full marriage equality for same-sex couples and their families.  The legislation had an unprecedented amount of support with 49 House and Senate cosponsors, and it received favorable hearings in both the House and the Senate. The ACLU of Maryland is deeply disappointed on behalf of Maryland’s thousands of same-sex couples and their families still waiting for full equality and protection of the law, that the legislation did not receive a vote in either committee this session, despite a strong vote count in the House.  The next goals are to overcome key opposition in the Senate and build support among the legislative leadership.

Please thank Delegates Barnes, McIntosh, Kaiser, Mizeur, and Schuler and other House cosponsors. And click here to thank Senators Madaleno and Raskin and other Senate cosponsors.

Click here to learn more about why the ACLU of Maryland supports civil marriage equality.

Maryland’s Constitution saved from discriminatory amendments.
Victory!  With a coalition of civil rights organizations and compelling individual advocates, ACLU was again successful in defeating bills proposing to amend the Maryland Constitution to limit marriage to a man and woman, thereby “constitutionalizing” the denial of same-sex couples and their families equal protection of the law.  These bills did not receive a vote in either House or Senate committees.

LGBT RIGHTS
ACLU of Maryland again thanks Equality Maryland for a successful partnership in supporting individual bills designed to offer some legal protections for same-sex couples and their families in meeting basic daily challenges and obligations.

Health Care Facility Visitation and Medical Decisions – Domestic Partners.
Victory! SB 566/HB 733 provides the same rights enjoyed by spouses to domestic partners in visitation of loved ones, and participation in emergency medical decisions and end of life decisions.  Click here to read the new law. Click here to see how your Senate and House representatives voted.  Thank you to Delegate Hubbard, Senators Garagiola and Kelley, and those who voted for the bill in the House and the Senate. 

Recordation and Transfer Taxes - Exemptions - Domestic Partners. 
Victory! SB 597/HB 746 provides to domestic partners the same exemption from recordation and transfer tax for jointly owned property as that provided to spouses.  Thank you to Senator Kramer and Delegates Kaiser and Hixson as lead sponsors, to the Senate and House cosponsors of the bill, and for all those who voted for it in the Senate and House.

Inheritance Tax. 
This bill would have provided the same tax exemption for domestic partners provided to spouses from the inheritance tax for property that passes from a decedent.  Although the fiscal impact to the state was minimal, an indeterminate fiscal note proved to be an obstacle in moving the bills to the House and Senate floors. This represents more disparate treatment of Maryland’s LGBT constituents. The state approved other bills with large fiscal impact and found money to fund other programs. ACLU believes that equal protection and fairness are not fiscal issues and should not have affected this matter of justice and equality. 

Thank you’s to the bills’ lead sponsors, Delegates Hixson and Ross, and Senator Robey, as well as the bills’ Senate and House cosponsors are equally important to encourage them to sponsor this legislation again next year.

Antidiscrimination protection for transgendered Marylanders.
SB 976/HB 1598 – Human Relations – Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity – did not come up for a vote in either House or Senate committees. This important bill would have included gender identity in the state’s anti-discrimination statute to provide much-needed protection from cruel and persistent acts of discrimination experienced by transgendered individuals in Maryland. 

Many thanks are due to the bills’ sponsors, Senator Madaleno and Delegates Niemann and Mizeur, the Senate and House cosponsors, as well as to those transgendered individuals who courageously shared in their testimony examples of discrimination that no one should experience and that the state should not condone or tolerate.

PUBLIC EDUCATION: REFORM & ADEQUACY-EQUITY IN FUNDING
Thousands of children in Maryland attend schools that lack sufficient funding, certified teachers and facilities that are conducive to learning. Since 1987, the ACLU of Maryland has been an advocate for the proposition that the State Constitution guarantees all children in Maryland — including the most disadvantaged and educationally at-risk — an adequate education. ACLU’s Education Reform Project worked with education coalition partners to ensure that public education did not suffer additional budget cuts in the 2008 session, to protect the Governor’s budget for school construction/renovation, to pass positive measures to reduce student suspensions and truancy, to expand pre-K, and to advocate on other bills affecting at-risk schoolchildren.

