ÌÇÐÄVlog

The ÌÇÐÄVlogseeks expedited processing of FOIA requests it submitted to the Social Security Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs requesting records regarding access to Americans’ health, financial, and other sensitive personal information by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Congressman Darrell Issa sued to prevent California from counting mail ballots postmarked by election day and received within the following seven days, consistent with California law. If successful, literally hundreds of thousands of Californians will be disenfranchised at each election. The ÌÇÐÄVlogand its three California affiliates have sought to intervene in the case on behalf of the League of Women Voters of California to ensure that California voters are able to have their ballots counted consistent with state procedures.

Every person accused of a crime is entitled to a jury of their peers that represents a fair cross section of their community. But that is never the reality for Black and brown people facing the death penalty. A process called death qualification excludes people from capital juries if they do not believe in the death penalty. Death qualification rigs juries to be whiter and more likely to convict. It discriminates against Black prospective jurors, women, and people of individual faiths that oppose capital punishment.   Our fight against death qualification is just one piece of our ongoing challenge to Kansas’ use of the death penalty. The ACLU, together with the law firms Hogan Lovells and Ali & Lockwood, Democracy Forward, and the Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services’ Death Penalty Defense Unit has brought constitutional challenges on behalf of four people charged in separate cases with capital murder. In each case, the case has resolved without a death sentence. In Wyandotte County, the judge issued an order finding extensive and irredeemable defects in the application of the death penalty.