ACLU in Annapolis
2007 Legislative Report
The 2007 session of the Maryland General Assembly was marked by numerous landmark civil liberties victories, which expand voting and due process rights, and protect the civil rights of the GLBT community and disabled Marylanders. The session was also notable because the campaign to end capital punishment came closer than ever to fruition, thanks to a courageous stand by Maryland’s new governor, Martin O’Malley.
However, there were also significant attacks on rights, especially on First Amendment rights and the rights of immigrants. ACLU helped defeat attempts to pass “English-Only” laws. But an effort to pass a sweeping ban on free speech activity near roadways was successful. And there was increasing momentum to pass vouchers and other taxpayer funded subsidies for religious and other private schools.
The ACLU of Maryland's Legislative Program reflects the commitment of our organization to speak strongly for civil liberties in a challenging political environment. We represent ACLU members throughout the state on a wide range of civil liberties issues, including voting rights, criminal justice, civil rights, reproductive freedom, privacy, public education reform, and freedom of expression.
Representing the ACLU in Annapolis during the 2007 General Assembly was our first-ever legislative director, Cynthia Boersma, who manages our advocacy work in Annapolis; Bebe Verdery, our Education Reform Project Director, and contract lobbyist Barbara Hoffman, who focus on public school funding and reform issues; and ACLU's Public Outreach Director, Meredith Curtis. The Maryland ACLU’s advocacy in Annapolis is guided by our Legislative Committee, under the aegis of our Board of Directors.
Following is a summary of the Maryland ACLU’s advocacy in Annapolis in 2007:
VOTING RIGHTS
Voter-Verified Paper Record.
Victory! HB 18/SB 392 require Maryland's voting system to produce a separate, durable, auditable voter verified paper record. This bill also contains model standards for voters with disabilities. ACLU was instrumental in bringing election integrity advocates and disability advocates together to craft landmark legislation protecting the voting rights of voters with disabilities. Provisions include voting system standards to ensure independent, private and equivalent casting, verification and correction of secret ballots; representation of voters with disabilities in the evaluation of prospective voting equipment; and uniform training of election judges. ACLU thanks its coalition partners in the Maryland Election Integrity Coalition, as well as the Maryland Disability Law Center and the Maryland League of Women Voters for sharing support and expertise in securing a comprehensive bill to restore all voters' confidence in our voting system.
Voting Rights Restoration.
Victory! SB 488 brings expanded democracy to the Free State while bringing Maryland into the mainstream with 38 other states by removing permanent bans for some voters and simplifying a previously unenforceable and complicated law with respect to eligibility for ex-offenders. Over 50,000 people in Maryland are eligible to vote under SB 488, which provides that a former felon is eligible to vote after successful completion of probation and parole supervision. Partners in this effort joined together under the auspices of Got Democracy/Justice Maryland and included the Maryland League of Women Voters, the N.A.A.C.P., Project Acorn, Progressive Maryland, NYU's Brennan Center, and the Sentencing Project.
Early Voting.
Victory! SB 1/HB 201 propose amending the state constitution to allow voting to occur prior to Election Day. The proposed constitutional amendment must be approved by the voters in the 2008 election. While the General Assembly enacted early voting legislation over a veto with ACLU support in 2006, that legislation was determined to be unconstitutional by the Court of Appeals in December 2006 in Lamone v. Capozzi. These bills respond to that ruling.
Public Financing of Campaigns.
Progress! This initiative, spearheaded by Progressive Maryland and broadly supported by public interest and election integrity groups in addition to ACLU, would have made general funds available to General Assembly candidates willing to forgo other kinds of fundraising after demonstrating baseline popular support. The bill had widespread support in the House, and received a favorable report from the Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee despite a large fiscal note, but died on the Senate floor after vigorous debate.
Voters’ Rights.
Victory! ACLU and other election protection advocates successfully defeated bills that would have required voters to produce photo identification before they could vote. We opposed these bills because photo identification requirements conflict with current voting law, inconvenience voters, and reduce voter turnout without improving voting security. This is a victory for Maryland voters. ACLU also supported the Voters Rights Protection Act of 2007, which built upon our election protection work by responding to numerous documented problems during the general and primary elections. This initiative passed the House of Delegates but did not receive a vote in the Senate.