Protect Bridge to Excellence Funding.
Victory!  After $150 million in reductions to statutorily mandated funding for public schools in fiscal 2009 during the special session, a top priority for our Education Reform Project in the 2008 session was to ensure no additional reductions to public school funding.

Include Geographic Cost of Education Index Funding.
Victory!  A key component to the Bridge to Excellence funding formula is an adjustment based upon the differences in the cost of living and provision of educational services among counties in the state.  This adjustment has not been funded in previous years.  Fiscal 2009 represents the first installment of funding, with $76 million in the fiscal 2009 budget allocated to jurisdictions throughout the state based upon the cost of education in those jurisdictions.

Protect Aging Schools Program.
Victory!  A top priority of our Education Reform Project was ensuring full funding, including increases due to inflation, for this critical program. The Aging Schools Program funds critically needed maintenance projects that ensure basic safe and habitable school buildings, such as remedying damaged roofs and failed heating and air systems, which do not qualify for school construction funds.  State funding for this program was cut in half in the fiscal 2008 budget.  Then, the House during the special session and during the 2008 session voted to reduce mandated inflation funding by cutting almost $300,000. ACLU organized Baltimore parents and the state PTA to resist cuts.  With help from the Senate, full funding was restored in the final fiscal 2009 budget. 

Maintain School Construction Funding.
Victory!  ACLU of Maryland continued advocacy for full funding of school construction as called for by the Kopp Task Force and the Public Schools Facilities Act of 2004.  Fiscal year 2009 will see another year of record funding for school construction after years of neglect under the prior administration. ACLU of Maryland thanks Governor O’Malley for prioritizing school construction funding in his budget proposal and thanks the General Assembly and budget committees for working with the Governor to locate an additional $27.4 million for a final school construction appropriation of $327.4 million.  Because the demand still outstrips the funding available, facility funding will continue to need strong support.

School Facilities Survey Overdue.
Next year!  In order to ensure that school construction funding is distributed fairly and is effectively addressing the state’s critical need for both new buildings for growing student populations and adequate old buildings that do not pose serious safety and health threats, the state was required to complete an updated survey of school buildings in 2007.  This long overdue survey has not been completed and was the subject of ACLU of Maryland advocacy during the legislative session.  Proposed mechanisms for funding the survey were rejected.  With unprecedented levels of critically needed school construction funding, oversight and accountability is as important as ever.

Positive Support for Students & Teachers.
Victory!  ACLU supported bills that addressed student truancy with positive behavioral interventions, as opposed to punitive sanctions, and established a task force to study multiple suspensions of students.  HB 285/ SB 96 will require schools with a high truancy rate (adjusted downward until schools with 1% truancy are covered) to implement research-based staff training programs that will create positive school environments.  Thanks to lead sponsors Delegate Kaiser and Senator Pugh and bill supporters.  HB 139 establishes a task force to study the issue of students who have been suspended multiple times (see also School-to-Prison Pipeline section).

High School Assessments Still a Diploma Requirement.
Bills that addressed, in various ways, the requirement that students pass four High School Assessments to receive a high school diploma did not move from committee. ACLU has raised issues about this requirement, citing concern about whether students have been adequately prepared for the tests, with adequate schools and qualified teachers.  The ball now moves to the State Board of Education, which will likely address whether the diploma requirement should be delayed.

Expand Pre-Kindergarten.
ACLU has long supported public pre-Kindergarten programs for at-risk three- and four-year-olds.  The current Thornton mandate requires that all 4-year-olds from low-income families be offered public school pre-K.  HB1319, sponsored by Delegate Hucker, and SB912, sponsored by Senator Dyson, would have expanded pre-K to serve children of military families.  The bills’ fiscal notes, though not large, were enough to block passage in a year with concerns about the deficit and economy.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
Unprecedented Private School Voucher Subsidy Rejected. 
Victory!  ACLU of Maryland, along with the Public $$$ for Public Schools coalition and other education coalition partners, strongly opposed a bill masquerading as a tax credit for private school scholarship donations that would have in practice ushered in private school vouchers for the first time in Maryland. ACLU believes that vouchers for private and parochial schools are part of an ideological crusade, not a plan for education reform.

