This blog entry first appeared on our Fair is Fair Montana website.

You never know what a new morning will bring:  A hot cup of coffee, an amusing article in the newspaper,  homophobic comments about being gay being akin to pedophilia, bestiality and incestuous behavior…  Wait, what??

Last week, Billings radio personalities “The Breakfast Flakes,” on KCTR, read an article on air regarding a transgender woman who fought for – and won – the right to marry her boyfriend. They  went on to compare that to bestiality.

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Maryland made history today as the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line to abolish the death penalty.  Maryland becomes the 18^th state country wide to end this archaic and inhuman practice.  For activists and supporters in Maryland it is time for a celebration of their hard work.

This is another huge step in the right direction.  At the same time however, Mississippi is planning to execute a man without testing potentially exculpatory DNA and fingerprint evidence.  Willie Manning is on death row for the murder of two college students in 1992, and has maintained his innocence the whole time.  Left untested are fingerprints found in the car, and DNA found at the scene of the crime.  Last week the Mississippi Supreme Court held that Manning has no right to test the evidence because the absence of the his DNA from the scene of the crime would not exonerate him given the other evidence presented at the trial.  This way of looking at the DNA evidence fails to appreciate that if the DNA is not Manning’s, the person who actually committed the murder will forever remain free. 

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Public Defender Travis Williams doesn't have the resources to test fingerprints. His client faces 10 years to life in prison, but Williams operates on a shoestring budget. So he does what he has to do. He tricks the prosecutor into testing the fingerprints by making a motion to have them barred as evidence.

It works. Now Williams can show the fingerprints aren't his client's.

This is one bright spot in the award-winning documentary film "Gideon's Army," which follows three Southern public defenders as they give their all for their clients. The trio struggle under crippling caseloads that entail long hours and salaries that barely enable them to pay their student loan debt. Filmmaker Dawn Porter does an amazing job of capturing the emotional toll the job takes on them, and the unflinching spirits that motivate them to keep going.

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By Anna Conley
ACLU of Montana Staff Attorney

Having reached my one year anniversary of working for the ACLU of Montana, I am amazed at how much good our organization has done in 12 months, and thrilled to be a part of it. I have learned so much, and gotten to know so many incredible people as part of the ACLU family. I want to take a minute to reflect on some of the changes I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with.

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Sure, a lot of what we do at the Montana Legislature is play defense battling bills that seek to strip away your civil liberties. But we're really excited this year that two bills we worked to write and lobbied to pass are on their way to becoming law.

At the heart of both is your privacy.

Governor Steve Bullock has already signed SB 194, to restrict the use of strip and body cavity searches. We saw the need for this law last year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Florence v. Burlington that law enforcement can strip search anyone, regardless of the offense. The case was horrifying. In it, a New Jersey man, Albert Florence, was erroneously arrested for failing to pay a traffic fine he had already paid, dragged off to jail, incarcerated for six days and subjected to two invasive strip searches. We did not want that to happen to anyone in Montana.

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You did it.

The hard work of all of you who called, wrote or emailed their legislators, who talked to friends, family and coworkers, who wrote to their newspaper or talked about equality in church.... all the work for equality finally got it done. Montana's law criminalizing gay sex is soon to be a thing of the past.

Senate Bill 107 has to get Gov. Steve Bullock's signature, but that's going to happen. What wasn't a given was its passage in the Montana House of Representatives. But thankfully it passed overwhelmingly there today on third reading, with a vote of 65-35.

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Unbelievable. Well, maybe not believable, but incredibly disappointing.

But this isn't the last word.

Once again the Montana House Judiciary Committee has voted down a bill to remove the state statute criminalizing gay sex. We're talking about a law that imposes up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000 for simply having sex with someone of the same gender.

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We're very grateful to U.S. Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester for standing up for the privacy and safety of Americans, and urging the federal government to fully disclose how it is using drones and what its legal basis is to do so.

In a March 28 letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, both senators expressed concern with the lack of transparency in how the federal government is using drones in the United States and overseas.

"Of great concern to us is the use of drones within the United States as tools for enhanced aerial surveillance, and at the heart of this issue is the right to privacy," they write. "Our home state of Montana is a stalwart supporter of this right and it is enshrined in our state constitution.

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By Liz Welch
Fair is Fair LGBT Organizer

When you looked at your Facebook page this week, did it look like the popular social media network changed its brand color from blue to red? Was it hard to tell your friends apart because all of their pictures were the same red equal signs? If so, you weren’t alone.

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Deciding whether and when to have a child is a decision that has lifelong effects -- one that needs to be made by each woman without coercion. But today the Senate Judiciary Committee hears a bill that would take that decision away from the woman and place it solely in the hands of her parents.

HB 391 would require pregnant minors to get the written consent of their parents in order to obtain an abortion. We strongly oppose this bill.

Every woman needs to make this decision for herself. Of course, consultation with family, doctor and other advisors can play an invaluable role, but it should not be forced. And allowing parents to decide whether their daughter can have an abortion or must have a baby is an extreme violation of her right to bodily autonomy.

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The Supreme Court hears two cases this week regarding same-sex marriage -- a case challenging California's Proposition 8 today and the ACLU's own DOMA case tomorrow.

That case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Windsor v. United States, is involves Edie Windsor who lived with Thea Spyer in New York City for 44 years. After a 40 year engagement they were finally married in Canada in May 2007. Two years later, Thea passed away.

When she died, the federal government refused to recognize the couple's marriage and taxed Edie's inheritance from Thea as though they were strangers. Under federal tax law, a spouse who dies can leave her assets, including the family home, to the other spouse without incurring estate taxes.

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A bill to restrict the use of unmanned aircraft and the information gathered by them gets its hearing in House Judiciary at 8 a.m. Thursday.

Senate Bill 196, sponsored by Sen. Matt Rosendale (R-Glendive) takes many of the rules that apply to trespass, surveillance of private property, and searches and applyies them to drones. SB 196 would generally prohibit any person or state or local law enforcement agency from using a drone for data collection over private property without a search warrant, exigent circumstances, or the consent of the landowner. Any information collected by using a drone without a warrant or consent would not be admissible in court or as the basis for obtaining a search warrant. These are the kinds of guidelines included in the ACLU's report "Protecting Privacy from Aerial Surveillance: Recommendations for Government Use of Drone Aircraft."

We fully support this bill.

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Good news from the Capitol today.

A bill to restrict the use of strip and body cavity searches passed out of the House Judiciary Committee and will be debated on the House floor Thursday or Friday.

Senate Bill 194 prohibits the use of strip and body cavity searches on people arrested for misdemeanor offenses (like traffic stops) unless there is reasonable suspicion to believe the person is concealing a weapon, contraband, or evidence of the commission of a crime.

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Yesterday, several Montana legislators marked the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright by committing to working for more funding for Montana's Office of the Public Defender.

One of those legislators, Sen. Mitch Tropila (D-Great Falls) said that when we see an injustice we have an obligation to correct it.

"What was the promise of Gideon? That defense would stand on equal footing with prosecutors and that justice would prevail," Tropila said.

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Today Fair is Fair Montana Organizer Liz Welch writes about the good businesses can do by supporting fairness for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and how important it is that we support those businesses.

Check out who's the latest good guy on the LGBT scene (Hint: It's a restaurant, but not Pita Pit - Billings,which has been a Fair is Fair supporter for a long time.) and find out about Montana businesses that support fairness over at the Fair is Fair Montana blog.

Today people across the nation celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which upheld the Sixth Amendment right of poor criminal defendants to have a court-appointed attorney. But the celebration will be muted.

Who was Clarence Gideon and how did he change the system for poor defendants? Find out in this 1-minute "Your Constitutional Rights" podcast.

Public defense systems across the country remain severely underfunded, including Montana’s statewide system. Today the ACLU of Montana and advocates of public defense will hold a noon press conference in Room 35o of the Montana Capitol to talk about these issues, which are scheduled to be debated Tuesday by the Legislature.

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By Mary Beall
ACLU of Montana Legislative Intern

In 1997, in Gryczan v. State, the Montana Supreme Court struck down a state statute which labeled same-sex relations as “deviate sexual conduct,” punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000. The court stated that under the statute, gays and lesbians experienced psychological fear of prosecution and persecution. Furthermore, the statute infringed upon the individual’s right to privacy, a right which Montanans proudly defend. However, 16 years later, the statute remains on the books and serves as a constant reminder of state-sanctioned discrimination.

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Domestic partner violence is one of the ultimate betrayals -- having the person you love hurting you. And it's far too common.

Montana's partner or family assault law doesn't protect all victims, though. In fact, right now it doesn't protect any victims.

That's because a district court judge ruled in August 2012 that Montana's law designed to address partner violence is unconstitutional.

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The Senate Public Health Committee hears a bill at 3 p.m. today that could prevent thousands of Montana public school students from getting the education they need to stay healthy and prevent unwanted pregnancies.

House Bill 239 would make it illegal for public school students to be given sexual education unless they have written approval from their parents. It's already passed in the House.

We oppose this bill. It's dangerous for our youth.

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Missoula County officials recently told reporters at KPAX and the Missoulian that they are going to build an outdoor recreation area at the jail for women and juvenile prisoners.

Right now the Missoula County pods housing juvenile and female prisoners don't have access to outdoor recreation even though the pods with male prisoners do.

The ACLU of Montana sued the county last fall over this disparate and unconstitutional treatment.

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By Anna Conley
Director of the Montana Prisons and Jails Project

Hurray – there’s no solitary confinement in Montana!

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“I live in a box. . . Imagine being locked in your bathroom but instead of a tub there’s a bed. . . . It’s a very dehumanizing experience to suffer living like this for months. I’ve been doing it for years trying to survive.”

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Medical marijuana has not fared well this legislative session. Bills to undo the draconian law passed last session, and later ratified by voters in the fall, were tabled in committee. Restrictions that prohibit providers from being paid or even reimbursed for their costs, and that limit the number of people they can grow for remain in place.

Today the Senate Judiciary Committee takes on two more marijuana bills -- one to add PTSD to the list of conditions it can be used to treat (SB 310) and another to make sure the state doesn't delay to act if the federal government reschedules marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (SB 311). We support both bills.

Medical marijuana relieves the suffering of a great many patients. It's unfortunate that the Legislature has so far been deaf to their pleas for help.

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It's in clear violation of our constitutional right to due process, yet our government continues to indefinitely detain people -- including American citizens -- with no charges and no trial. They have no opportunity to defend themselves and, in many cases, don't even know why they are imprisoned.

It's a topic that the Montana Legislature tackles today when it holds a hearing on House Bill 522 to prohibit state officials from cooperating with federal agents in this shameful practice. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Nicholas Schwaderer (R-Superior), will be heard at 8 a.m. in the House Judiciary Committee.

The sections of the National Defense Authorization Act allowing this practice are "dangerous detention provisions authorizing the president — and all future presidents — to order the military to pick up and indefinitely imprison people, including United States citizens, captured anywhere in the world, far from any battlefield," says ACLU of Montana Public Policy Director Niki Zupanic in our letter supporting HB 522. "These provisions codify indefinite military detention without charge or trial into law for the first time in American history. This kind of sweeping detention power is completely at odds with our American values, violates the 5^th and 6^th Amendments to the United States Constitution, and corrodes our nation’s commitment to the rule of law, which generations have fought to preserve."

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A Washington car owner's vanity plate tribute to the movie "This is Spinal Tap" -- GOES211 -- was challenged by another driver who said it was offensive.

Find out why and if the challenge stood up in this episode of the Civil Liberties Minute podcast -- Taking on injustices 90 seconds at a time.

Civil Liberties Minute is produced by the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Well, with just 24 hours notice, a hearing has been scheduled for 8 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 19, on a bill to add gender expression/identity and sexual orientation to the classes protected under the Montana Human Rights Act.

It's a disappointing move to schedule the hearing with such little notice. It will likely prevent many people who would have liked to testify from making their way to the Capitol, but that just makes it all the more important that those of us who can be there fill the room with support for equality.

Please testify for fairness and LGBT equality tomorrow, Feb. 19, at 8 a.m. in the House Judiciary Committee, Room 137.

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The Montana Reproductive Rights Coalition is holding its lobby day Monday at the Capitol and you are invited to attend and to speak up for privacy and a woman's right to make her own medical decisions.

Numerous bills have been introduced this session attacking that right, including HB 104 to create a new crime for killing a fetus, HB 391 to prohibit minors from getting an abortion without their parents' permission, and HB 239 requiring school districts to obtain parents' permission before the district may provide any instruction or materials that touch on sexual education or human reproduction.

Members of the Montana Reproductive Rights Coalition - including the ACLU of Montana, Planned Parenthood of Montana, NARAL-Pro-choice Montana, the Montana Human Rights Network, the Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and Blue Mountain Clinic - have been working hard to stop these bad bills. But we need your help.

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Now that anti-choice advocates have successfully convinced voters that young women are not entitled to make the decision about whether to carry an accidental pregnancy to term without notifying their parents, they are trying to make it so that these young women are unable to get an abortion without a parent's permission.

House Bill 391 had its hearing in House Judiciary today. It would require minors seeking an abortion to get signed consent from a parent. The only exception would be a judicial bypass process and even then only if the judge determines that the minor has been abused by her parents.

So, a young woman who has parents who oppose abortion but have not harmed her, could be forced to have a baby she doesn't want and cannot care for. And even those parents who don't have strong feelings about abortion could be scared into refusing to allow their child to get one by the information the bill requires they read about the procedure. A young woman could be forced to carry a pregnancy to term even if it was the result of rape.

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Today's the day.

Murder victims' family members, civil liberties advocates, faith leaders, fiscal conservatives and defenders of justice will gather at the Capitol for a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on ending Montana's death penalty.

The death penalty is a system that is broken beyond repair. Not only have there been close to 200 cases of prisoners on death row being exonerated, capital punishment delays justice for victims' families, it is unevenly applied more often to minorities and the poor, it wastes taxpayer dollars and it's simply wrong. That's why Republicans and Democrats are sponsoring House Bill 370 to put an end to the death penalty in Montana and replace it with life in prison without parole.

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Once again some members of Montana's Legislature are trying to fix Montana's nonexistent immigration problem. They want to make it illegal for employers to hire immigrants who don't have the proper documentation and force those employers to use the flawed E-Verify program.

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Legislators in the Senate Judiciary Committee today heard powerful testimony about a bill to establish rules and regulations for physician aid in dying.

Emotions on both sides of the issue were high. It's and intensely personal topic. And it's that personal decision-making that puts us firmly in the camp of those who support death with dignity as an individual choice.

In 2008, a District Court judge ruled that physician aid in dying for competent, terminally ill people is legal and constitutional in Montana, but doctors have been reluctant to help patients at the end of their lives -- even those with painful, severely debilitating diseases, because there are no guidelines or rules for who is eligible and what procedures must be followed. Senate Bill 220 seeks to remedy that situation by providing clear rules that protect doctors from prosecution and patients from abuse.

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Friday is an exciting day at the Capitol. Montanans from across the state will gather there to urge their senators and representatives to abolish the death penalty.

The event will feature meetings with legislators throughout, activities in the Rotunda from 10 a.m.- noon and lunch at noon. Stop by our video booth from 1-2 p.m. in the Rotunda to tell us why you support abolishing the death penalty.

This is a diverse movement. The Montana Abolition Coalition includes the ACLU of Montana, the Montana Human Rights Network, the Montana Association of Churches and the Montana Catholic Conference. Our reasons for opposing the death penalty may differ, but our commitment to its abolition in Montana has kept us together as coalition for 15 years now.