GLBT RIGHTS
“Marriage Amendment”.
Victory! ACLU once again worked with our partner Equality Maryland to defeat discriminatory bills seeking to prohibit civil marriage protections for same-sex couples via legislation and constitutional amendment. SB 564, HB 774 and HB 919 all died in committee after very moving hearings with compelling testimony from same-sex couples, children of same-sex parents, parents of same-sex couples, civil rights leaders (including ACLU), and religious leaders of many faiths. ACLU also sought to protect the judicial process by preventing legislation from preempting the Court of Appeals decision in our marriage equality case, Deane & Polyak v. Conaway, without interference from the legislature. A decision from the state’s highest court is expected in that case any day.
EDUCATION REFORM
“Thornton” Education Funding.
Victory! ACLU’s highest education reform priority this year was protecting the final, and largest, increment of “Thornton” education funding from any budget cuts. The additional $567 million to K-12 education will bring most school systems up to the point of funding that was defined by the Thornton Commission as an “adequate” amount in 2001 (the funding was phased in over 6 years).
However, though the new Governor campaigned on funding the one unfunded part of the Thornton formula — the Geographic Cost of Education Index, which would direct additional money to counties with higher educational costs—he did not include the money in his budget. The Governor did file legislation to that effect but the bills never got out of committee in either chamber. The predicted budget deficit made legislators hesitant about committing to new spending items.
School Facilities Funding.
Victory! ACLU continued its strong advocacy for increased spending on school construction and renovation. In its 2004 report, the State had determined a $4 billion need. The Governor took the lead and budgeted $400 million for school facilities funding and the legislature backed him up and kept to that amount. Less successful was our attempt to get additional funding for the Aging Schools program, which would benefit the state’s oldest schools. While not cutting the overall amount, the legislature actually made accessing those funds more difficult.
High School Assessments.
ACLU and a large coalition successfully highlighted what’s at stake with the new requirement that all students pass four High School Assessments to get a diploma, beginning with the class of 2009. The coalition sought to establish an HSA Task Force to examine the policy and funding implications of this requirement. ACLU supports high standards for students, but we stress that students must receive the support and resources necessary to be able to reach those standards. The Task Force bill, SB 475, passed the Senate with a resounding 43-3 vote, but was never given a vote in the House Ways & Means Committee. Stay tuned for more action on this front in coming months!
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
RWOC Expungement.
Victory! Thousands of individuals who are arrested but released without charges are finally liberated from the permanent taint a groundless arrest leaves on their record under current law. HB 10 requires automatic expungement of the arrest record for those who are released without charges. This reform corrects a substantial injustice for the tens of thousands of Baltimore City residents victimized by aggressive and improper police arrest tactics. ACLU's work on this bill ensured that anyone who has already been arrested and released without charge is entitled to the same expungement as those who are arrested after the bill's effective date – benefiting over 100,000 Marylanders.
Wrongful Conviction.
Victory! Working to address root causes of wrongful convictions, ACLU and the Innocence Coalition succeeded in drafting and enacting model legislation creating forensic laboratory oversight, which makes Maryland the first state in the country to adopt a comprehensive oversight statute modeled on successful clinical lab oversight. ACLU also succeeded in passing legislation requiring all Maryland police departments to adopt best practices for obtaining accurate eyewitness identification. Erroneous science and mistaken eyewitness identification are involved in most of the wrongful convictions documented nationwide and in Maryland. An ACLU bill to require videotaping of interrogations in crimes of violence received a favorable vote in a Senate committee for the first time in this initiative's multi-year history. But the legislation was defeated on the Senate floor after intense opposition from State's Attorneys and law enforcement.
Criminalization of Truancy.
Victory! The ACLU of Maryland supported legislation intended to promote effective responses to the problems of school suspensions and truancy. We successfully opposed legislation attempting to criminalize truancy, which would have swept truant children into the state's dangerously dysfunctional juvenile justice system.
FREE SPEECH
Roadway Solicitation.