ACLU of Maryland opposes private school vouchers because they divert millions of dollars in public funds to private schools, depleting the funding available for public services, including public education.  A similar program in Pennsylvania has ballooned with no accountability or oversight to siphon over $70 million from that state’s general fund.  This is especially objectionable with current revenue shortfalls and a chronic structural deficit that forced the State to cut nearly $200 million from public education funding, even after raising taxes.  

Private schools are not accountable for student achievement, for student diversity or for educating all of Maryland’s children.  They are also not required to ensure that state funding does not subsidize religious education.  The Senate disappointed public education advocates and their constituents by passing the Senate bill.  The few Senators who opposed the bill should be thanked for defending public education. Those Senators who supported the bill need to hear from constituents that it is not acceptable to use public dollars for private schools when the state is failing to meet its public education funding needs.

The ACLU of Maryland defeated several additional bills that proposed similar tax credits that would have acted as taxpayer subsidies to private, religious schools. 

Private School Textbook Fund.
Over ACLU of Maryland’s objection, the objection of other public education advocacy groups, and against the recommendation of the nonpartisan budget analyst with the Department of Legislative Services, the General Assembly approved the diversion of $1 million in the Cigarette Restitution Fund from health care to the over-funded private school textbook program. The funding was increased by over $600,000 in the face of a Department of Legislative Services recommendation to reduce the over $3.5 million appropriation.  This diversion leaves health care for Marylanders short changed, as well as stem cell research. 

DEATH PENALTY REPEAL
ACLU of Maryland thanks Maryland Citizens Against State Executions and lead sponsors Delegate Rosenberg and Senator Gladden for continued leadership to restore human dignity to Maryland’s criminal justice system by repealing the death penalty and replacing it with life without parole.  We also extend thanks to Delegate Dumais and Senator Raskin for successfully leading the effort to empanel the first Maryland commission to conduct a comprehensive review of Maryland’s system of capital punishment.

Commission to Evaluate Maryland’s Death Penalty Established.
Progress! HB 1328/SB 645 would have abolished Maryland’s death penalty and substituted for execution the punishment of life without the possibility of parole. ACLU of Maryland advocated strongly along with exonerees, murder victim family members, and other abolition advocates for passage of these bills.  While neither bill came to a vote in committee, the legislature enacted legislation creating a commission to evaluate Maryland’s death penalty and to report its recommendations by December 2008 (SB 614/HB 1111). 

ACLU of Maryland supported the creation of the first commission in Maryland empowered to conduct a comprehensive review of Maryland’s death penalty by those with a diversity of expertise in its application in Maryland and a broad range of experiences and perspectives relevant to capital punishment.  Click here to learn more about the commission’s mandate and its composition.

Please thank all of your Senate and House representatives who voted for the commission bills.  Please also tell your representatives who voted against the bills about the importance of the work of this nonpartisan commission.  Click here to learn more about why the ACLU of Maryland opposes the death penalty.

Public Oversight of Capital Punishment Retained.
Victory! ACLU of Maryland’s opposition helped defeat proposed legislation to exempt the state’s lethal injection process from the public oversight and accountability served by the regulatory process. This proposed legislation attempted to circumvent a court victory in an ACLU case in which the Court of Appeals required the Department of Public Safety and Corrections to establish its lethal injection protocols through the public regulatory process. The Court rejected the secret adoption of protocols that do not conform to medical standards and may subject those executed to excruciating pain and suffering before death. Click here to learn more about that case.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM
Wrongful Conviction & Due Process: Videotaping of Interrogations.
Victory! ACLU of Maryland, in partnership with the Maryland Innocence Coalition, succeeded in passing HB 6/SB 76, which requires the electronic recording of interrogations in cases of murder and sexual assault. ACLU thanks the bill’s lead sponsors, Senator Conway and Delegate Anderson, for seeing this multi-year effort through to enactment this session. Governor Martin O’Malley helped ensure final passage of the amended bill by committing to provide the funding necessary for law enforcement to comply. 