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Domestic drones are a serious threat to Americans' privacy, so we are pleased that they are getting serious attention in the Montana Legislature this session.

Lawmakers have introduced three bills on the issue, including one which we helped Sen. Matt Rosendale (R-Glendive) draft legislation to limit their use.

SB 196 had its hearing on Tuesday -- the same day that a federal document on the use of drones to kill Americans overseas was leaked to NBC News. The ACLU of Montana is working hard to get SB 196 passed.

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(Corrected with accurate date)

Employees give up some privacy on the job. They can't expect what they do on their work computers to be secret, for instance. But they shouldn't have to worry about their employer snooping into their personal lives.

That's exactly what Bozeman tried to do in 2009 when it demanded job applicants provide their user names and passwords for social networking sites like Facebook. When the facts were exposed it caused such an uproar from privacy advocates (including the ACLU of Montana) and the public that the city quickly changed its policy.

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It's probably the most personal and emotionally damaging of all invasions of privacy -- the strip search. No one wants someone examining their naked body or, even worse, searching inside that body. That's why the ACLU of Montana is working with Sen. Anders Blewett to pass a new law limiting the use of strip and body cavity searches in our state.

As it stands now, the state doesn't have codified limits on the use of these invasive and humiliating searches. Senate Bill 194 would add a new provision to Montana Code stating that "A person arrested or detained for a traffic offense or an offense that is not a felony may not be subjected to a strip search or a body cavity search by a peace officer or law enforcement employee unless there is reasonable suspicion to believe the person is concealing a weapon, contraband, or evidence of the commission of a crime."

These are reasonable limitations and we are very optimistic that this bill will pass. There's simply no reason to subject someone to a body cavity or strip search for a traffic offense or for a misdemeanor crime unless there is some valid reason to suspect that person is hiding drugs, a weapon or some other serious evidence on or in their body.

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It's a sneaky bill. It doesn't specifically talk about creationism or intelligent design, but we can read between the lines.

House Bill 183 "Emphasize critical thinking in science education" talks all around the issue.

From the bill title: "An act encouraging the Board of Public Education to emphasize critical thinking in instruction related to controversial scientific theories on the origin of life; clarifying the duty of the Board of Public Education to include the basic instructional program in the Board's standards of accreditation; encouraging teachers to foster critical thinking; protecting teachers who present alternative viewpoints regarding controversial scientific theories..." (Emphasis added.)

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Today we are focusing on a bill which would prevent people from dropping off other voters' absentee or mail ballots at the county election office.

Although not as egregious as attempts to do away with same-day voter registration (HB 30) or limit the forms of identification people can use to vote (HB 108), House Bill 200 could prevent some people from voting.

As it stands now, anyone is able to be of service to a voter and drop-off his or her ballot at the election office. This bill seeks to prohibit that except in cases where the voter has a disability.

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Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law -- for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. - Barack Obama, Inauguration speech 2013

Although we are celebrating that President Obama mentioned LGBTQ rights in his inaugural speech, we need to remember that ultimately the responsibility for equality and fairness lies in our own hands. We must take a stand even when it means facing people with views that run contrary to our own. The only way to change hearts and minds is to speak across the table to those who don't understand what this discrimination feels like to those who aren't able to have their relationship legally recognized or who remain "sexual deviants" under Montana law.

We have an opportunity now to correct that second part. Please send a message to your state senator today, asking for passage of Senate Bill 107, which would remove the offensive language in our criminal code classifying same-sex sexual relations as “deviate sexual conduct” and prescribing up to a 10-year prison sentence and up to $50,000 in fines. The law has already been declared unconstitutional by both the Montana and U.S. Supreme Courts.

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The ACLU values individual privacy. It's something every American should hold near and dear to her heart.

That's why we view workplace drug testing laws with a skeptical eye. While we understand the need to protect public safety, workplace drug testing is a lot like any other kind of search -- it's something that should not be done simply on a whim, but rather if there is reasonable suspicion that something will be found.

Here's what we have on tap for the day:

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We were so pleased with the turnout for today's Roe v. Wade rally commemorating the 40th anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision making abortion safe and legal. Thanks to all who came out!

Privacy will be the  touchstone of the ACLU's work today at the Montana Capitol.

The morning will feature a Senate Judiciary hearing on a bill to limit drone use by government agencies in Montana. At noon we will be at a rally in the Capitol Rotunda to mark the 40th anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision making abortion legal.

Senate Bill 150: "Prohibit state government from owning or using unmanned aerial vehicles," sponsored by Sen. Robyn Driscoll would make it illegal for information obtained by aerial drones to be used in criminal proceedings and prohibit law enforcement and other government agencies from owning any drones with "antipersonnel devices" like tear gas, Tasers, ammunition or anything else that can be used to hurt a person.

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Today the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold an important hearing on Senate Bill 107 -- a bill to repeal same-sex sexual relations inclusion in the state's deviate sexual conduct law.

It's past time for this to happen. The law is completely unconstitutional. Montana's Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1997 through the ACLU's  case Gryczan v. Montana.  And the U.S. Supreme Court did the same in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas. Yet this Montana law calling for gay men and lesbian women to serve 10 years in prison and pay up to $50,000 in fines for having sex has remained on the books.

Retaining the law has been an act of mean-spiritedness by legislators intent on keeping gay and lesbian Montanans labeled as criminals.

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By Mary Beall
ACLU Legislative Intern

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Policy committees continued to be busy during the second week of the session with hearings on anti-immigrant and anti-choice bills and measures to restrict voting rights. Additionally, the budget subcommittees held hearings on the budgets for the Office of Public Defender and the Montana Board of Crime Control.

Criminal Justice
We opposed SB 110, a bill that creates a new surcharge for almost all criminal convictions, including many minor non-violent offenses like traffic violations. The funds raised by the surcharge would be use to fund a statewide grant program for private nonprofit crime prevention programs. While we support smart and effective programs to reduce crime and over-incarceration, we oppose adding even more surcharges to criminal convictions. The surcharges, fees and costs assessed to offenders can be a real barrier for low-income people to move forward after a conviction. We requested that the committee amend the bill to make the funding mechanism a general fund appropriation. The Senate Judiciary Committee tabled the bill.

Budget Items
The Joint Appropriations Subcommittee on Judicial Branch, Law Enforcement and Justice held hearings on the budget items for the Montana Board of Crime Control and the Office of Public Defender and took initial executive action. While the committee did not approve all of the OPD's budget requests at this time, these items remain open and subject to revision as the committee works through other agency requests. We will continue to advocate for the committee to fully fund the OPD requests.

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Our schedule for the day:

Office of Public Defender Subcommittee
8 a.m. Room 317A
Joint Appropriations Subcommittee on Judicial Branch, Law Enforcement and Justice

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A graphic illustration of why the Office of the Public Defender has a hard time recruiting and retaining staff.

The Office of the Public Defender (OPD) has been chronically underfunded since it was created in 2005.

The ACLU detailed the ways that hurts the office and compromises defenders' ability to adequately represent their clients in our report to the Public Defender Commission in 2011. Attorneys have too many cases, there are not enough investigators. Too often this means that clients have difficulties meeting with an attorney and the attorneys don't have the resources they need for their cases.

Indigent defendants have a constitutional right to competent defense, and we are working hard to make sure OPD has the funding necessary to do its job. We're monitoring the Office of the Public Defender Subcommittee as it discusses budget issues today.

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Today the House State Administration Committee takes on a bill which would prevent many Montanans from casting the ballots they are legally eligible to vote.

House Bill 108, introduced by Rep. Ted Washburn (Bozeman), seeks to limit the forms of identification voters can use when casting their ballots to a Montana-issued driver's license, a Montana-issued photo ID card or a tribal photo ID.

The ACLU of Montana, the national ACLU and ACLU affiliates across the country have opposed these sorts of voter ID bills in the past, and we oppose this one. It simply goes against a fundamental freedom of our one-person, one-vote democracy and places an unfair burden on senior citizens, people with disabilities, minorities and students.

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By Scott Crichton
ACLU of Montana Executive Director

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Less than two weeks into the session and they're at it already -- attacking the safety and well-being of Montana women.

At its 8 a.m. meeting today, the House Judiciary Committee will be hearing about House Bill 104 which seeks to "criminalize offenses involving death to an unborn child."

We fought hard against a look-alike bill last session. It is at best a misguided attempt to address violence against women. At worst, it's a sneaky way to control pregnant women and every decision they make about health care and their personal lives.

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By Niki Zupanic
ACLU of Montana Public Policy Director

ACLU in Action
The Legislature was sworn in on Monday afternoon and wasted no time in starting to hear bills. Within days, committees began holding hearings and ACLU of Montana Executive Director Scott Crichton and ACLU of Montana Public Policy Director Niki Zupanic testified to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on bills related to the Office of Public Defender, jail suicide prevention, and inmate reentry programs.

Criminal Justice
House Bills 43 and 69 would create statewide jail suicide prevention programs. Over the last decade, Montana's jail suicide rate has increased to more than eight times the national average. The Law and Justice Interim Committee (LJIC) has studied and discussed the issue for more than five years, without passing legislation or appropriating funding. HB 43 and HB 69 were developed and approved by the LJIC over the last interim. While the bills provide different types of resources to local governments and rely on different funding sources, we supported both bills' efforts to give local detention centers tools to help reduce jail suicides, such as grant funding for suicide smocks and bedding, video monitoring, training, and assistance with the development and use of a suicide risk assessment instrument. We do, however, prefer the funding mechanism in HB 43, which would make an appropriation from the general fund, rather than the new surcharge created in HB 69 that would be assessed on many people convicted of certain crimes. The House Judiciary Committee has not yet taken action on these bills.

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It's a busy day for us today at the Capitol, with the first anti-immigrant bill up in front of the House Judiciary Committee and our booth on death penalty abolition in the Rotunda. Come see us there and learn more about the Montana Abolition Coalition.

House Judiciary Committee
8 a.m. Room 137
HB 50 Prohibit immigration sanctuary policies by local governments
HB 70 Require victim impact panels in certain state correctional facilities
HB 140 Generally revising controlled substance laws

Senate Judiciary Committee
9 a.m. Room 303
SB 8 Eliminate racial profiling report to the legislature
SB 73 Repeal DARE program
House Human Services Committee
3 p.m. Room152
HB 84 Revise 72 hour presumptive eligibility requirements for crisis stabilization services

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Here are the hearings we're tracking today in the Montana Legislature:

House Judiciary Committee
8 a.m. Room 137
HB 68 Establish Statewide Re-entry Task Force for Paroled Offenders
HB 103 Authorize Conficts Manager to Hire Attorney for Post-conviction Cases

House State Administration Committee
8 a.m. Room 455
HB 129 Revise Campaign Finance and Disclosure Laws

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Here are the hearings we're tracking today in the Montana Legislature:

House Judiciary Committee
8 a.m. Room 137
HB 42 Revise Laws Related to Destruction of Property By Minors
HB 134 Define Certain Investigators in State Auditor's Office as Peace Officers

House State Administration Committee
8 a.m. Room 455
HB 23 Revising Ethics Violation Laws for Commissioner of Political Practices

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Today the House Judiciary Committee will discuss two bills to create jail suicide prevention programs -- one in Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) and the other within the Board of Crime Control.

HB 43 would create a program within DPHHS to assist detention centers with developing a program to triage incoming prisoners to determine their risk of suicide and to give them the appropriate treatment, utilizing community mental health centers and providing grant money to pay for up to 50 percent of the cost of that program.

The second bill, HB 69, is directed at the Board of Crime Control, and would require the Law Enforcement Academy to create and teach a course on preventing prisoner suicides, require that course be available to law enforcement agencies and be taught to all officers going through the Academy, add a $10 surcharge to criminal convictions to pay for the program, and require that county detention centers budget for and pay for the programs and treatment necessary to prevent jail suicides.

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Montanans from all walks of life serve in the Montana Legislature. Many have little or no experience with the law.

That's where legislative law school comes in. Legislators are participating in this training session this morning in the House Chambers. (You can watch live here.)

The goal is to teach legislators about the divisions between the different branches of government, and what they can and cannot do as senators and representatives.

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By Niki Zupanic
ACLU of Montana Public Policy Director

Today is the start of the 2013 Montana Legislative Session, and while my tote bag is packed with bill lists, schedules, and rosters, the one thing that I wish I had at the start of every session is a crystal ball.

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Initial reactions to the news of the Montana Supreme Court's decision on our domestic partnership case were largely ones of disappointment. Allies and others watching the case saw it as a setback.

But our plaintiffs knew differently. They could see that the Court's opinion was one that leaves the door wide open for amending our complaint and winning on individual statutes. That's why they (and we here on staff) continue to remain positive about the case.

Today plaintiff Mary Anne Guggenheim (pictured above on right with her partner, Jan Donaldson), a retired doctor, likened progress on the case to progress in the medical field. Although people notice and remember the big leaps, they fail to see all the small steps it takes to make those leaps. It's the same with this case, she said.

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Yes, we wish the Montana Supreme Court had granted same-sex couples full protection in our domestic partnership case, but we aren't discouraged. We're ready to move forward with our work for equality, and we're prepared to win.

The justices were clear that their ruling to send the case back to the trial court was based on technical issues – not principle. A majority support our couples' right to fair treatment under Montana's constitution. They said that while they cannot offer an overarching ruling addressing every statute referring to marriage rights, there is still a legal solution for same-sex couples if we address these statutes individually.

And we're going to do just that. We will soon be moving forward with this litigation seeking fairness and dignity for all families and we urge our partners and supporters to keep the faith.

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As amazing as the U.S. Constitution is, its Bill of Rights is an even more impressive and essential document when it comes to protecting individual liberty.

Ratified on Dec. 15, 1791, these first 10 amendments, covering everything from freedom of speech to the right to a speedy trial and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, are national treasures.

Juggler Chris Bliss agrees.

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Some parents at Chief Charlo Elementary, a public school in Missoula, are rightly upset about a holiday music program featuring religious songs.

They recently sent a letter to the Missoula County School District expressing their concerns about the songs, which include tributes to Jesus.

What's really troubling is that parents expressed these same concerns last year.

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Here we go again. And again, and again. It's the same old tired refrain: "There's a War on Christmas!"

But it's becoming increasingly clear that other than those who feel our society is discriminating against Christians (read people who are out-of-touch with reality) Americans just aren't buying it. Outrage is being replaced with eye rolling.

Even those who have trumpeted this so-called "war," are losing their enthusiasm, says Jon Stewart in this Dec. 3 clip. We haven't even gotten any cards this year from people thinking we are out to get Christmas.

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On Dec. 1, the ACLU of Montana honored a young woman who is already making a difference protecting the rights of others in Kalispell -- even though she has yet to graduate from high school.

When Flathead High School administrators told one of Barrie Sue Sugarman's classmates that she had to change out of a T-shirt saying, "Legalize Gay," or go home, Barrie Sue organized a demonstration in support of free speech.

She knew that students have a right to express their views -- a right that was firmly established in 1969 when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Mary Beth Tinker and her classmates' right to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. So Barrie Sue encouraged students to wear T-shirts with the slogan of their choice on front and "T-shirts for Tinker" on the back.

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That's the question the Helena Independent Record is asking online poll this week.

Our answer is not just, “Yes,” but, “Hell, yes!” (Please vote.)

You only needed to be at the Helena City Commission meeting Monday night to understand why.

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The U.S. Supreme Court announced today that it will consider a lawsuit challenging patents on the genes that cause breast cancer.

Patenting treatments and medications is one thing, but patenting the very cells that inhabit our bodies is way out of line and definitely violates our constitutional rights.