Free speech became a pawn of partisan gamesmanship and lost with passage of SB 252/HB 276. As originally introduced, these delegation bills would have banned roadside solicitations in Anne Arundel County. As amended, they ban all speech in ill-defined highway "right-of-ways." ACLU opposed the amended version of these bills.
Political Free Speech.
Victory! The ACLU of Maryland vigorously defended free, unfettered political speech in the face of numerous attempts to restrict it by outlawing political campaign “robo calls” and criminalizing some campaign speech. All of these bills died in committee (SB 523, SB 598, HB 652).
DEATH PENALTY
Progress! ACLU continued its work with the coalition to abolish the death penalty. Currently, there is effectively a moratorium on capital punishment, following a Maryland Court of Appeals ruling in December 2006 that the state’s procedure for administering lethal injections violates the Administrative Procedures Act. In order to reinstate the death penalty, the General Assembly has to exempt the procedure from having to comply with the APA. ACLU helped ensure that efforts to do this were unsuccessful. The movement also received considerable momentum from the courageous public stand by Gov. O’Malley against the death penalty at the bill hearings in both the House and Senate.
IMMIGRANTS RIGHTS
English-Only.
Victory! Free speech and immigrants’ rights triumphed in the defeat of "English-only" legislation. Bills that would have required all government business statewide and in Baltimore County to be conducted in English were defeated thanks to opposition by ACLU and other civil rights advocates.
Drivers License Access.
Once again, ACLU of Maryland helped defeat bills requiring proof of lawful status in order to be a licensed driver, which would jeopardize effective safety practices in the name of immigration control. These bills all died in committee following opposition by ACLU and other groups.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
Private/Religious School Vouchers.
Victory! We beat back a handful of voucher initiatives that would have diverted millions in taxpayer dollars to private religious schools from the general fund for necessary public school funding. These bills were all defeated in committee (HB 853, HB 857, & HB 973/SB 265).
Subsidies for Private/Religious School Textbooks.
Funding for the private school textbook subsidy program, which provides approximately $4 million to private religious schools for textbooks and technology, remained at last year's funding levels.
REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM
Victory! With the Marylanders for the Right to Choose coalition, ACLU helped ensure that Maryland's strong protections for women's right to choose remain intact. The most serious threat this year emerged in the spectre of an attempt to eliminate funding for medically-necessary abortions for low-income women and women in poverty. A rapid response, strongly organized coalition prevented this threat from manifesting and the funding remained intact.
PRIVACY
Federal Real ID Act Implementation.
With ACLU backing, Maryland joined numerous other states in a nationwide push back against the federal Real ID Act by considering resolutions and legislation that would have prohibited the state from spending general funds in an attempt to comply with this onerous unfunded federal mandate. These bills died in committee. But the legislature ordered the MVA to prepare a report on the cost of compliance for review before the next legislation session. Most recent estimates put the cost for Maryland alone over $10 million. If unfunded by federal dollars, drivers' license fees could increase to $200 per license. For more information, go to http://www.realnightmare.org/.
HIV Testing Consent.
ACLU helped stave off attempts to eliminate written consent for HIV testing and to impose mandatory HIV testing on prisoners. Instead, the issue will be included as part of a more comprehensive review and adjustment to regulations in light of new CDC guidelines and research on effective HIV intervention programs. HB 781/SB 746, HB 980, HB 1270, SB 464, SB 746, SB 819 all addressed this issue in various ways. We also succeeded in defeating a bill that would have imprisoned rather than quarantined individuals choosing not to receive medical treatment during an epidemic, in violation of protections under existing law for freedom to refuse treatment and religious liberties.
Audio Surveillance of School Children.
Victory! ACLU advocated for the privacy of Maryland's school children against unjustifiable intrusions. We were the lone, successful opponent to eroding Maryland's strong protections against electronic eavesdropping and surveillance. HB 1094/SB would have permitted open-ended, unsupervised, unprotected eavesdropping of children on school buses in violation of federal law, constitutional protections of privacy, and Maryland's longstanding policy. We also opposed a bill that would have required random drug testing of all school children in Maryland, without basis and without oversight, funding, counseling or assurances of accuracy.
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