Electronic recording of interrogations protects police officers from accusations of misconduct, prevents false confessions, improves investigations, and protects the integrity and admissibility of confessions as evidence in criminal trials.  With enactment of this legislation, ACLU of Maryland and the Maryland Innocence Coalition have successfully enacted a comprehensive criminal justice reform agenda to address known causes of wrongful conviction, including the adoption of best practices in obtaining accurate eyewitness identification and statutory oversight of and standards for forensic laboratories. 

Nuisance Crime Expungement.
Victory! ACLU of Maryland supported the enactment of HB 685, which enables the expungement of nonviolent nuisance crime convictions from a criminal record. Without the legislation, a conviction for a nonviolent, minor offense like begging, loitering, or vagrancy can plague a person forever. The record of the offense will appear on credit history and on background checks for housing applications and employment, triggering automatic rejection for housing and employment opportunities, loans and other forms of financial assistance. Individuals arrested for such crimes are overwhelmingly those who are in poverty and homeless; who are begging because they have no money; and who are sleeping on park benches because they have no place else to sleep. 

ACLU of Maryland thanks the Job Opportunities Task Force and the Homeless Persons Representation Project for their leadership in securing this necessary reform.

DUE PROCESS
Forced Warrantless Seizure of DNA from Arrestees Enacted Over Objection of Civil Rights Advocates.
The O’Malley Administration’s signature public safety initiative this session was legislation seeking to authorize the warrantless seizure of DNA from innocent people, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment’s privacy guarantee against forced searches and seizures without a warrant and probable cause.  The bill as introduced would have required forced DNA sampling from any person arrested (not charged or convicted) for a crime of violence, burglary and breaking and entering a motor vehicle.  Swift, unwavering opposition by the ACLU of Maryland and the Maryland State Conference of NAACP Branches prompted opposition by the Legislative Black Caucus. 

Despite mounting opposition from civil rights organizations that grew to include MD NOW, the Maryland Innocence Coalition, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, and Progressive Maryland, the Administration refused to acknowledge or address the fundamental civil rights violation entailed in warrantless seizure of DNA from arrestees.  It insisted on appropriating $3 million to fund this expansion while refusing to provide the $65,000 required to ensure the accuracy and efficacy of analyzing crime scene DNA evidence due to lack of funds.  Click here to tell your representatives and the Governor that enactment of this legislation is unacceptable.

However, with technical assistance from ACLU of Maryland, the Legislative Black Caucus succeeded in amending the legislation to limit the risk of abuse of DNA records and to remove barriers to claims of wrongful conviction for those where DNA evidence may prove their innocence.  Click here to learn more about the bill in its final form. And click here to learn more about ACLU opposition to the bill.

In its final form, thanks to the Legislative Black Caucus, the bill is limited to sampling from those charged with crimes of violence, excluding mayhem, and burglary, excluding fourth degree burglary; samples cannot be analyzed or entered into any databank until arraignment; samples must be destroyed and databank records expunged automatically where charges do not result in conviction; expungement must include records in local, state and federal databanks; and familial DNA searching is prohibited.  Finally, the legislation will sunset after five years.

Warrantless arrest for quarantine order violations. 
Catastrophes and other threats to public safety include the heightened risk of government overreaching.  In response to the ACLU of Maryland’s advocacy following 9/11, the state’s current catastrophic health emergency powers law was carefully crafted on model legislation to ensure the government has all legitimate authority to act quickly and comprehensively in a health emergency without trampling civil liberties.  HB 834 proposed to upset that careful balance by granting police the power to arrest without a warrant those suspected of being in violation of a quarantine order.  ACLU opposed this provision in the bill while supporting strengthening the existing process for addressing quarantine violations. The provision was struck from the bill by the House Judiciary Committee and the legislation died in the Senate.