But that's exactly what Myriad Genetics has done with the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes -- two genes that cause breast cancer. And these patents give the company the exclusive right to research the genes and test patients for whether they have the genes.

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I have a pretty strict policy of not commenting on people's Facebook posts when I disagree with them (they have a right to express their views after all), but a post on a friend's wall today got me going.

Luckily, I can write about the issue here and steer clear of my friend's wall.

In the post, Hobby Lobby owner David Green talks about why he's suing the federal government over its requirement that employers include no copay contraceptive coverage in their insurance plans. According to Green, this is a violation of his right to religious freedom because it makes him fund abortion-inducing medication.

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The ACLU is dedicated to protecting and advancing civil liberties, but we can't shoulder the burden of protecting the Constitution alone. We rely on organizational allies, members, donors and activists to stand with us.

And we are grateful for all they do.

That's why we honor some of these dedicated organizations and individuals each year with the ACLU of Montana's Jeannette Rankin Civil Liberties Awards.

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Everyone deserves dignity, respect, security for their loved ones and to be treated fairly.

That's why it's so important that Helena pass a nondiscrimination ordinance protecting people from being denied jobs, housing and access to restaurants and stores because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Helena City Commission will hold a hearing on the ordinance on Monday, Dec. 3 at 6 p.m. in the Helena City/County Building at 316 N. Park. Come and testify.

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This blog entry by ACLU of Montana LGBT Organizer Liz Welch originally appeared on www.fairisfairmontana.org.

Today, we mark the moment of the ultimate prejudice toward fellow human beings with the Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual observance on November 20 that honors the memory of those whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.

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As communications director of the ACLU of Montana, I spend a lot of time on public education. It's essential that people understand their rights, how they are being whittled away and what can be done to protect them.

It's especially gratifying to teach young people that they have rights and they CAN make a difference. I recently had that opportunity when I spoke to students at Sussex School in Missoula. (The pictures here are of thank you notes from some of those students.)

As a child, it's easy to feel powerless. Your parents tell you what to do. Your teachers tell you what to do. Coaches, counselors... But children do have rights -- very important rights.

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This blog entry by ACLU of Montana LGBT Advocacy Coordinator Ninia Baehr on www.fairisfairmontana.org.

Will you be visiting with family this holiday season? With all the emphasis on love and family, a family gathering might provide the perfect opportunity to talk with your aunt or your cousin or your brother or sister about domestic partnership. Consider having a personal conversation with at least one person who may not yet be in firmly in favor of relationship recognition for same-sex couples.

Research in virtually every state that has worked toward relationship recognition has shown that the best way to change hearts and minds is through a personal connection. Whether you are an LGBT person or an ally, by sharing your personal story about why you want fairness for same-sex couples, you can put a human face on the issue.

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"Every day I battle just to stay sane and keep my wits as others around me are broken down mentally… I have become extremely paranoid as I keep withdrawing from people becoming more and more antisocial as the time goes… If you are treated and you live like an animal, how long before you start to believe that you are no longer human?"

That's one of the things that William, a prisoner in solitary confinement at Montana State Prison told us about serving his sentence in isolation. He and other prisoners describe in their own words the daily despair in our online story, "Voices from Montana Solitary."

It's an ugly place to be in -- physically, psychologically and emotionally. Solitary confinement wears away at prisoners, causing long-term damage.

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Today the U.S. Supreme Court said it would review a voting rights case that directly challenges the Voting Rights Act's protections for minority voters.

That case involves Shelby County, Ala. The ACLU intervened in the case in order to represent minority voters and the state NAACP chapter, and protect the right to vote.

The county is challenging the Section 5 Voting Rights Act requirement that jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices get approval for changes in their election laws. When Congress extended Section 5 in 2006 by another 25 years, it overwhelmingly concluded that there is a great need for it, and said that without the Voting Rights Act’s protections, the minority vote will be diluted.

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This blog entry by ACLU of Montana LGBT Organizer Liz Welch first appeared on www.fairisfairmt.org.

Pardon us while we catch our breath.

Tuesday night was a monumental occasion for those who believe in fairness, equality and civil rights for all people.  It was a watershed experience to watch Maine become the first state where the public voted for marriage equality – in essence, FOR LOVE.  As the night progressed, we could see the momentum of affirmation for LGBT rights sweep across the country. Maryland affirmed same sex marriage. Minnesota shot down a discriminatory constitutional amendment narrowly defining marriage. Legislators and judges who had supported LGBT rights were retained in their posts, vindicating their pro-LGBT positions.  The first openly gay congresswoman will take office from her home state of Wisconsin. Other lesbian and gay legislators around the country were elected in their home states. And, then Washington state rounded out the experience by passing a referendum allowing same sex marriage.  It was a clean sweep!

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Yesterday I headed out to do a little get-out-the-vote pavement pounding, visiting a number of residences and urging people to go to the polls.

One of my stops was the God's Love homeless shelter in downtown Helena, where I told residents what they need to do to register and vote. People with no permanent home have a more difficult time voting than those with regular addresses, but it's still possible.

If they miss the regular voter registration deadline, they can still register to vote and cast a ballot at their county clerk's office. In Lewis and Clark County, that's at the City/County Building -- a short walk from God's Love. Montana residents are lucky. It's easier to register to vote here than in many states and people can do so through election day.

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Government officials in Montana have been making the right calls lately on separation of church and state, so we want to give them the kudos they deserve.

In Kalispell, the city council recently declined an offer to install a monument with the Ten Commandments in its Depot Park.

"It’s divisive and it could possibly bring us into a legal entanglement we don’t need," council member Randy Kenyon said about moving the Ten Commandments to the city park. "I would vote against this."

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Montana has a long and troubled history of denying Native Americans the right to vote, trying to limit their ability to vote and diminishing their votes' impact.

For many years these efforts were deliberate, premeditated and obvious.

Today's problems are more subtle, but they still have the effect of diluting the Native American vote and violate the law.

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Helena commissioners are now back-tracking on a proposed ordinance to protect LGBT people from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations.

At an Oct. 10 meeting city commissioners said a Montana Human Rights Bureau memo about a federal employment decision regarding a transgender woman means the nondiscrimination ordinance isn’t necessary. We couldn’t disagree more.

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First Amendment protections of free speech and the press have long been applied to newspapers, magazines and the Internet, but yellow pages?

Yep. As of this week that same protection has officially been extended to telephone directories.

In a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling issued Monday, the yellow pages are "fully protected expression."

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Raistlen Katka was so desperate for any human contact, so despairing, that he thought the only way out was to kill himself. The 17-year-old was locked in a single cell at Montana State Prison in 2009, when we first found out about his situation. He spent 23 hours each day in isolation, and was only released into an outdoor dog-run like cage or to shower for one hour a day.

It was more than he could take.  Raistlen tried to commit suicide multiple times, including an attempt by biting through the veins in his wrists.

It was heartbreaking for staff at the ACLU of Montana. We sued the Montana Department of Corrections to get Raistlen out of solitary confinement and into mental health treatment. It took a year and one-half before we were successful, and even longer to settle our case. Finally, in April of this year, the DOC agreed to settlement conditions that mandate juvenile and mentally ill prisoners can only be held in solitary confinement for 72 hours, unless the warden or head of the DOC reviews the situation and signs off on a longer time period.

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This blog entry was first posted at www.fairisfairmontana.org. 

National Coming Out Day is the perfect day to recognize the significant courage many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have mustered up to come out to their families, friends, churches, and communities. It’s also a sad reminder of all the people who have not been able to come out because of the fear, prejudice, and contempt that is a reality for many LGBT people.

As a straight ally working day in and out for equal protections on the Fair is Fair Montana campaign, I hear many stories from wonderful, open, honest and loving people from Montana. I am always honored with the trust they show me by sharing these stories of coming out, finding love, losing love, and, in many cases, being challenged because of WHO they love. I have learned so much from these people and carry what I learn forward in hopes of making a difference in their lives.

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When the ACLU first began investigating fusion centers in 2007, little was known about them and few publicly questioned their work compiling information about U.S. citizens and sharing it with law enforcement at all levels of government.

The ACLU was concerned about the centers' excessive secrecy, data mining, military and private sector participation and the ambiguous lines of authority.

Congress finally caught up last week when it issued a report criticizing fusion centers' ability to safeguard both national security and civil liberties.

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Tomorrow is the last day, Montana voters can register to vote at the polls. But thanks to the efforts of voting rights supporters, and to Gov. Brian Schweitzer's veto you can still register to vote and vote at your county elections office up and through Election Day.

During the 2011 Montana Legislative Session, lawmakers passed a bill that would have taken away your right to same-day voter registration. The ACLU of Montana opposed that bill, and we were extremely grateful when Gov. Schweitzer vetoed it.

It's hard to understand why lawmakers would want to make it harder for people to vote. Why?

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What a great day for those of us working to end Montana's death penalty. The Choteau Acantha editorialized this week for abolishing the death penalty.

The paper recognizes what we've long known -- there are many reasons the death penalty is wrong and isn't working and people from many perspectives along the political, religious and human rights perspective are reaching the same conclusion that the death penalty is broken beyond repair.

The Montana Abolition Coalition was formed with just that idea. Different people can take different roads to arrive at the same location.

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National Banned Book Week kicks off on Sunday, Sept. 30, and librarians, intellectual freedom advocates and book lovers everywhere will be marking the occasion by reading challenged and banned books and taking a stand for free speech.

Here in Montana, book challenges happen every year. This year, the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian -- a National Book Award winner for young adult fiction by Sherman Alexie -- survived a challenge in the Geraldine School District. The ACLU of Montana and the Montana Library Association came to the book's defense. While we believe that parents have a right to make decisions about what their children will read, we firmly believe that parents do not have the right to make decisions about what other people's children read.

You can learn more about Banned Books week and how you can support intellectual freedom on our website's banned books page.

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Today is National Voter Registration Day. Are you registered to vote?

Nationwide, only 59.8 percent of those eligible to vote are registered, according to a 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report. In Montana that percentage is 65.2.

Those figures are shameful. People fought hard for our right to vote, and more than half of us didn't even get the right to vote until the 20th Century.

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One year ago, Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed, making it possible for gay, lesbian and bisexual troops to openly serve in the military. What a great day.

But even as a new study of the effects of the repeal shows it has had absolutely no detrimental impact -- either on military readiness or morale -- there are still members of Congress attempting bring discrimination back to the armed forces.

The UCLA study, authored by instructors from the military academies, found that repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell has had “no negative impact on overall military readiness or its component parts: unit cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment or morale.”

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More and more people every day are joining the abolition movement.

And more and more of them are conservative leaders. Just recently, a new organization called Montana Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty publicly called for the state to abandon the death penalty in favor of life in prison without parole. Some members oppose the death penalty on religious grounds, others because it is a waste of taxpayer dollars.

The group's statement was in response to the ACLU's recent victory in its case against Montana's lethal injection protocol. A district court judge recently ruled that protocol unconstitutional because it violates the state and federal constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment in two ways and it does not comply with the state's death penalty statute.

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This blog entry by ACLU of Montana LGBT Organizer Liz Welch originally appeared on the Fair is Fair blog.

Two separate stories about transgender women made headlines in Montana news today.

The first was a tragic report of a young transgender woman in Missoula getting physically assaulted by a man she met in a bar.  Anita Green, who is a pre-operative transgender woman, is currently awaiting her day in court to testify against the man who allegedly physically forced himself on her and then hit her when she refused his advances and he discovered that she has male genitalia.

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Happy birthday, U.S. Constitution. You look great for 225. Here's to many more years.

As we celebrate our nation's guiding document on Constitution Day, let's take a look at the many rights it grants us -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, the right to an attorney... The list is long, and the road to protect those rights has been long, too.

The ACLU of Montana produced a series of one-minute podcasts on 50 key U.S. Supreme Court cases about those freedoms, called "Your Constitutional Rights." Please take a moment today to check a few of them out in honor of this great day.

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Male prisoners at the Missoula County Detention Center are given an hour of outdoor recreation five days a week.

In their outdoor recreation yard, these prisoners exercise in the fresh air and have time in the sun to absorb the Vitamin D crucial to physical and psychological well-being.

But Missoula County doesn't think female and juvenile prisoners need an outdoor recreation yard. They are only allowed exercise within an indoor gym where they rarely have access to fresh air and must take turns trying to get a short moment in the sunlight that shines at times on small parts of the gym floor.

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We were so happy on Saturday when more than 100 people showed up in Billings to attend the Fairness for All Rally in the face of those who prefer to stand up for intolerance.

Call it a case of Chicken Little vs. Super Chicken.

Chicken Little says that if same-sex couples are allowed to love one another and are given equal rights, the sky will fall. Marriage and family will be destroyed. The world will end.

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On the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, it's impossible to not think of those harrowing morning hours -- all the people who lost their lives in senseless acts of violence, all the grieving family members left behind, the fear of not knowing what would come next.

We lost a lot of innocence that horrible day when thousands of people lost their lives. We still mourn for them.

But in the days, months and years to follow, we lost more. We lost our freedom.

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Montana's death penalty was dealt a serious blow this week when District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock ruled the state's lethal injection protocol unconstitutional.

The ACLU of Montana, with Ron Waterman of Gough, Shanahan and Waterman, challenged the protocol in 2008 on behalf of death row inmate Ronald Smith. We knew it was unconstitutional because it did not provide enough safeguards to ensure prisoners would not suffer during executions. It also fails to conform to Montana's death penalty statute.

Sherlock agreed. He pointed out three chief deficiencies:

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Custer County Commissioners voted last week to move prisoners from the county's unsanitary, unsafe and unconstitutional jail, in response to demand letters sent from the ACLU of Montana.

Beginning Oct. 1, prisoners will be held in another county's jail. The Custer County Jail will only be used for short-term holding of prisoners overnight to give them the opportunity to post bond before being transported.

This is a good thing. The conditions in the jail, particularly the basement cells, are unfit for habitation. Three colors of mold are present in the unsanitary jail, which also has fire safety issues and a falling ceiling in at least one place. When prisoners are let out of their cells, the only place they have to go is a narrow hallway. They have no access to fresh air or sunlight -- a constitutional violation.

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Join us Saturday, Sept. 8 as we rally for fairness for same-sex couples and their families in Billings.

You've probably heard about Chik-fil-A and its stance opposing rights for same-sex couples. About the people who had an eat-in and gobbled down fried chicken sandwiches for discrimination. And maybe you've heard about the fundraiser the Montana Family Foundation is having Saturday, selling trucked-in Chik-fil-A sandwiches to help fund its work opposing rights for same-sex couples.

Well, let's put that negativeness aside and enjoy some local fun and locally made sandwiches with Montanans who are standing up for the original family value -- love.

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Montana voters will be asked to decide in the general election whether to approve a legislative referendum to deny state services to people who can't prove they are citizens or government-approved residents.

There's nothing good about this referendum. LR-121 would discriminate against immigrant families and burden all Montanans with increased bureaucracy and costs.

A recent column in the Billings Gazette explains that if made law this referendum would be like Real ID for all Montanans -- all for an estimated 5,000 immigrants who may be in our state illegally.

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After years of success in Montana, medical marijuana hit a serious snag in 2011.

Even as the numbers of medical marijuana patients registered with the state climbed and provider businesses flourished, medical marijuana was under attack by both state legislators and the federal government. On the same day legislators held a hearing on possible repeal, federal agents raided medical marijuana providers across the state.

The documentary "Code of the West" follows the events of 2011 and what they mean for the future of medical marijuana in Montana and across the country. The ACLU of Montana is hosting more than a dozen screenings of the movie in September and October in communities across the state, beginning with Hamilton on Wednesday, Sept. 5. Dates have also been set in Choteau, Havre and Conrad.

