This week’s roundup is co-authored by Amanda Epstein and Matthew Meyer.
This week, hundreds of New Yorkers gathered to protest police brutality on the subway after a fare evasion crackdown, and a federal judge blocked a policy that would preclude immigrants without health care from obtaining visas. On Friday, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would allow adoption and foster care agencies to get federal funds even if they discriminate against the LGBTQ community.
Following an incident of police brutality against two teenagers on the subway, hundreds of New Yorkers jumped turnstiles en masse to protest the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s revamped, draconian approach to fare evasion. On Saturday evening, many more marched through Downtown Brooklyn to stand against the deployment of 500 new subway police officers, which comes with the MTA’s larger and harsher efforts to “stop fare-beating.” (Gothamist)
A federal judge in Oregon blocked the Trump administration from enacting policy that would prohibit immigrants unable to afford health insurance from obtaining a visa. The policy could bar up to 375,000 “otherwise qualified immigrants each year.” It follows another decision in federal court preventing the “public charge” rule, which would deny green cards to people that rely on public benefits, from taking effect. (New York Times)
A Missouri official confirmed that state investigators had compiled a spreadsheet which tracked the periods of patients at the state’s last remaining abortion clinic. Abortion rights activists protested what they saw as state intrusion into patient privacy, while state officials defended the spreadsheet as “a one-time data pull from information Planned Parenthood had already provided.” (New York Times)
The Chicago teacher’s strike ended Thursday after 11 days of striking. The city agreed to new funding to decrease class sizes, expanded access to nurses and social workers, and a 16% raise for teachers. (Chicago Tribune)
The Department of Health has proposed a new rule that would allow adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ families. This rule would roll back protections introduced by the administration in January of 2017, just days before President Obama left office. The Trump administration argues this will enhance religious freedom protections. (CNN)
The ACLU sued the Justice Department, the DEA, and the FBI on Thursday for the release of documents related to their use of facial-recognition technology. In the same suit the ACLU seeks access to documents related to gait and speech-recognition software, which can identify individuals by their walking and speaking patterns. The group has called such software “dystopian surveillance technology.” (The Washington Post)
Oklahoma, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country, approved the largest single-day commutation in U.S. history. On Friday, the sentences of over 500 people serving low-level drug or nonviolent offenses were commuted. They will be released today. In 2016, Oklahoma voters approved a measure that would reclassify certain offenses as misdemeanors instead of felonies, and in January, state legislators voted to make the laws apply retroactively. (The Washington Post)
A New York Times investigation found that breathalyzer tests, most often used to arrest individuals for drunken driving, are “often unreliable.” Though they are marketed as being extremely precise, the machines are quite frequently improperly calibrated, leading to results “that were at times 40 percent too high.” These breathalyzers are used by police departments across the entire country. (New York Times)
A gay police officer was awarded $20 million in damages in an employment discrimination suit against St. Louis County police. The officer alleges he was told to “tone down his gayness,” was passed over for multiple promotions, and was transferred from his regular shift in retaliation for reporting this discrimination. (New York Times)
The Census Bureau reported Thursday that preliminary results of a new test indicate that a citizenship question would not affect overall Census self-reporting rates. The Bureau did report, however, that there was a 0.3 percent difference in reporting rates for Hispanic households. (The Washington Post)
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed suit Wednesday in the Eastern District Court of Virginia to undo the rejection of 171 George Mason University students’ voter registration applications. The students were rejected for listing a general university address as their residence. (The Washington Post)
A federal judge issued an injunction on Tuesday against the implementation of Alabama’s Human Life Protection Act. The injunction stops the draconian abortion ban from coming into force until after the conclusion of the suit against it. (CNN)
Former Detroit Congressman John Conyers passed away last Sunday. Conyers was a fervent advocate for racial justice and civil rights, and among many other things, sponsored legislation that led to the implementation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday. He was the longest-serving black member of Congress in U.S. history. Civil rights leaders will gather in Detroit on Monday to honor his life and accomplishments. (Detroit News)
Congresswoman Katie Hill, in her final speech before Congress on Thursday, described her resignation as driven by a “double standard” to which she was held as a woman in power. Hill acknowledged having an affair with a staffer but noted, “We have men credibly accused of sexual assault who are in boardrooms, in the supreme court, in this very body and, worst of all, in the Oval Office.” (The Guardian)
A coalition of civil rights lawyers representing several groups will sue the University of California for discrimination unless it ends its use of the SAT and ACT in college admissions. Affirmative action, which has been seen as a countervailing force to the discriminatory effects of standardized tests, was banned in California in 1996. Since then, the number of enrolled Latinx and African American students has waned. (The New Yorker)
A new document suggests that the Federal Bureau of Investigations and San Francisco Police Department have been lying about the scope of a counterterrorism investigations. The FBI-SFPD joint task force may have been acting in violation of city law and policy. There are concerns that the SFPD has conducted investigations infringing on the civil liberties of many, including undocumented immigrants. (The Intercept)