Mass Incarceration

by Jim Thompson

In The Huffington Post, Samantha Lachman explains why the Supreme Court might take its first abortion case in nine years.

In The Boston Globe, ACS Board Member Nancy Gertner reflects on her experience as a federal judge during the era of mass incarceration, and details some of the efforts she and others are taking to address the grievous harm caused to African-American lives and communities nationwide. 

In The New York Times, Clifford Krauss writes that “the opening of an investigation of Exxon Mobil by the New York attorney general’s office into the company’s record on climate change may well spur legal inquiries into other oil companies.”

Keith Brekhus at PoliticusUSA reports that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has selected six pro-choice Democrats to serve on the Select Investigation Panel on reproductive rights, including Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who was recognized for her contributions to the field of reproductive justice at the Bay Area Lawyer Chapter’s Sixth Annual Gala Reception.

by Sean J. Young, Staff Attorney, ACLU Voting Rights Project

Earlier this week, The New York Times published a column asserting that the American Civil Liberties Union has “seemed to take [] opposite position[s]” in two voting rights disputes. This is wrong.

In the first dispute, which is pending before the Supreme Court, the question is whether states should be allowed to count all persons for the purposes of equally apportioning their legislative districts, as nearly all states currently do. The ACLU filed an amicus brief answering yes, for our country has long embraced the fundamental principle that all persons, whether or not they can vote, are entitled to equal representation. Given the democratic values of inclusion and equality built into the Constitution, we reject our opponents’ argument that this same Constitution now forces all states to exclude all ineligible voters from their population counts.  Millions of non-citizens are contributing members of our communities, and the vast majority of states that currently provide these individuals the same share of representation that citizens receive should be allowed to continue doing so. 

In the second dispute, which is pending in the lower courts in Rhode Island and Florida, the question is where incarcerated persons should be counted for apportionment purposes: the place where they were lived prior to incarceration, or the place where they have been involuntarily confined?  The ACLU believes that for the 2.4 million individuals now incarcerated in this country, their “home” should be counted as being the place where they lived prior to incarceration. Counting these incarcerated individuals as “residents” of the district where they have been involuntarily confined artificially inflates the population of the districts in which the prison is based. This type of prison-based gerrymandering results in an unequal system of representation where, after prisoner bodies are siphoned into the district where the prison is based, their numbers are used to increase the district’s political power at the expense of the communities from which these incarcerated individuals had lived.