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A moldy basement, with inadequate ventilation and no natural light may be a good place to store tools and old furniture, but it's not the place to house prisoners.

That's just what's happening in the Custer County Jail, and it violates those prisoners constitutional rights.

The ACLU of Montana is working to protect those prisoners. We sent Custer County officials letters on August 14 and August 23 demanding that it stop housing prisoners in these unsanitary, unsafe and unconstitutional conditions.

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As many Montana public school students head back to classes this week, we are grateful that the U.S. Constitution requires that they be taught facts rather than indoctrinated with religious teachings.

Since the Scopes trial, however, many educators and legislators continue to try to incorporate creationism into public school curriculum rather than teaching the science of evolution.

Federal courts have repeatedly ruled that is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment's right to freedom of religion.

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A new nonprofit organization has entered the scene in Montana with the sole purpose of protecting the rights of immigrants.

The Montana Immigrant Justice Alliance will fight discrimination against migrants, educate migrants about their rights and provide legal assistance.

MIJA, the group's acronym, is an affectionate term for daughter in Spanish and is a representation of the care the group hopes to provide immigrant populations.

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The Republican National Convention gets underway in Tampa Bay, Florida, this weekend, soon to be followed in September by the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Many people will be outside both events in the hopes of telling conventioneers their minds on a wide variety of issues. Unfortunately past experience shows that there will likely be efforts in both cities to restrict protesters by a variety of means, including corralling them in so-called "free speech zones" far from the action of the conventions.

Such zones are unconstitutional, but cities have discovered that if they delay specifying where they will be until the last minute, they can often get away with them because there isn't adequate time to challenge them in court.

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Time for a back-to-school lesson in religious freedom.

Every morning some schools start the day with a prayer over the public address system. Administrators may feel that it's ok because most of their students like it.

But it's not. Our constitutional rights are in place to protect minority populations. Majority definitely doesn't rule when it comes to civil liberties.

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It's that time of year again. Students across Montana are preparing to head back to school.

Time to give up long, lazy days on the river, sleeping in late and camping. But it's not time, nor is it ever time, for students to give up their rights.

That's why the ACLU of Montana has published a new booklet -- "Protecting Religious Liberty in Public Schools: A School Official's Guide."

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Ugh.

It's the kind of campaign that turns our stomachs. An anti-Islamic organization has purchased advertisements on public transportation platforms in New York, attacking Muslims.

The American Freedom Defense Initiative associates Islam with thousands of terrorist attacks carried out since Sept. 11, 2001, saying “It’s not Islamophobia, it’s Islamorealism.”

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By Niki Zupanic

ACLU of Montana Public Policy Director

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By Ellie Warren

Willamette University student

As I was coming home from school in Oregon this summer, I came across a graph. It was a colored wheel showing the legal protections for gay people by state, and the little section of the chart for Montana was almost totally blank.

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The state of Montana has taken a firm stand for racial justice by joining with 13 other states to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold racial preferences in college admissions.

The 14 states filed a brief supporting racial preferences in admissions in a case involving a white student who was not admitted to the University of Texas in 2008.

Abigail Fisher filed a lawsuit challenging the university's admissions policy as a violation of her rights because she says less qualified minority students were admitted.

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Disneyland definitely wasn't the "happiest place in the world" for former employee Imane Boudlal.

Disney would not allow her to wear the hijab -- religious head scarf -- while on duty in one of the theme park's cafes, and refused to do anything about the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab slurs of her coworkers.

Boudlal, a Moroccan-born U.S. citizen, wears the hijab in observance of her Muslim faith.

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The Olympic spirit is one of welcoming and friendship. Competition is the focus, but all are accepted on equal footing.

If only that were the case here at home.

It's apparent that our home team is the most diverse in the world. It's a team of all races. It's a team that includes lesbian athletes. It's a team where immigrants new and old shine. More than 40 foreign-born Americans are part of the U.S. team competing in London.

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It's a mess, plain and simple.

Right now, 19 states, including Montana, have laws on the books legalizing marijuana for medical purposes. Other states are considering such laws.

Yet, still, the federal government refuses to even look at the medical uses of marijuana. Even worse, the feds are arresting and prosecuting medical marijuana providers in states where it is legal.

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This blog entry by Liz Welch originally appeared on the ACLU of Montana's Fair is Fair Montana website.

Let us be THAT kind of people…

I first heard the news about Joe Baken as a victim of bias-based crime while sitting in a rehearsal in a theatre where he grew up performing. One of his friends had posted a blog with the now familiar photos of Joe’s bruised face. In this theatre, we all know Joe. We’ve watched him grow up and this is where he made some strong, lasting friendships. He is talented, well thought of, and very private in his personal life unless you know him well.  My first thought after hearing the story was “Please, don’t let us be those kind of people in Montana who would do something so heinous as to beat this young man.”

Within no time at all, the story broke on Wipe Out Homophobia on facebook.  My first thought was it would open this young man to public scrutiny.  I thought “Please don’t  let us kind of people who tear him to bits for being gay, for asking directions to a gay bar in a notorious jock bar, and for being gullible enough to be drawn out of a public place and beat up.” But I was wrong – it was an overwhelming outpouring of love and support for this young man.

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A publicly funded school in Louisiana has a policy of forcing female students it suspects of being pregnant to get tested. Positive? They get kicked out. Refuse the test? Kicked out, too.

Not only is this wrong from every aspect of human decency, it is illegal. The policy clearly violates Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which states that schools cannot exclude any student from an education program or activity, “including any class or extracurricular activity, on the basis of such student’s pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy or recovery therefrom.”

Apparently Delhi Charter School, in Delhi, Louisiana, doesn't care. 

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It was a horrific display of hatred and violence. On Sunday an armed gunman killed six people and injured many more when he burst into a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee and began shooting.

The shooter was killed by police, and his precise motives remain unclear. What seems clear is that he targeted the Sikh community -- because of a hatred of Sikhs or of Muslims (coupled with the mistaken belief that Sikhs are Muslim).

Since Sept. 11, 2001, Sikhs, with their turbans and uncut hair (a sign of faith), Sikhs have been targeted repeatedly by people who wish to discriminate against Muslims. Islamophobia's tentacles reach far and wide.

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Who watches the watchers? It has to be us -- members of the public -- right?

That's why being able to record police officers -- with video or audio -- is so important to making sure our rights are protected.

In Illinois, however, there was a law on the books saying that audio recordings could not be made unless all parties consented. The ACLU of Illinois too the case to court and won on First Amendment grounds, as detailed in this Civil Liberties Minute podcast.

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It's finally here -- no-co-pay women's health services, including well-woman visits, gestational diabetes screening, contraception, breastfeeding support and more.

It's a procedure filled with confusion, lack of detail and in direct conflict with state law. Montana's lethal injection protocol, as recently revised by the Montana Department of Corrections is supposed to guide capital punishment, but it is too vague, too short on training details and wholly inadequate in ensuring that executions will be conducted humanely as required by the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Montana Constitution.

In short, the protocol is unconstitutional. On Wednesday, the ACLU of Montana presents its case, Smith v. Ferriter, challenging the protocol to District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock in Helena.

To add to the problems, states across the country are scrambling to find drugs to use for lethal injection since the drug of choice for the first part of the process - sodium thiopental - was put out of production in early 2011. 

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Think dragging the kids through the airport on the way to Grandma's is a hassle? Try being one of the more than 21,000 Americans on the No Fly List. If you're one of these people, you're only option is to travel by ground.

According to the federal government, these Americans -- most of whom are innocent of any wrongdoing -- have no recourse other than to fill out paperwork with the Transportation Security Administration asking that their case be reviewed and they be removed from the list.

We don't agree. Americans have the right to challenge inclusion on the No Fly List through a fair redress process. That's why two years ago, the ACLU joined with 15 U.S. citizens and permanent residents to challenge their inclusion on the No Fly List.

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Abortion is legal.

But what do you do if you are at the mercy of someone who doesn't really care that you want an abortion, or, even worse, doesn't want you to have one?

There are many places where access to an abortion is difficult, if not close to impossible, like rural areas with no abortion provider, states with repressive abortion laws and jails and prisons.

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When Lisbeth Ceriani was diagnosed with breast cancer, she thought going through a double mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation would be the worst she'd have to face.

Then she found out that her breast cancer might have been caused by a genetic mutation that could  cause her to get ovarian cancer, as well. A simple genetic test would give her that answer.

Trouble is that one company has a patent on that gene. Because of that patent, Myriad Genetics is the only company that performs the test. And because Myriad would not accept her insurance, Ceriani could only get the test if she paid $4,000 for it.

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U.S. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske says federal drug policy is flawed -- that it focuses too much on enforcment and punishment and not enough on treatement -- but he isn't doing too much to change things.

In a recent interview, Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, says that drug addiction is not a "moral failing," but a chronic disease.

Still, the bulk of federal resources for drug issues go to arresting people, not helping them.

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This blog entry by Liz Welch first ran on the ACLU of Montana's Fair is Fair Montana website, dedicated to helping Montana's same-sex couples.

Who supports domestic partnerships for loving, committed same-sex couples in Montana?

More than 100 Montana clergy do. A long list of Montana businesses do. And hundreds of thousands of Montana residents do, too - and some of them have sent in photos, bios, and statements attesting to their support for fairness.

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In the United States, around 80% of households access the internet in some way or another.We use it to check Facebook, read blogs (hopefully this one), find a recipe for dinner, read the news or shop. We log-on at work, at home and even on our phones. The Internet can be a powerful tool to connect people, spread news and information and facilitate the sharing of ideas across wide expanses of land; all almost instantaneously.

It would be hard for most Americans to fathom that what they posted on a social networking site, or wrote in a blog could send them to prison for life, but that is a reality that people all over the world face. Today a group of bloggers and journalists in Ethiopia were handed down sentences ranging from 15 years to life for writing things the government considered subversive. Free speech is by no means a value that crosses national boundaries.

The United States fortunately hasn't come close to this type of censorship in a while, but laws like the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act would have affected completely legal content and limited online innovation and free speech. Millions of internet users came together to stop these dangerous laws and protect the open and free nature of the internet.

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It seems incomprehensible that is was only in 2002 that the Supreme Court ruled that individuals with intellectual disabilities could not be executed. Georgia however, must not have read that decision and is planning to execute Warren Hill on July 18th.

Warren Hill was already in prison serving a life sentence in 1991 when he was convicted of killing another inmate who threatened him. At the time of his trial, his attorneys were unable to produce enough evidence of Mr. Hill's intellectual disability to overcome Georgia's exceptionally requirement of beyond a reasonable doubt. There is a preponderance of evidence to prove Mr. Hill's disability; he has an IQ of 70, had significant trouble in school and has an extensive history of diminished intellectual capacity. In fact, several jurors stated that they wouldn't have sentenced Mr. Hill to death if they had been presented the information about Mr. Hill's mental capacity. Family members of the victim have also spoken out against the execution.

Georgia's unfairly high standard of proof will result in a person with an intellectual disability being executed, unconstitutionally, if the parole board does not commute Warren Hill's sentence to life without parole. Take action now to lend your voice to those calling for Georgia to halt this inhumane and unconstitutional execution.

This blog is summarized from Sarah Lipton-Lubet, ACLU Washington Legislative Office

The abortion debate is often centered around abject ideas. Values held deeply by both sides; arguments based on the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent fly alongside church doctrine and sincerely held religious beliefs.

These arguments rarely take into account that the availability of abortion has real life consequences for women's health. It has real consequences for families, and it has real consequences for the legal standing of women in today's society.

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On any day, there are over 25,000 people in the United States in solitary confinement. That is more than any other country in the world. Solitary confinement is touted as a way to keep prison populations safe, but many experts are beginning to argue that solitary confinement makes prison, and eventually the general population, less safe by fostering, and sometimes even creating, mental illness that can lead to psychosis or even suicide. In fact, around half of all prison suicides occur in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is also almost three times as expensive as housing an inmate in general population.

So why use it? Proponents argue that is a necessary tool to control prison populations and prevent certain inmates from harming others both inside and outside of prison. But the ability to lockdown a person for 23 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year; possibly indefinitely, is a power that should have strong limitations. These limitations should help insure that solitary confinement is a short-term solution so that people like Peter Rollock don't spend the rest of their lives in solitary confinement without hope of ever being stepped down into general population. Limitations like those won in the case we filed against the State of Montana on behalf of Raistlen Katka to prevent mentally ill juveniles from being housed in solitary confinement for extended periods of time.

There is much work to be done on the front, but advocates are speaking up. The house recently held a hearing on the use of solitary confinement, and experts are speaking out against it as a form of torture. Learn more.

This blog entry by ACLU of Montana LGBT Organizer Liz Welch first appeared at www.fairisfairmontana.org.

When we talk about protections for same sex couples and their families in Montana, our plaintiffs in the Donaldson & Guggenheim case have been denied significant access to rights others take for granted in long term, committed relationships.

In Roanoke, Virgina, a couple with a young son simply wanted to take their son to the Roanoke Athletic Club, a local gym with an outdoor swimming pool. Only children on family memberships are allowed to use the pool, so Will Trinkle signed up for a family plan. His application was accepted and processed, clearly listing him, his same sex partner, and their child as members.

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Debtors' prisons, in which people are thrown in jail for not being able to pay their debts, have been ruled an unconstitutional violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. So how is it that they are making a comeback in the United States?

Across the country, cities and counties are throwing poor people in jail for failing to pay legal debts they could never afford to pay. Failure to pay incurs late fees and more fines which can land the defendant in jail, only adding to the burden of fees they must pay.

A recent New York Times article detailed the case of an Alabama woman whose $179 speeding ticket ballooned into $3,170 and 40 days in jail when she failed to appear in court. She has little hope of ever getting out from under the debt.

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I just love the U.S. Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Such a bold move by our nation's founders, and such a beautiful declaration of what our nation is about.

For so many years, though, it's full promise was not and has not been realized. These "truths" first applied to only white, property-owning men, then white men. It took incredible struggle to add other groups to that list -- African-Americans, women -- and that struggle continues.

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Butte's courthouse turns 100 this week. So how do officials celebrate? With a mock hanging, followed by a kiddie parade.

One child was so inspired by the whole event that he declared he wanted to grow up to be an executioner.

For years, executions were entertainment for the masses. Some countries -- like Saudi Arabia and Iran -- still hold public executions. But is that the kind of society we want to be? One that finds killing people entertaining?

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Lying about receiving a military award, like the Medal of Honor, is a pretty despicable thing to do.

But then, so is lying to your spouse about an affair or about earning a college degree that you never completed.

The U.S. Supreme Court was right to rule today that the Stolen Valor Act and its criminalization of lying about receiving military honors is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. Outlaw that and it opens the door to the government outlawing all kinds of lying. 

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We all know the story. Sickened as a baby, Helen Keller was blind and deaf. She lived a life of isolation until her teacher Annie Sullivan was able to teach her to communicate with hand signs. But then what?

 Then comes all the work that Keller did for others.

Born on June 27, 1880, Keller was part of a progressive movement in the early 1900s that fought for the rights of workers, African-Americans and women. She supported women's suffrage, access to birth control and unions. And, in 1920, Keller helped found the American Civil Liberties Union.

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The free marketplace of ideas that you and I know as today's Internet might have been an entirely different thing if Congress had gotten its way in the 1990s.

The Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, prohibited the publication of anything "obscene or indecent" on the Internet where children could access it. It was a vague and overreaching standard and the ACLU challenged it as soon as it was signed into law.