PROTECTING PRIVACY
Oppose Implementation of Federal Real ID Act.
Victory! ACLU of Maryland opposes the implementation of the federal Real ID Act, which would turn our state driver’s license into a national identity card that would enable tracking of individuals and increase the threat of identity theft. The Real ID Act would make highly personal information about Maryland driver’s license applicants available to motor vehicle administration employees nationwide and available to merchants and identity thieves through unencrypted machine-readable technology. States around the country are passing laws and resolutions against this $23 billion unfunded federal mandate.

ACLU of Maryland worked with legislators and other advocacy groups, including the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, the Maryland Chapter of AARP, MaryPIRG, the Public Justice Center, and CASA de Maryland, to prevent the wasteful expenditure of millions of state dollars to comply with Real ID.  We are pleased to report that there is no funding earmarked for Real ID implementation in the fiscal 2009 appropriation. 

In addition, the Motor Vehicle Administration must assess the risks to personal privacy and data security presented by the federal law and propose security standards and necessary legislation to address these risks.  The MVA must also provide a cost estimate for implementation and subject any information technology procurement to heightened legislative oversight.  ACLU also successfully defeated proposed legislation requiring Maryland to adopt a lawful presence requirement for driver’s licenses in order to comply with the Act, which would make our state roads less safe by causing more unlicensed, uninsured drivers to be on the highways.

This legislative session represents only the beginning of the ACLU of Maryland’s campaign to help the national ACLU repeal the federal Real ID Act.  The O’Malley Administration continues to assert its intent to move forward with implementation despite mounting opposition to this ill-advised, unfunded, and misdirected federal mandate.  

Click here to read ACLU-MD’s presentation opposing Real ID

Click here to learn more about Real ID

Personal Privacy and Autonomy
ACLU of Maryland supported enactment of HB 29/SB 918, which would prohibit the use of genetic information to deny long-term care insurance.  The legislation closes a significant loophole in Maryland’s model genetic privacy laws. 

ACLU also supported proposed legislation that would protect the privacy of Marylander’s personal information, especially Social Security numbers. ACLU opposition defeated numerous bills seeking to expand involuntary drug testing of Marylanders, proposals to weaken confidentiality of medical records, weaken informed consent for HIV/AIDS testing, and criminalize homelessness. 

SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE           
Victory! Research demonstrates that many school policies result in pushing children from the classroom into the criminal justice system. Policies like zero tolerance for discipline violations, excessive use of expulsion, and criminalizing truancy – all take children from the classroom and their education into the juvenile justice system, where the chances of ending up in the adult criminal justice system increase exponentially. These policies also have a very disturbing disparate impact on poor children, disabled children, and minorities.

That is why ACLU supported HB 139/SB 582, which mandates that schools engage parents and use reasonable responses when children are suspended for more than 10 days in order to identify and address the root causes of behavior or circumstances underlying the suspensions. As enacted, this legislation establishes a task force to study issues related to multiple suspensions, providing an important new forum to educate policy makers on the complex causes of suspension and best practices in addressing them.

ACLU of Maryland also monitored dozens of bills related to school discipline, suspension and expulsion policies, truancy interventions, gang-related legislation, and the expansion of delinquent acts to prevent the increased criminalization of students and the funneling of children from school to prison through the juvenile justice system.

REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM
ACLU of Maryland maintained its vigilance in defending Maryland women’s right to reproductive freedom and health care. We successfully defeated bills attempting to limit women’s access to full reproductive healthcare services, including safe and legal abortions. We also supported the Family Support Act (HB 1324), which would have increased funding for teen pregnancy prevention and family planning services.

ELECTION INTEGRITY
Victory! After playing a key role in ushering passage of the “paper trail” bill in 2007, ACLU of Maryland and the Election Integrity Coalition successfully supported funding for its implementation in the fiscal 2009 budget. ACLU lauds Governor O’Malley and the Maryland General Assembly for including funding in the fiscal 2009 appropriation for a new verifiable, paper trail voting system that provides equal access to voters with disabilities.  This landmark legislation requires Maryland's voting system to produce a separate, durable, auditable, voter-verified paper record. It also contains model standards for voters with disabilities.

ACLU of Maryland also supported numerous bills to strengthen our democracy, including legislation to allow for election-day voter registration and public financing of campaigns for General Assembly candidates.  We worked vigorously to protect access to the ballot box and defeated a host of bills motivated by anti-immigrant animus to disenfranchise eligible voters without improving election integrity by requiring proof of identity or proof of citizenship before voting. Such requirements are well known to disenfranchise poor people, minorities, and the elderly. They are a “solution” looking for a problem, as there have been no recent verified cases of such individual voter fraud in Maryland.

FREE SPEECH
Victory! ACLU of Maryland was the first responder to threats to the First Amendment this session.  In response to ACLU expertise, the legislature amended or defeated bills endangering our most fundamental right. 

The Right to Dissent.
The Fallen Soldier Privacy Act (SB 3/HB64) was provoked by disagreement over the war in Iraq and sought to censor anti-war speech in an effort to silence anti-war activists. The bill would make it a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year imprisonment and a $2500 fine for a person “to use the name, portrait, picture, or image of a soldier killed in the line of duty within the previous 50 years, for the purpose of gaining a commercial advantage by advertising for sale a product, good, ware, merchandise, or service, without first obtaining consent for use form the surviving spouse, the personal representative, or the majority of the heirs of the deceased soldier.”

ACLU believes that our soldiers deserve the highest honor. We also believe that honor is diminished when it comes at the expense of the First Amendment – one of the principles of American democracy they are dedicated to protecting.

The Maryland bill is part of an effort across states against the production and sale of anti-war t-shirts and other anti-war materials that use lists of names of soldiers killed in the war to underscore the human toll of the war in Iraq. The legislation is an unapologetic attempt to censor dissent.  It sweeps broadly to criminalize significant public debate over the Iraq War.  For instance, the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning was awarded to the cartoonist Mike Luckovich for a drawing that used the names of deceased soldiers to the spell the word, “Why,” followed by a question mark.

A May 30, 2004 Doonesbury cartoon that is sold commercially depicts a soldier placing his hand on the helmet of a fallen comrade and a memorial listing the names of all of the soldiers who had died in the war up to that point. Lists of soldiers’ names are also available publicly on websites such as CNN.com and WashingtonPost.com.

The Office of the Maryland Attorney General agreed with the ACLU that the legislation was an unconstitutional attempt to censor anti-war speech. It was amended in response to ACLU opposition.

Freedom of Expression.
In addition, ACLU of Maryland prompted redrafting of proposed hate crimes legislation introduced in response to recent disturbing events involving nooses at the University of Maryland, College Park and in Jena, Louisiana.

Two bills sought to have the government criminalize any display of a noose as a hate crime. ACLU of Maryland supports constitutional hate crimes legislation, however we know that no one is served or protected by an unconstitutional law. The Constitution does not allow the government to criminalize free expression. But when there is an underlying crime, such as defacement of private property, then an enhanced penalty can be added for that hate crime.

Similarly, if someone trespasses on private property in order to hang a noose with the intent of intimidation, then the hanging of a noose could be considered as a factor justifying an enhanced penalty for the underlying crime of trespass.

There are other situations where there could be legal, though not criminal, consequences for hanging nooses. In the case of a public university, students who hang nooses can be disciplined or expelled under university policies. In the case of workplace harassment, an employee who hangs a noose can be disciplined or fired. In addition, individuals targeted by the hanging of a noose may be able to sue under certain civil rights laws.

ACLU worked quickly with bill sponsors to craft legislation that would address hateful behavior without infringing First Amendment rights protected by our U.S. Constitution. ACLU response prompted other bills threatening free expression to be voted down in committee.