Your Constitutional Rights: Reno v. ACLU (a one-minute podcast)

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What do these books have in common?

They were all banned by the Board of Education of the Island Trees School District in New York in 1975 for being "objectionable" because they did not conform to board's conservative values.

The board called the books "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy," and said "it is our duty, our moral obligation, to protect the children in our schools from this moral danger as surely as from physical and medical dangers."

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Hours ago, the Supreme Court struck down much of Arizona's anti-immigrant law, including provisions that would have made violating federal immigration registration laws or working without proper documentation Arizona crimes.

But the court let stand for now the reprehensible "Show me your papers" provision allowing law enforcement to stop anyone on the street and demand to see their identification and proof of legal residency.

When local police can stop and detain anyone they perceive as "foreign" because of their skin color, their accent or their surname, that's racial profiling, and, says ACLU National Executive Director Anthony Romero, "a watershed moment for civil rights."

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I have no doubt that without Title IX, girls would not have even close to the sporting opportunities they have today.

Just look at the state of professional women's sports and you can see what the "free market" would do for our girls.

But on the eve of its 40th anniversary (It became law on June 23, 1972), it's important to note that Title IX is about more than sports. It's also about protecting female students from sexual assault, providing athletic opportunities for transgender students and making sure pregnant students have equal access to education.

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Anthony Graves's story is horrifying.

Convicted of a murder he did not commit, Graves spent years in solitary confinement on Texas's death row before proven innocent in 2010.

On Tuesday, Graves (pictured above on right, with Sen. Richard Durbin) testified in front of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

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By Anna Conley
ACLU Staff Attorney and Montana Prison Project Director

Last week I toured many jails, prisons and other facilities in the eastern part of Montana as part of ongoing research into work we need to do as part of the Montana Prison Project. One particularly interesting stop was the Custer County Jail in Miles City, Montana. Shocked and appalled are understatements how I felt going through this jail.

According to the jail's website, the facility can hold 18 inmates "comfortably." After touring this jail, I am 100% sure there is nothing comfortable about the stay there. We started our tour down a narrow hallway in the basement. Although the rest of the jail was built in 1904, the basement was built in 1975. Apparently, there were not yet any jail standards in place in 1975, because the basement area holding prisoners has no windows, no day room, a dank moldy shower with a broken shower curtain, and a falling ceiling. Two hours a day inmates were let out of their cells into a narrow cement hallway with no windows.

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Once upon a time, not that long ago, it mattered little whether police had a warrant to search your home or not. If they found something, it could be used against you.

Then along came a Cleveland woman named Dollie Mapp who took her conviction based on a warrantless search to the U.S. Supreme Court, and, 51 years ago today, won.

Dollie Mapp was a one-time girlfriend of two different prize fighters who rented rooms in her Cleveland home to fighters and other men looking for a place to stay. 

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By Katy Heitstuman

ACLU of Montana

The colors of the rainbow were out in force this weekend for the annual Pride celebration.

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This is what tough on crime looks like 25 years later. It's a 74-year-old inmate being taken to a hospital because his medical needs exceed the services available in prison.

In 1988, the United States spent about $11 billion on the entire corrections system. Today, we spend about $16 billion annually on the aging prisoner population alone. That's because while the total number of people incarcerated in this country grew by 400 percent between 1980 and 2010, the population of prisoners age 55 and older grew by nearly 1,400 percent. By 2030, it's estimated a full third of America's prison population will be age 50 or older.

An ACLU report released this week, "At America's Expense: The Mass Incarceration of the Elderly," details the rising number of American prisoners above age 50 and the high cost of keeping them in prison for life.

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This blog entry by ACLU of Montana LGBT Organizer Liz Welch first appeared on the Fair is Fair Montana blog.

When some people think of PRIDE, this is what they envision. And they are right. PRIDE weekend is about empowerment and acceptance of the LGBT community. It's about coming out of closets and sharing your inner rainbow and complexity with everyone. It's about celebrating that certain something when you have been told you aren't ‘enough' as a citizen or ‘too much' as a lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer. Yes, there will be a parade in downtown Bozeman. There will be drag shows. There will be rainbows, high heels, and feathers. There will be glitter.

But there will also be families and long time committed same sex couples who are celebrating their relationships in an accepting crowd. There will be faith leaders there who support the LGBT community. There will be businesses who believe in nondiscrimination, relationship recognition, and fairness for all of Montana's citizens. There will be quiet discussions where straight people interact with this loving community and learn just a little more about what's in others hearts. There will also be seminars - where everyone is invited to attend - where there are even more opportunities to learn more about the issues and concerns that LGBT persons face.

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Today we celebrate love. More specifically, we celebrate Loving -- the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down bans of interracial marriage.

Today marks the 45th anniversary of that decision.

Your Constitutional Rights: a one-minute podcast about Loving v. Virginia

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It's an inhumane and soul-killing practice in prisons across the nation, but next week will be the first time solitary confinement is ever addressed by Congress.

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights will hold the first-ever Congressional hearing on solitary confinement on Tuesday, June 19 at 10 a.m. Eastern. It will be webcast live at www.judiciary.senate.gov/

Some things that committee will hear from the ACLU and other opponents of solitary confinement: 

• Solitary confinement is inhumane. Inmates in Montana State Prison's "Locked Housing Unit" (solitary) spend 23 hours a day in a cramped cell with no outside light and no human contact other than a tray of food pushed through a slot in the door. Five days a week, for one hour, the inmate can leave his cell to shower or spend time in an open-air metal cage. A basketball hoop is the only thing in that cage. Nothing of the outside world is visible but a small patch of sky.
• Solitary confinement is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
• Solitary confinement is overused. It's estimated that 25,000 prisoners across the country are locked up in isolation.
• Solitary confinement is used in appropriately on minors and mentally ill prisoners. The ACLU of Montana recently settled a case (Katka v. Montana State Prison) concerning the incarceration of a 17-year-old boy in solitary confinement for more than year. That settlement severely limits the use of solitary on juveniles and prisoners with mental illness.

It's an argument we hear all the time: Why should I worry about the government spying on me? I've done nothing wrong.

Think again. Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, yesterday laid out all the reasons you should still worry about government spying in a great blog entry on the ACLU's national digital privacy blog -- Free Future. (Add it to your bookmarks today -- lots of great information on this important topic.)

I urge you to read the full entry, but in a nutshell, Jay explains:

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Forty-seven years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that contraception bans are unconstitutional.

The case, Griswold v. Connecticut, was brought when Estelle Griswold (pictured here on the left with fellow Connecticut Planned Parenthood League employee Cornelia Jahncke) and Dr. Jack Buxton were convicted in 1961 of violating the state's birth control law by giving medical advice about and prescribing contraceptives to married couples who asked about them.

Your Constitutional Rights - 1-minute podcast about case

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The ACLU is a fervently nonpartisan organization. We don't ally ourselves with any particular political party because we stand for the principles in the Constitution.

So, while we are keenly interested in who wins elections, we don't care if you are Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent or any other party. If you're a candidate or an elected official, we'd love for you to stand with us for civil liberties.

On the national level, the ACLU has a fairly new website, www.aclulibertywatch.org, to provide information about the presidential race and report cards on where the candidates stand on civil liberties. We want to focus attention on this part of these candidates' platforms.

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Yes, we all have busy lives, but voting is an important civic duty of all Americans, and a hard-won constitutional right for many of us.

White men without land holdings weren't able to vote until laws were changed from 1812-1860.

African-American men didn't get the right to vote until 1870, with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.

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Some would say that the struggle for American women's equality has already been won, but it only takes a quick look at the facts to dispel that myth.

Women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. And workplaces are currently allowed to prohibit employees from discussing pay practices, keeping women in the dark about this discrimination. The Paycheck Fairness Act would remedy that situation. It's being voted on in the U.S. Senate today.

Women are still prohibited from holding thousands of military jobs.

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By Niki Zupanic

Public Policy Director

The Montana State Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in Montana Cannabis Industry Association v. State, the case challenging a bill passed by the 2011 Legislature to severely restrict Montanans' access to medical marijuana. That bill, SB 423, repealed the voter-approved Montana Medical Marijuana Act and replaced it with an ill-conceived, unworkable system, whereby patients would find it difficult, if not impossible to get the medical marijuana that they need. MCIA challenged the new law, and a few of of its most most onerous provisions were ruled unconstitutional by the trial court.

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First posted at www.fairisfairmontana.org by ACLU of Montana LGBT Orgainzer Liz Welch:

 Young people "get" fairness.  They understand that civil rights extend to every citizen - regardless of sexual orientation. And what's more, they are willing to stand up for equality and fairness.

 Last week, a note from a young man circulated on the internet, becoming a viral sensation and a rallying cry against bullying. It was a simple gesture that not only supported a vulnerable student, but showed that your allies might not be the most obvious people in your life.

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We love it when young people stand up for their rights and the rights of others.

That's just what Flathead High School students in Kalispell did today in response to their school administrators' decision Friday to force a student to change her shirt saying, "Legalize Gay," or to go home.

They organized a protest called "T-shirts for Tinker," and called upon their fellow students to wear T-shirts to school today with the same "Legalize Gay" message or another message promoting free speech.

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They sacrifice just as much as the men they serve beside -- and in some ways more -- but women in the military face discrimination when it comes to the positions they can hold and the services they receive.

It's time for that to end. The women who serve us deserve more.

On Wednesday, two women soldiers sued the U.S. military over its prohibition against women serving in combat positions.

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A just-released Gallup Poll shows that the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as "pro-choice" has fallen to the lowest level - 41 percent - since Gallup began asking the question in 1995.

But the answers to that question may be deceiving. When it comes down to whether they actually support a woman's right to choose a legal abortion, a majority - 52 percent - say abortion should be legal under certain circumstances. Another 25 percent say it should be legal under any circumstances.

In fact, compared to previous years, the percentage who support abortion under some or all circumstances has remained steady while the percentage who always oppose it has declined.

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Posted earlier today by ACLU of Montana LGBT Organizer Liz Welch on the Fair is Fair Montana website.

A new mother called in to local Billings radio station (Hot 101.9) Tuesday morning to tell, Jason "Big J" Harris a sad story.

It should have been a joyful tale. The woman was the proud mother of a new baby and wanted the community to know all about it. So she sent in a birth announcement to the Billings Gazette. But when it was printed, only her name was there. The baby's other mother - her same sex partner- was not included

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Yesterday, the Montana Pardons and Parole Board recommended denying clemency to death row inmate Ronald Smith.

Discussion of the death penalty in Montana during this process has naturally focused on Smith's case, the family of his victims and his own family.

But it's important to remember that the debate over the death penalty is bigger than any one case or any one person. It's about larger issues of justice, equal treatment and what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

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UPDATE (5/22/2012): Missoula mayor apologizes for overreaction to police officer's email.

---------------------------------

Nausea. 

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Here we go. A candidate for Montana governor is proposing drug testing people receiving public assistance.

Cuz you know, when someone is down it makes sense to kick 'em.

Not only is gubernatorial candidate Ken Miller's proposal, brought to light by Montana Watchdog, an insult to those who need state aid, it's unconstitutional and would almost certainly cost the state more money than it would save.

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The story arc of medical marijuana in Montana couldn't have been more dramatic had it been written by a novelist.

Voters pass an initiative legalizing medical marijuana in 2004. Patients' suffering is relieved by its use. Enterprising businessmen and women, bolstered by state law and a pledge from the Obama administration that it won't pursue those following state medical marijuana laws, build companies to serve the growing demand. These businesses drive a new economic engine that fuels the construction industry and pumps money into local economies.

Use grows, and some begin to complain that people are registering as patients to smoke pot recreationally. A backlash begins to develop and some begin work to repeal or tighten state laws.

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Shocking.

There's really no other way to describe the evidence compiled by Columbia Human Rights Law Review showing how Texas arrested, tried, convicted and executed the wrong man for murder.

It was 1983 when single mother Wanda Lopez was stabbed to death while working at a Corpus Christi, Texas, gas station.  After a 40-minute manhunt, police arrested Carlos DeLuna.

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A Kalispell native's heart-wrenching video about the devastating death of his life partner and the ensuing actions by his partner's family to exclude him from the funeral has gone viral over the past week.

Shane Crone had been in a loving, committed relationship with his partner, Tom Bridegroom, for six years. But while Shane's Montana family embraced Tom and welcomed him into the fold, Tom's family refused to accept that Tom was gay or to acknowledge Shane.

When Tom died after falling from a rooftop, his family took his body back to Indiana and warned Shane not to attend the funeral or he would be assaulted. They took Tom's possessions from the home that he and Shane shared and did everything they could to erase all mentions of Shane from Tom's life. The hospital where Tom was taken following the accident refused to release any information to Shane. The two young men had no wills.

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Kendall Davis spends weeks in solitary confinement simply for walking too slow in a prison line or talking back to a guard.

In an interview with the ACLU, his mom, Lisa Ortega, talks about the toll it's taking on Kendall (pictured above with his sister, nephew and younger brother), both physically and mentally.

Stand with Lisa, and sign the ACLU's pledge opposing solitary confinement today.

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"It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."

Such a short statement from Obama, but it has so much meaning to so many families in across the country and has injected new energy into the movement.

So now is the time to take that energy and put it to good use.

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Kudos to Planned Parenthood of Montana for winning its suit against the state of Montana over its refusal to provide prescription contraception coverage for minors enrolled in Healthy Montana Kids (formerly the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP).

Of course, it seems like a no-brainer to us that Planned Parenthood would win.

In his decision, Montana District Court Judge James Reynolds described the state's conflicting positions that preventing teenage pregnancy is a compelling state interest but prohibiting prescription contraception coverage does not affect a compelling state interest as "illogical" and that they "seem to fail even the rational basis test."

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Primary ballots land in Montana absentee voters' mailboxes this week, but two candidates for U.S. Senate's names won't be on them.

Secretary of State Linda McCulloch decided in March that the Libertarian Party did not meet the threshold requiring the state to prepare a primary ballot for the party because it did not field candidates for at least half the races on the entire ballot. Instead, both candidates -- Dan Cox of Hamilton and Jerry McConnell of Missoula -- will be on the general election ballot.

The ACLU of Montana opposes that decision and is looking forward to a meeting later this week with an attorney from the Secretary of State's office to discuss a solution.

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Much of Montana tuned in last week when death row inmate Ronald Smith made his appeal for clemency to the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole.

We, too, take a keen interest in this case. Though the ACLU does not provide criminal defense, we care deeply about the death penalty and are working hard for its abolition in Montana.

We're urging the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole to grant clemency to Smith.

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Ouch.

Here I am, someone who works everyday on civil liberties issues, including privacy, and finding out the scope of information I'm unwittingly giving away on a daily basis staggered me  last night at a presentation by ACLU's Chris Calabrese in Great Falls.

Every tweet includes four or five times more information about my computer, my location and other details than the 140 characters of my intended message.

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By Anna Conley
ACLU Staff Attorney

Last week was my first time in a prison interviewing inmates as the new ACLU staff attorney and director of the Montana Prison Project. I thought I'd share a few reflections on my experience.

I was nervous before going because I learned from others who had visited before that there was no guard in the room with the inmates and myself. As soon as I got there and started interviewing inmates, I realized two things. First, I didn't have to worry about a guard being in the room because the inmates were respectful, grateful for the visit and didn't appear to be interested in causing any problems. Second, the inmates were nervous about being retaliated against in prison for meeting with an ACLU attorney about prison conditions, and they probably wouldn't have said anything had a corrections officer been in the room.

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It can be frightening to think about how much information we readily make available to the government, businesses and potential criminals.

When we turn on our cell phones, we broadcast our location. When we click on a link from Facebook, say for an article about  politics, we tell Facebook what we are interested in reading.

We count on our telephone providers and online portals to keep this information to themselves, but do they? Sometimes, sometimes not. The problem is that there are few privacy protections for us in our digital world and there are plenty of people who want our information, including the government.

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The ACLU made the big time Friday when it was featured as a category on Jeopardy!

Think you've got what it takes to dominate the board?

"Questions," with links to additional information about each topic at the bottom.

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You may have seen this little privacy cat staring at you on our Facebook page or somewhere else online this week, and wondered, "What's up with that?"

The ACLU and other organizations and individuals have been promoting "Stop Cyber Spying Week" to call attention to HR 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, better known as CISPA, and the dangers it poses to our privacy and civil liberties. A House vote on the bill is expected next week.

According to folks in our national office monitoring the bill, CISPA would create a loophole in all existing privacy laws, allowing companies to share Internet users' data with the National Security Agency - the biggest spy agency in the world - without any legal oversight. Companies like Google and Facebook could pass your communications to the military, just by claiming they were motivated by "cybersecurity purposes." CISPA would give the companies immunity from lawsuits if you want to challenge that. Once the government has the information, the bill allows them to use it for any legal purpose other than regulation, not just for stopping cybersecurity threats.

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"I brought this lawsuit so no one else would have to endure the torture I endured."

That's what Raistlen Katka said when he found out the ACLU had reached a settlement with Montana State Prison to protect juveniles from being locked in solitary confinement for months on end with no review and no way out.

Raistlen was barely 17 years old when he was thrown into solitary. He spent well over a year in isolation -- only being allowed out for an hour a day, five days a week. His only mental health visits were through the window of his cell, in full hearing range of other inmates. At times he was stripped naked, given only a smock to wear and denied bedding or running water.

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We have a new member on our team here in Montana.

Anna Conley joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana Foundation this week.

Conley is a Staff Attorney and Director of the Montana Jail and Prison Project. She will be working to forward the ACLU of Montana's aims of ensuring Montanans' state and federal constitutional rights are protected. Her focus will include ensuring that inmates in Montana's jails and prisons are receiving the protections guaranteed to them by the Montana and U.S. constitutions.

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Two years ago, six wonderful, brave and loving couples partnered with the ACLU to file a lawsuit against the state of Montana, seeking legal recognition of their committed same-sex relationships.

I immediately took to these 12 warm, generous and fun people. They were so in love with each other and so optimistic about life and the prospect of domestic partnerships in Montana. 

Today I love them all the more, and, I, too, am optimistic about their future here in Montana. Tomorrow they have their day in front of the Montana Supreme Court as we appeal the District Court decision against their case, Donaldson and Guggenheim v. Montana.

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The American Civil Liberties Union appears before the U.S. Supreme Court more than any other organization or law firm in the country (with the exception of the federal government's own Justice Department).

That, says ACLU National Legal Director Steve Shapiro, is just one example of how the ACLU's committment to both principle and quality litigation pays off in the ongoing struggle to uphold our Constitution's civil liberties.

But don't take my word for it. Here it straight from Steve Shapiro in this two-minute video clip (YouTube) from the ACLU of Montana's annual meeting in Billings.

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Just what is private anymore?

It's so hard to know.

Of course, there is plenty of information that we willingly disclose on websites like Facebook and youTube, but what about the information those sites collect without our knowledge? And what about the cell phone and GPS tracking that law enforcement does without warrant through our cell phones and other devices?

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Renny Cushing has always been against the death penalty.

Then his father was murdered.

"If I changed my position on the death penalty, it would only give more power to the killer," Cushing said in an interview with the Billings Gazette. "Not only would they take away my father, they would take away my values."

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Redistricting. It isn't a sexy topic, but it strikes at the core of what it means have equal rights and equal opportunity in our country -- the right to vote for legislators who will serve our interests.

For years Native Americans in Montana didn't have much of an opportunity to elect state senators and representatives who truly represented them. Voting districts were drawn in a manner that separated tribal populations and prevented them to vote in large enough blocks to elect Native American legislators. But in the 1980s that began to change.

In 1983 Crow and Northern Cheyenne tribal members filed a lawsuit, Windy Boy v. County of Big Horn, in state court alleging countywide elections diluted the Native vote.

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Yep. You read that right. The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that suspects can be strip-searched by police... even for traffic violations.

In the 5-4 ruling, the Court said that people arrested for even the most minor of violations can be strip-searched whether or not police have any reason to suspect contraband.

The case, Florence v. Burlington, involves Albert Florence, a man who was  riding with his wife when she was pulled over by a New Jersey trooper. Because Florence owned the vehicle, the officer ran his license and discovered a warrant for an outstanding noncriminal traffic fine.

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We've been lucky here in Montana, but our luck as run out.

 The Transportation Secruity Administration's full-body scanners have made their way to Montana airports.

Scanners debuted earlier this month at the Billings aiport, Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport and Glacier Park International Airport at Kalispell. They will be unveiled next week in Missoula, and next month at Helena Regional Airport.

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Helena has a wonderful chance to be the second city in Montana to protect people seeking jobs, accommodations and housing from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The nondiscrimination ordinance being considered by the Helena City Council is that opportunity.

Soon you will have the opportunity to  stand in support of this ordinance.

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What is wrong with some Montana legislators?

Why do they think that comparing women to animals is acceptable?

First it was Rep. Keith Regier comparing women to cattle while debating abortion on the House floor during the 2011 Legislative Session.

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The high-profile fight over Real ID seems to be turning into quiet whimpers from the feds.

In 2009, states and privacy advocates were loudly fighting Real ID and hearings on the issues were packed with people appalled by the federal government's plan for a national ID. Now it's as good as dead.

The federal government tried to force states to adopt one-size-fits-all drivers' licenses rules. Since at least 15 states have refused, and the federal government's only solution under the statute is to bar citizens of those states from using their driver's licenses to pass airport security, Real ID is stalled. The government can't allow the air travel pandemoneum that would cause. 

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People across the nation are outraged over Trayvon Martin's killing at the hands of vigilante George Zimmerman.

The teenage boy was walking home from a Florida 7-Eleven store with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea when Zimmerman stalked the boy and shot and killed him. Even more shocking, Zimmerman wasn't arrested for the crime because he claimed it was in self-defense.

Self-defense, even after he followed Trayvon, carried a gun, was much larger than the boy and has had previous run-ins with the law.

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Great news emerged late Tuesday when District Court Judge Jim Reynolds ruled a legislative referendum to elect Montana Supreme Court justices by district unconstitutional because it attempts to change how the justices are elected, but does not amend the Montana Constitution to change the residency requirements of becoming a justice.

Right now all Montana Supreme Court justices are elected statewide.

Reynolds ruled that while the initiative would require judicial candidates to live inside proposed regional districts, the state constitution only requires Montana residency for two years.

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Girls and women's educational and sports opportunities have improved dramatically since it became law in 1972.

Unfortunately there is still work to be done.

An article in today's Montana Standard describes the situation in Butte, where federal officials are investigating the complaints of two former girls softball coaches that the public high school has substandard softball fields for female athletes.

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"They take jobs away from real Americans."

"They lower wages because they'll work for less."

"They won't adapt to our customs."

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It's hard to imagine what it's like to be shot in the face with military-grade pepper spray from just feet away. It's even harder to understand why University of California - Davis security officers in November 2011 did just that to students who simply sitting peacefully, demonstrating against a proposed 81 percent increase to their tuition.

In this video, three of those students speak out about the terrifying and excruciating experience. The image here shows the moment that engineering student David Buscho was targeted by an officer. It was his first time protesting anything, and he says he knew he had the right to peacefully assemble and voice his views. He never imagined he would be subjected to pepper spraying simply for exercising his First Amendment rights.

Know your rights when you protest, and if they've been violated, contact us.

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The Montana Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the ACLU's domestic partnership case at 10 a.m. on Friday, April 13 in the University Theater at the University of Montana in Missoula.

The Montana Supreme Court picks a few cases this year to hear in venues outside its Helena courtroom. It chooses cases that it deems interesting and educational to law students and the general public to hold at the University of Montana near the law school and in a venue large enough to accommodate many interested observers. Our case, Donaldson and Guggenheim v. State of Montana, is certainly a such a case.

It will be a big day for the ACLU and for our "fabuliffs" -- Jan and Mary Anne, Kellie and Denise, Gary and Rick, Nancy and M.J., Stacey and Mary, and Mike and Rich. We hope you will join us in being witness to this historic event.

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The Senate gets another shot tomorrow morning at fixing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Senate Judiciary will hold a hearing on it at 10 a.m. Eastern Wednesday. The time is now to fix provisions that authorize the President of the United States to order the military to capture of anyone, any time, anywhere for indefinite detention.

It's hard to imagine anything that flies in the face of the U.S. Constitution than this provision.

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Interested in finding out more about our campaign for same-sex domestic partnerships and how you can help?

Check out our new website -- www.fairisfairmontana.org.

It's your one-stop clearinghouse for  the latest news on our relationship recognition lawsuit, Donaldson and Guggenheim v. State of Montana, information about the couples in that case, ways to support our work on LGBT issues and more.

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It's difficult to think about locking people up as a business model, but for private prisons the money is in inmates. Now the largest private prison operator in the nation -- Corections Corporation of America (CCA) -- is blanketing states with offers to buy their state-run prisons... provided, of course, that the states guarantee a steady flow of prisoners.

Thankfully Montana corrections officials declined this offer.

 The Montana Department of Corrections did receive a letter from CCA, confirmed the department's communications director, Bob Anez, but it isn't interested.

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The movement for fairness and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trandgender people is no different. At an estimated 10 percent of the population, they can't go it alone. They need straight allies to care about them, too.

Thankfully in Montana, and across the nation, there are many people who stand with their LGBT sisters, brothers, children, parents, grandparents, friends and coworkers. Why wouldn't they stand with the ones they love?

Allies are becoming more visible each day in Montana -- family members, students and church leaders have all been working on LGBT equality.

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A lot has been said in presidential campaigning over the past few months about religion and religious freedom. Some candidates just can't quite get it right, though. They talk about biblical teachings and how they should be applied to government decisons.

Wrong.

This Presidents Day, why don't we go back in time to our very first president (one of those we are celebrating this very day). George Washington understood the importance of religious freedom and that the United States is not a Christian nation. The United States is a nation where everyone is free to practice or not practice the religion of her choice.

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The 2011 Montana Legislature thinks you are going to vote against your own interests.

Why else would it put LR-119 -- a legislative referendum to take away your ability to vote for six of the state's seven Montana Supreme Court justices?

Of course, they dressed the whole thing up in sheep's clothing by saying it's about representation. If passed, the referendum would create a system to elect justices by district rather than statewide.

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The Montana Public Defender Commission announced yesterday it has hired William Hooks of Helena as the new chief public defender.

Hooks has a lot of experience with public defense. He has participated in some high-profile defense cases, including successfully litigating a challenge to a conviction is a sex case that represents Montana's first exoneration based on the use of DNA evidence.

And Hooks has a lot of work in store for him leading the Montana department in charge of defending indigent clients across the state. He is charged with overseeing a five-year-old department that is expreiencing some growing pains. While a vast improvement over the previous piecemeal county-by-county public defense system, the Office of the Public Defender faces a number of challenges moving into the future.

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Obama's compromise -- mandating that insurance companies, not employers themselves -- provide not cost birth control -- should have ended the controversy, but unfortunately, it appears it hasn't.

Those who want to control women's medical decisions have drawn a line in the sand, and it's becoming clear to Americans that those who drew it, like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, are out of touch with what women need to protect their health and plan their families. Thankfully, we have most of the American public standing with us.

We were ecstatic when President Obama included mandatory birth control coverage. Almost all women from all backgrounds use contraception at some time in their lives.

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UPDATE 2/9/2012: The Geraldine School Board decided yesterday evening to retain the book in its curriculum. Fabulous news!

Here we go again. Another school district is trying to ban a critically acclaimed book from its curriculum.

This time it's happening in Geraldine, where a challenge has been issued to "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," by Sherman Alexie. The book  about a Native American boy's experiences when he leaves his reservation to pursue a better education at a mostly white school is the 2007 winner of the prestigious National Book Award for youth literature and is on the reading list at many middle schools and high schools. It's just the sort of book our students should be reading.

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Billy McCarthy, lead singer of the band We Are Augustines, lost a brother to the horrors of solitary confinement. Many of the songs he writes are influenced by this family tragedy.

McCarthy's brother, James, was mentally ill. He wound up in Fulsom State Prison and spent five years in solitary before being sent to a hospital for mental health treatment. Shortly after arriving there, James hung himself with a bedsheet.

In an ACLU  podcast, McCarthy talks about his brother as a child, James's descent into mental illness and his time in the inhumane conditions of solitary confinement -- a place that McCarthy says he wouldn't even put a dog.

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Let's face it. These are challenging times for those of us committed to protecting reproductive rights. Thirty-nine years after Roe v. Wade protected access to abortion, we are facing a growing tide of legislative efforts to restrict it.

We saw many challenges to choice, birth control and women's privacy in 2011. According to the Guttmacher Institute in New York, state legislators introduced more than 1,100 reproductive health and rights-related provisions last year compared to 950 in 2010. Of the 1,100 introduced in 2011, 135 were enacted in 36 states, an increase from the 89 enacted in 2010 and the 77 enacted in 2009. Almost 70 percent of these restricted access to abortion.

That's the bad news.

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We're excited to welcome a new legal director to our Missoula office.

Jon Ellingson is just the right kind of person to lead the ACLU of Montana's legal program. As a former Montana representative and senator from 1994-2006, he championed LGBT right and sponsored the voting rights legislation that made election day registration a reality in Montana.

Jon has operated his own legal practice in Missoula and worked for six years as an assistant attorney general under Attorneys General Mike McGrath and Steve Bullock.

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"I wonder if the U.S. government wants to keep us here forever," wrote Suleiman al-Nahdi recently to his lawyers.

He's been cleared for release for five years now, but still sits in prison at Guantanamo because the federal government refuses to free him. His story of unlawful detention was told in a recent New York Times article.

Today marks 10 years that Gitmo has been illegally detaining prisoners without charge or trial.

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Yes. It's true. More states have laws on the books outlawing discrimination against smokers than have laws outlawing discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Today I e-mailed an article to ACLU staff and board members about how more and more companies are refusing to employ smokers. One board member responded about how sad it is that more states protect smokers than protect LGBT people.

I couldn't agree more. According to today's USA Today story, 29 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws in the past 20 years protecting smokers' rights. Only 15 states and the District of Columbia have laws prohibiting LGBT discrimination. Another five prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This map breaks it all down.

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The ACLU of Montana had a very busy 2011; thanks in large part to your support. From LGBT rights to advocating in front of the legislature, to working with the Public Defender Commission to fix the problems witht the current indigent defense system, ACLU of Montana staff and volunteers have been all over the map.  

In November, clergy leaders across the state signed onto an amicus brief in support of our lawsuit, Donaldson & Guggenheim vs. State of Montana, for fairness for LGBT couples and their families.   Our Fair is Fair campaign made its way all across Montana with the first Fair is Fair tour.  Liz Welch, our new LGBT Field Organizer joined our staff.  And on a national level, New York State legalized gay marraige with the help of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Staff worked with the Law & Justice Interim Committee to monitor jail suicides and recently made presentations to the Committee on several different topics.  Staff is also working with the Public Defender Commission to help fix the problems with the system. 