CIVIL RIGHTS
Fighting Employment Discrimination.
Victory! ACLU of Maryland supported initiatives to protect against employment discrimination.  We supported the Flexible Leave Act (HB 40), which will allow employees to use their accrued sick leave to care for sick family members.  Click here to view the enrolled legislation.   Click here to urge the Governor to sign the bill. ACLU thanks the Job Opportunities Task Force for their stewardship of this initiative and the large coalition of groups supporting this bill through to final passage.

ACLU also supported the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2008. If the legislation had passed, it would have clarified Maryland’s employment discrimination law by protecting the timelines for the discovery and prosecution of wage discrimination claims as well as employees’ rights to full restitution, to correct an erroneous interpretation of the federal version by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

ACLU defeats discriminatory legislation.
ACLU of Maryland helped defeat proposals that would have discriminated against those seeking substance abuse treatment, pregnant women with HIV/AIDS, individuals eligible for public benefits, and those with mental illness.

IMMIGRANTS
Numerous bills seeking to target illegal immigration would have restricted the rights and privileges of legal immigrants and citizens by imposing onerous burdens without any benefits – unconstitutionally preventing access to government services and encouraging discrimination in employment, housing, education, and the court system. None of these bills offered constructive responses to illegal immigration, which the ACLU believes must be addressed by the federal government. Rather, they each would have caused the infringement and weakening of rights and liberties guaranteed to all Maryland residents. 

ACLU opposition helped ensure the defeat of these discriminatory and unconstructive proposals again this session.  However, legislators and Governor O’Malley are under increasing pressure from anti-immigrant activists and policymakers to enact such counterproductive legislation.  It is important over the interim for ACLU members to counter these messages of intolerance by letting your representatives and the Governor know that you do not support damaging or discriminatory responses to illegal immigration.

ACLU of Maryland supported the enactment of legislation creating a Commission to Study the Impact of Immigrants in Maryland (HB 1602/SB 475) as a reasonable proposal to engage in a thoughtful debate on the issues, grounded in facts. 

OPEN GOVERNMENT
ACLU of Maryland successfully defeated legislation that would have restricted public access to government records through the Maryland Public Information Act. HB 615/SB 549 and HB 393 purported to restrict who could use the MPIA and what information would be available through the Act.  HB 615/SB 549 were defeated and HB 393 was amended in response to ACLU opposition. ACLU of Maryland also supported HB 349, which would have ensured that the votes of a public body are open to the public under the Open Meetings Act. 

HEALTH CARE AND AUTONOMY
ACLU of Maryland advocacy in the area of health care focuses on protecting fundamental rights like privacy and autonomy, and preventing discrimination in access to public services and benefits: 

• Enactment of the Health Care Facility Visitation and Medical Decisions Act (SB 566) protects equal rights of visitation and participation in critical care and end of life decisions for domestic partners. 

• Protect access to public benefits by defeating bills requiring onerous citizenship documentation, illegal drug testing and English-only services as perquisite for receiving eligible services. 

• Protect personal autonomy by defeating a proposal to authorize forcible medication of psychiatric patients in state psychiatric facilities and provisions of bills eroding informed consent for HIV/AIDS testing. 

• Prevent government overreaching in emergencies by defeating legislation to circumvent civil quarantine laws by authorizing warrantless arrest of those suspected of violating quarantine orders. 

• Enactment of Long-Term Care Insurance – Prohibited Acts – Genetic Tests, Genetic Information or Genetic Services (HB29/SB918) prohibits the use of genetic information in issuing long term care insurance, closing a significant loophole in Maryland’s model anti-discrimination statute. 

• Protecting patient confidentiality and personal privacy by defeating legislation mandating disclosure to law enforcement of private medical tests for blood alcohol concentration, legislation authorizing disclosure of personal information of those with infectious diseases and involved in infectious disease investigations, and legislation stigmatizing the treatment of pregnant women with HIV/AIDS. 

• Protect women’s reproductive freedom and autonomy, including a women’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, by supporting legislation promoting increased funding for family planning and teen pregnancy prevention, and improved support services to young families; defeated several initiatives to restrict access to safe and legal abortions and to restrict funding for women’s health care.

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