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Laws that require voter's to produce a photo identification to cast their ballot are sold to the public as preventing fraud.  However, between the years of 2002 and 2005 only 86 people were convicted on a federal level of improper voting, and most of those convictions were for improper voter registration and eligibility; problems that wouldn't be remedied by a photo identifiction at the polls.  Regardless of the negligible impact of fraud on elections, laws like this were passed in eight states across the country; including South Carolina.  The Justice Department recently blocked the law from taking effect under the Voting Rights Act because of its impact on minority voters.  Texas, which must also receive federal approval for any changes to its election law, passed a similar law this session, and may now face a similar injunction by the Justice Department. 

 If these laws don't prevent voter fraud, what do they do?  They disproportionality affect African Americans, Latinos, young voters, people over 65 and people with disabilities.  According to the Advancement Project, 11% of Americans lack photo identifications; this translates to 21 million people.  Making sure that all eligible voters have ample opportunity to cast their ballot should be a priority for states, not disenfranchising millions of voters.

Find out more by reading National ACLU's press release on the issue.

For the first time since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, less than 100 people were sentenced to die across the United States in 2011.  There were 78 new death sentences handed down this year; in 2000, by comparison, there were 224 new death sentences.  In 2011, 43 people were executed; almost half the number of people that were executed in 2000.  These numbers, along with interesting statistics on the decline in support for the death penalty; this year's 61% was a 40 year low for Americans, as well as movement around the country to end the death penalty nationwide come from the Death Penalty Information Center's Year End Report.

It should be a surprise to no one that  support for the death penalty is declining; especially in the midst of widespread budget crises and the tragic execution of Troy Davis in September which was protested by everyone from Pope Benedict XVI to former President Jimmy Carter.  

Montana came close to abolishing the death penalty in the 2011 legislative session.  Find out what you can do to help to make sure the practice is ended in 2013 by visiting the ACLU of Montana's page on abolishing the death penalty, and the Montana Abolition Coalition's website.  

Montana State Prison officials revealed a new inmate correspondence policy last week via an announcement on their website.

But though it's better than the old policy, which completely prohibited any correspondence in a foreign language, there is stillroom for improvement. Our negotiations with prison officials over the policy continue.

The ACLU of Montana sued the prison in July on behalf of an inmate who has been denied mail written in Spanish by members of his family.

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The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday presented information to the Montana Legislature's Law and Justice Interim Committee about a report we released this fall on the Office of Public Defender.

In a nutshell, the report examines the statewide office after five years of operation and finds that, while a vast improvement over the previous nonexistent  system, there are still some serious flaws in how indigent clients are being defended in Montana's courts.

One key problem is that public defenders' caseloads -- in some cases well over 100 open cases at any given time -- are too high. They simply don't have enough time to spend working on each case.

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Hamilton Wright Mabie once said, "Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love."  For families all across Montana and the United States, the holiday season is about celebrating our families, and spending time with the ones we love.  Unfortunately, for the thousands of families, the ones they love are not recognized as family by law. 

Recently there has been a troubling wave of politicians speaking out against protections for same sex couples.  A mayor in Troy, Michigan made a disparaging remark on Facebook after New York passed legislation legalizing same sex marriage.  This February the Iowa State Legislature considered a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage.  

However, in this season built on celebrating family and holding the ones we love close, people are speaking out against this hateful speech.  Like the two mothers and their two children in Michigan who attended a city council meeting, telling the mayor that "We talk every day about different families and different types of people, and teaching respect and kindness.  That is the heart that beats in our home.  It's about being kind, and choosing love over everything." Or Zach Wahls, the 19 year old honor roll student from Iowa who spoke out against the constitutional amendment.  These eloquent speeches in defense of love and of family help confront hateful speech.

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If Congress members opposed to freedom and your ability to exercise your rights have their way 'Shut up," could be your answer to a request for a lawyer.

That's what Sen. Lindsey Graham has to say on the subject of indefinite detention and its application to anyone suspected of being involved with a terrorist organization -- including U.S. citizens.

In short, Congress is set to vote in days on a National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill that would codify trampling on the Bill of Rights. Who knows how many more people would end up locked up in prisons like Guantanamo for years on end with no charges and trial?

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Today the U.S. Supreme Court said that it would hear a case involving the state of Arizona's and the federal government's dispute over Arizona's anti-immigration law, SB 1070.

 We aren't waiting for the court to come to a decision on these issues, however.

Our separate lawsuit, Friendly House v. Whiting, is broader than the federal government's case, U.S. v. Arizona.

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The ACLU of Montana submitted comments today opposing the renewal of a U.S. Forest Service permit allowing the Knights of Columbus to maintain a statue of Jesus on public land at the top of Whitefish Mountain.

The group says its sculpture is a World War II monument. But the Knights of Columbus is clearly a religious organization and the statue is a Christian figure. No reasonable observer would view it as anything other than a Christian symbol.

The permit for it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by advancing and endorsing a particular religion -- in this case Christianity.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration was all set to make Plan B an over-the-counter drug available to all females of child-bearing age. The agency reviewed studies of those younger than 17 (the current minimum age at which a person does not need a prescription), and determined allowing those females unrestricted access was safe.

If the plan had been implemented, you would have been able to get Plan B off the shelf right next to condoms. 

But then U.S. Health and Human Services  Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stepped in and said, "No way," exercising the department's right to veto the FDA decision.

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So much for love and peace to all mankind.

The war on those who are waging the so-called "War on Christmas" continues in some quarters. In that fictional battle, the ACLU is cast as General Scrooge.

While I appreciate all the Christmas cards we are sent each year in misguided protest, it's time to get real. The misrepresentations of the ACLU's work are a tradition, like fruitcake, that I could do without.

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Today people all over the globe mark World AIDS Day. Despite more than 20 years of work on AIDS, the epidemic continues to grow.

And though treatment options continue to improve, many aren't getting the treatment they need. And even those who do continue to be stigmatized.

The ACLU's AIDS work focuses on four core areas: discrimination, privacy and medical decisions, government HIV policy and improving access to HIV medical care.

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By Ninia Baehr
LGBT Advocacy Coordinator
ACLU of Montana

From Miles City to Columbia Falls, Great Falls to Red Lodge, pastors, chaplains, rabbis and priests across Montana took a public stand for fairness yesterday by submitting an amicus brief to the Montana Supreme Court in support of the plaintiffs in the domestic partnerships lawsuit Donaldson and Guggenheim v. State of Montana.

Clergy lead their congregations through good times and bad, they have a deep and personal understanding of the pain of couples whose relationships cannot be legally recognized. They know that lack of domestic partnership recognition has very real and harmful consequences for families.

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We're really excited about the launch of the new campaign for an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance in Helena.

The kickoff event is tonight at Hub Coffee on Last Chance Gulch, and we hope you will be there to show your support for a city where no one is discriminated against in terms of employment, housing or public accommodations because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.

Missoula enacted its nondiscrimination ordinance last year. It was the first city in the state to do so. The results have been amazing. All people are now protected by the city. Naysayers who predicted problems (remember the bathroom batties?) have been proven wrong.

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Like many people these days, I hardly know what to do with myself without Facebook. It's my window into the lives of all my friends -- the place I can keep up with their job promotions and kids' plays, find their links to important and thought-provoking articles and find out what they are recommending I look at online.

Unfortunately, Facebook is keeping track of what we all look at online, too. From the day you sign-up for Facebook, the social networking site installs browser and session cookies on your computer to see where you surf on the Internet. Any time you land on a page that has a Facebook "like" button or other Facebook application, that information is sent back to Facebook.

The system is detailed today in this USA Today story.

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If only.

That was my first thought when I heard that Michele Bachmann had declared during the latest Republican presidential debate that the CIA is under the control of the ACLU. According to Bachmann, we are in charge of the CIA's policy on torture.

I wish that were true. The ACLU has been working for years to stop torture and to hold those who have permitted it accountable.

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No one is going to argue that smoking is good for you, but should cigarette manufacturers be forced to use half the space on each pack of smokes for pictures showing just how unhealthy it is?

A U.S. District Court judge in says noU.S. District Judge Richard Leon said that compelling tobacco companies use half their packaging for pictures of diseased lungs, corpses and other horrifying imagery was forcing cigarette manufacturers to "say" something they otherwise would object to.

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If Mississippi can do it, we can do it here, too.

Mississippians yesterday defeated a personhood measure -- the same kind of initiative that anti-choice extremists in Montana are trying gather signatures for right now.

But as those in Mississippi and Colorado and North Dakota before them have said: Women's lives matter and we respect their choices.

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Too many people take their right to vote for granted. Hope you aren't one of them today, and that you have voted.

You may not realize it, but your voting rights were under attack in Montana just months ago. The Montana Legislature even passed a bill during this year's session to do away with same-day voter registration -- a bill that the ACLU fought. Thankfully Governor Brian Schweitzer vetoed that bill. That means even if you aren't registered it's not too late for you to do so at your county election office where you can also cast a ballot today.

Voter suppression laws were introduced and passed in many states this year. It's a disturbing trend that only serves to disenfranchise people. The most common way is by requiring photo identification at the polls. The new laws were introduced to combact the non-existent problem of voter fraud, creating a very real problem -- today 21 million voting age Americans now lack the proper identification to cast a ballot. That's 21 million Americans who are being denied their right to vote.

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Lost in the joyous stories about the release of the three Americans imprisoned by Iran after unknowingly hiking over the border of Pakistan into Iran was the horror endured by the one female prisoner.

Sarah Shroud revealed her traumatic experience and the pain it still causes her in a poignant opinion piece in Saturday's New York Times:

After two months with next to no human contact, my mind began to slip. Some days, I heard phantom footsteps coming down the hall. I spent large portions of my days crouched down on all fours by a small slit in the door, listening. In the periphery of my vision, I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that nothing was there. More than once, I beat at the walls until my knuckles bled and cried myself into a state of exhaustion. At one point, I heard someone screaming, and it wasn't until I felt the hands of one of the friendlier guards on my face, trying to revive me, that I realized the screams were my own.

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Real ID is technically alive, but in every practical way is as good as dead. With 25 states refusing to comply, the federal government has repeatedly pushed back the implementation date. The latest delay moves it into 2013.

Montana led the charge against this federal invasion of every American's privacy in 2007 when it became the first state to refuse to implement Real ID. The ACLU of Montana began encouraging this idea in 2006.

The reasons were obvious. Real ID would have turned drivers' licenses into national ID cards which could be electronically scanned and used to track everything from travel to voting to gun ownership. And putting the system in place carried an estimated nationwide price tag of more than $23 billion.

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We are heartened that Montana Sen. Max Baucus is opposing two provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which strike at the heart of our constitutional protections for a fair justice system.

Those two provisions would authorize indefinite detention of American citizens without any charges and without a trial (Section 1031) and require that all terrorism suspects be held in military custody (Section 1032).

In a letter to top Congressional leaders, Sen. Baucus states his opposition to both sections. Indefinite detention, he says, "violates basic American Constitutional principles" and "is contrary to the nature of the system of checks and balances the authors of our Constitution considered essential to the preservation of liberty."

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They're at it again. Anti-choice extremists in Montana want to declare fertilized eggs people and women's bodies under the control of government.

In Missisippi, a similar initiative made the ballot and will be voted on Nov. 8. Our hope is that it will not pass. It's ambiguity alone makes it incredibly dangerous for women.

And the initiative proposed here is not much different. Not only does CI-108 take aim at abortion, it could also lead to government interference into pregnant women's decisions on things like prenatal care, diet, exercise and even birthing options.

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This week marks the Patriot Act's 10th anniversary. It's certainly not an anniversary to celebrate.

The Patriot Act was thrown together in just 45 days, and Americans have been paying the price ever since. Government surveillance powers now pervade every corner of our lives.

And despite repeated chances to eliminate or reform it, lawmakers have refused to make any real changes.

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Living quietly at home isn't possible, however, when others want to nose into your bedroom and discriminate against you for your sexual orientation.

That's the message from blogger Greg Smith in response to a letter to the editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle chiding participants in the Pride parade for "flaunting" their "lifestyle." Smith writes: "We would love to live our lives quietly- but there are laws (and lack thereof) and attitudes that prevent that. We don't always feel safe. We aren't always treated with dignity and respect. We don't have equal protection under the law... it's hard to live a normal life when there are people just like me who are threatened with violence all over this country. It's hard to live a happy life when you're afraid."

The original letter writer's complaint is a common one. It makes me wonder. Is her discomfort with LGBT people or is her discomfort with the fact that they are pointing out how people like her want nothing more than to keep them as second-class citizens?

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The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of appeals has ruled that police used excessive force when they used stun guns on a pregnant Washington state woman and an Hawaiian woman involved in a domestic dispute.

Neither woman was threatening the officers.

The first was simply refusing to sign a traffic citation and had told police she was pregnant before the officer stunned her three times in less than a minute.

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Misssoula County Sheriff Carl Ibsen says he sees no need for significant changes at the Missoula County Detention Facility.

The Missoulian Editorial Board disagrees, and so do we.

Inmate deaths, a violent (possibly racially motivated) assault and employee union complaints within just the past couple months all point to a troubled facility. Change is needed to protect both prisoners and staff.

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The unfairness and injustice of the death penalty has been front and center recently with the execution of Troy Davis, a Florida man who was convicted of murder with no physical evidence and only the testimony of witnesses, most of whom later recanted.

Now a new Gallup Poll shows that attitudes about the death penalty are changing. Americans are increasingly opposing capital punishment.

According to the poll, 35 percent of Americans oppose the death penalty, with 61 percent supporting it for people convicted of murder. That level of support is the lowest it's been in the United States since 1972.

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By Katy Heitstuman

ACLU of Montana Operations Manager

Civil liberties have always been something that requires a lot of time, energy, and resources to defend. The ACLU and other organizations work alongside many state funded programs. The tough economy is forcing budget cuts across the spectrum. Unfortunately, many of these cuts are having disastrous effects on civil rights. Cities, counties, and states all across the country are facing these problems. Some localities are working hard to preserve access to important services and others are making an already tense situation even worse.

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Today is National Coming Out Day -- a day for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to tell their friends and family about their sexual orientation or gender identity, for those who already have done that to share their stories about what coming out was like, and for straight allies to support their LGBT friends.

Personally, I love this image on the left. This isn't a guy peeking out of the closet. This is a guy joyously kicking it open as he celebrates who he is. I wish coming out could be this way for everyone.

Unfortunately it's not always that way. While some LGBT people find love and support on the other side of the door, some find ridicule, fear and bullying. This can be especially true in our middle schools and high schools, where being different from the majority paints a target on kids' backs.

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Those are the words that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Bruce Norum used to describe an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim screed supposedly penned by a former American Airlines pilot. Norum recently forwarded that essay to a fellow ICE employee and Helena immigration attorney Shahid Haque-Hausrath, a Muslim Arab-American.

"Good" isn't the right word to describe the reactionary and bigoted diatribe titled "YOU WORRY ME!" "Appalling," "ignorant," and "discriminatory" would be better descriptors. That someone charged with enforcing our immigration and customs laws would forward such rhetoric along with a recommendation is deeply troubling. Now we're the ones who should worry - worry about Norum's prejudices in his duties of overseeing deportations and about federal immigration law being justly and fairly applied in Montana.

The author of the e-mailed essay demands loyalty oaths for Muslim-Americans. For us, that recalls dark days in American history. Japanese-Americans were forced to take loyalty oaths during World War II. Such oaths were also commonly ordered during the oppressive McCarthy era of rooting out communists (real and imagined). Here are examples from Nebraska, and the University of California. History has never looked kindly on these violations of civil liberties, and we shouldn't take demands for loyalty oaths lightly today, especially from government officials.

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Flathead area residents, please join us tonight for the Fair is Fair tour in Kalispell.

The event kicks off at 7 p.m. at Christ Episcopal Church, 213, Third Ave., East.

Rev. Gil Caldwell, a longtime civil rights activist who  participated in the "Mississippi Freedom Summer" of 1964, the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965, and the March on Washington, is the featured speaker.

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In a heartbreaking, infuriating and shameful announcement, the Georgia Board of Parole and Pardons today upheld Troy Davis's death sentence.

Barring a last-minute change of heart from that board, a man who is probably innocent will be killed tomorrow by state-imposed lethal injection.

Take action now to make that change of heart happen.  

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Beep beep! We're on the road to promote fairness and justice.

The Fair is Fair Tour hosted its first event over the weekend in Billings, where a good-sized crowd turned out at Grace United Methodist Church to hear civil rights activist Gil Caldwell, documentarian Marilyn Bennett of Truth in Progress and our own Ninia Baehr talk about faith and same-sex couples.

It was a great dialogue and we're grateful to the Billings Gazette and KULR-8 for covering it. Thanks!

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Time after time I hear people say that they support the death penalty because some people are simply so bad that they deserve to die. The death penalty, they say should be, and is, only used for the worst of the worst.

I don't agree with that. At all. But I'd like to know where those people are for Troy Davis. Are those death penalty supporters rallying for his execution to be halted?

Troy Davis appears before the Georgia Pardons and Parole Board on Monday. It's his last chance to avoid execution at midnight on Wednesday, Sept. 21.

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Rev. Gil Caldwell's plane touched down in Billings today. Forty years ago he was hip-deep in work on racial justice. For the next two weeks he's in Montana to spread the word about the need for relationship recognition of gay and lesbian couples during the Fair is Fair Tour.

Caldwell is part of an exciting project called Truth in Progress. Together, he and documentarian Marilyn Bennett of Helena are taking part in a multimedia project to promote cross-cultural understanding around issues of race, sexual orientation/gender identity, and religion.

The ACLU of Montana and Truth in Progress are teaming up for this cross-Montana tour to explore connections between sexuality, race and faith.

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Don't start counting security cameras when you're out and about unless you really want to be creeped out. When you start looking, you'll see them everywhere.

Now the city of Helena is getting into the surveillance camera business. Monday evening the Helena City Commission approved installing security cameras at Memorial Park and in some parking garages as part of a pilot project.

The goal? Reduce crime, especially vandalism. The cost? To the city's coffers, $6,000-$7,000, but to our privacy... it remains to be seen.

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The days leading up to the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks have largely focused on those who died, the heroes who worked so hard to rescue them and the troops who have been fighting the war on terror ever since.

It's been a bloody and draining decade for us all. But we can't let fear control us for the next decade. And we can't let fear destroy the civil liberties that make our nation the wonderful place it is.

Montana has resisted some attempts to rein in our freedoms, but there is much more we must do as a nation, as explained in our guest editorial today in the Montana Standard and Missoulian. The ACLU of Montana and the ACLU nationwide are committed to maintining all our civil liberties.

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You have a right to photograph federal buildings, cute puppy dogs and, yes, even cops if you are in a public area.

With the rise of cell phone cameras that capture not only images, but also video, more Americans are exercising their rights and some police aren't too happy about it.

There is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs or video in public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply. That is illegal.

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The White House announced this week that it is starting its own petition mechanism online, called "We the People."

Kind of a White-House-approved version of online petitioning like that found on change.org, the site is a place where people can create petitions and then link to them to gather signatures.

It's a simple way to get your petition in front of White House officials, but doesn't come without a catch. In order to have your petition reviewed by staff, it must gather at least 5,000 signatures within 30 days.

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By Katy Heitstuman

ACLU of Montana Operations Manager

Immigration reform is an issue being talked about from the White House to the halls of state legislatures to courts around the nation. Many states, and citizens feel frustrated by what they see as a lack of progress on the federal government's part in comprehensive immigration reform; something all sides of the issue can agree is needed.

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If he only had a heart, former Vice President Dick Cheney might not be boasting in his new book, In My Time, about his part in our country's shameful post-9/11 torture practices.

As I watched his interview on NBC's Dateline, and saw him alternately discussing his failing heart and his pride in authorizing waterboarding, secret prisons and indefinite detention, I couldn't help wondering if the two were connected.

Of course, plenty of  people have physical heart problems that don't corrupt their morality.

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Being Muslim in America keeps getting harder and harder.

Since 9/11, American distrust of Muslims, discrimination against them in the form of harassment, anti-mosque activity and hateful rhetoric has steadily risen.

According to a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey, a majority of Muslims say that the 9/11 terrorist attacks have made it harder to be Muslim in the United States both because Muslim leaders have not spoken out enough against extremism and because of Americans' distrust.

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So what is the FBI up to these days? A lot, but not necessarily the kind of work that you and I wish they were doing.

Rather than tracking down criminals, they are busy spying on Americans. The FBI wants to determine whether these people are terrorists, which seems like a reasonable goal until you dig a little deeper. Most these investigations are opened with little or no indications of terrorist involvement.

Guess how many files a year the FBI is opening on "potential terrorists," and then check out this short Civil Liberties Minute podcast to find out the answer.

The ACLU of Montana has long fought Montana's death penalty -- both as a member of the Montana Abolition Coalition advocating the death penalty's repeal, and through litigation challenging the state's lethal injection protocol.

Now we're also watching with great interest a case in  Kalispell in which the attorneys for a man charged with murder are arguing that Montana's death penalty is unconstitutional because the sentence is decided by a judge, not a jury.

"It is only when there are no mitigating factors calling for leniency that the death penalty can be imposed, and those factors must be decided by a jury, not by a lone employee of the state," attorney Ed Sheehy said.

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Excited delirium: The only time you ever hear about it is in an police-involved death.

It's notlisted as a condition by the American Medical Association or the American Psychiatric Association. It's not included in the psychiatry bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Medical Disorders (DSM).

John Adams of the Great Falls Tribune has a great article today on how controversial the diagnosis of excited delirium is within the medical community. In it, ACLU Senior Staff Counsel for the National Prison Project Eric Balaban describes excited delirium as a "catch-all" diagnosis  police and forensic pathologists use when police actions lead to death.

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Perhaps Billings School District 2 Superintendent Keith Beeman learned something during the last school year.

Teachers in the district today met at the Alberta Bair Theater to launch the new school year -- a much more appropriate venue for a public school district meeting than where they were forced to gather last year.

Billings teachers were greeted by the message above in 2010 when they attended a manadatory Billings School District meeting prior to the beginning of the school year.

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District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock has ordered Montana State Prison officials to keep teenage prisoner Raistlen Katka out of solitary confinement. The judge also prohibited the Montana Department of Corrections from placing Raistlen in any sort of behaivior management plan (BMP) that deprives him of contact.

You may remember that Raistlen is the teenage prisoner the ACLU of Montana has been representing since 2009, when at the age of 16 he was placed in solitary confinement and subjected to BMPs that deprived him of clothing, plumbing, and dignity. At that time we referred to him as Robert Doe since he was still a minor.

Raistlen, suffering from mental illness suffered greatly under these conditions. On multiple occasions, he tried to kill himself -- by cutting himself with a razor, by attempted hanging and even by biting through his own wrists to puncture the veins.

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We're used to marching at least once a year for pride, but if you prefer a faster pace, check out the Stride 4 Pride 5k event in Billings this weekend.

The event, put on by the Pride Foundation, also includes a kids' dash and a post-race party.

If you see Kellie and Denise there, say, 'Hi.'

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Ninety-one years ago today, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, ensuring women the right to vote.

The amendment became law on Aug. 26, 1920 when the ratification was certified.

It's hard to believe that American women have been able to vote for less than a century.

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The Montana Department of Corrections wants a new drug, and thinks that drug and minor tweaks to its lethal injection protocol will fix the system.

They won't. The state's newly revised lethal injection protocol leaves too much to chance. It fails to mandate appropriate qualifications or adequate training for executioners and does not ensure that prisoners won't suffer during their executions.

 The policy leaves almost every important decision at the sole discretion of the warden. Past court rulings have been clear that the death penalty and protocol are only legal if the procedures are spelled out in explicit detail and are performed by people who are qualified and have the training and experience they need to conduct executions without inflicting pain and suffering.

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UPDATE (1:15 p.m., 8/17/2011) The man tased has died.

UPDATE (8/17/2011): The 41-year-old man remains in critical condition.

A Helena man was hospitalized Monday after being shocked with a Taser twice during a dispute with Police.

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The white supremacists and Montana civil liberties advocates agree on one thing -- Montana is the last best place.

For hate groups, that means the last best place for the white race. For civil rights groups, it means for the human race. Thankfully there are more people in Montana who agree with us than with the hate groups.

The Great Falls Tribune ran a frightening article over the weekend about racist hate groups in Montana. In it, Montana Human Rights Network Executive Director Travis McAdam discussed the reach of groups like the Montana Creativity Movement, pictured here.

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The University of Montana School of Law and the Christian Legal Society have reached a settlement over the Society's lawsuit demanding that the Student Bar Association fund its programs. The university won't have to.

It's a victory for freedom of religion and preservation of a school system that does not promote any religious group.

You wouldn't think that by reading the Alliance Defense Fund's press release on the settlement. The anti-gay, anti-choice group acts as if the Society won. They most certainly did not.

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Dear Super Committee members,

We appreciate your service to the country. Coming up  with ways to find $1.2 trillion in savings by Thanksgiving is an ambitious goal. Bet you could use some suggestions.

Here's one: Instead of cutting services for women and children, for seniors and the poor, for education spending, how about cutting back on prison spending?

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Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1988, which offered our nation's official (and long overdue) apology to the thousands of Japanese-Americans who were interred in camps during World War II under Executive Order 9066.

All told, 120,000 Americans were imprisoned during the war because of the nation's collective hysteria over its "enemies within." Make that imagined enemies.

The ACLU of Northern California was one of the few groups at the time to challenge this unlawful imprisonment when it took up the case of Fred Korematsu, who defied the order to leave his home and move to one of the camps. The took the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

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A new interactive timeline of torture and the CIA's torture tapes includes detail after detail of the agency's torture program, as uncovered by the ACLU through FOIA requests and court proceedings.

There are dates torture occurred and was videotaped, dates the court ordered the CIA to deliver the torture tapes to the  to the ACLU and even the dates the CIA illegally destroyed those tapes.

What there isn't in the timeline is any measure accountability for those who authorized torture, those who performed it or those who attempted to cover it up.

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"Do you think same-sex couples in Montana should have the same legal protections as married couples?"

That's the question in the current Bozeman Daily Chronicle poll.

The answer seems obvious to us. It's a shame that it's not obvious to everyone.

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By Katy Heitstuman

Today I gave a presentation to nine men and women from different African nations who are visiting the United States on a tour to learn about accountability in government. The ACLU of Montana was asked by the Office of International Visitors if we could speak to this group on the issue and our work surrounding it.

The presentation that I gave was a general overview of the work that the ACLU does both here in Montana and nationally to hold government to its own standard; the Constitution. In preparation for this presentation I tried to highlight for myself some of the ways that the ACLU works towards government accountability. I focused on jail standards and voting rights, as those for me are especially important ways the government works to be accountable to its citizens. Jail standards representing the base treatment that the government must provide for people once it deprives them of their liberty, and voting rights as the direct way people participate in government.

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When the ACLU of Montana first began exploring the possibility of a lawsuit seeking domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, it's something I wanted to work on because I knew it was right -- all couples deserve to be treated fairly.

But like with many of our cases, my feelings changed as I got to know the plaintiffs involved. My commitment to the principle remains, but my desire to win this for the wonderful couples involved has grown even stronger.

So I'm very happy that we are appealing our case, Donaldson and Guggenheim v. State of Montana to the Montana Supreme Court. These couples need domestic partnerships. Montanan values of fairness and to live and let live demand that they and other same-sex couples be able to get those domestic partnerships.

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Today, the ACLU of Montana, along with 34 other state-based ACLU affiliates, filed a public records act request to uncover information about warrantless cell phone tracking. 

As of December 2010, over 96 percent of the overall population of the United States carried a cell phone-an estimated 302.9 million people. But while Americans have quickly embraced cell phones and the convenience they offer, the widespread use of cell phones has given the government the unprecedented ability to track people's movements by tracking the geographical location of their cell phones.

The Montana Supreme Court ruled that cell phone communications are private, and we believe that protection extends to location information cell phones collect. We want to see if law enforcement in the state agrees.

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It's about time. Birth control without a copay will finally be required of health insurers.

Starting Aug. 1, 2012, any new or significantly changed plans must include birth control for women without any copayments according to rules announced Monday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The new rules also mandate insurers provide breast pumps, STD counseling and screening and other preventative care. Thank goodness the rules don't require the approval of Congress.

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This is the only kind of roadblock Montanans should be dealing with. They shouldn't be stopped by police who are on a fishing expedition for people who don't have the proper registration or insurance.

That's just the kind of suspicionless and warrantless roadblock that Missoula Police have been conducting, and they are unconstitutional.

ACLU of Montana Legal Director Betsy Griffing explains in the KECI-TV story that Montana's constitution has an even greater right to privacy than that contained in the U.S. Constitution.

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Imagine knowing that there is a treatment that can relieve your pain. Now imagine the federal government is making it difficult, if not impossible, for you to get that medicine.

That's the case right now for cancer, chronic pain and other patients in Montana who have been recommended marijuana by their doctors. Though the federal government isn't going after medical marijuana patients, they are hurting them by raiding and shutting down the caregivers those patients depend upon.

Two years after issuing a memo telling federal agents to not pursue those complying with state medical marijuana laws, a new memo from the U.S. Attorney General now threatens prosecution of anyone who grows, sells or distributes marijuana even if they are complying with state law.

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A recently released poll shows that a majority of Montanans support fairness in the form of domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.

In fact, the Montanans who support same-sex domestic partnerships with the same rights and responsibilities as marriage outpaces opposition by 13 percent.

That's good news for couples like Kellie and Denise (above), who have three children (two at home) in Laurel. Kellie and Denise know what happens when opposite sex couples can't get legal protection in Montana. When Kellie's father died, Denise could not get the bereavement leave her employer gives to opposite-sex married couples in the same situation. Now the couple is one of six plaintiff couples suing the state for domestic partnerships.

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You'd think that the days of politicians trying to manipulate the voting system to disenfranchise minorities and those who would oppose them were over in the 1960s. But if you thought that you'd be wrong.

Though there is little to no evidence of voter fraud, 30 states have recently enacted voting restrictions that will make it difficult, if not impossible for some to vote.

It sounds simple. Fifteen of the states are requiring voters to present photo identification. Not so tough, right? Just show a driver's license. But some people don't have driver's licenses. And those people are overwhelmingly those who  are racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, low-income individuals, students, and voters with disabilities.

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It's the kind of post that brings you to tears, fans your anger and makes you smile with hope, all at the same time.

Ming Linsley (on the right) and her fiancee,  Kate Baker (on the left) are suing the Wildflower Inn in Vermont for illegally discrminating against them by refusing to allow them to hold their wedding reception at the  inn.

 Ming's mom, Channie Peters, was in charge of scoping out locations for the couple's wedding reception, and thought she had the perfect spot. But when she told the Wildflower Inn employee that it wasn't a reception for a bride and a groom, but for a bride and a bride, she received a call back with the news the inn does not host "gay weddings."

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The Transportation Security Administration took a big step yesterday when it announced that it would be retrofitting its millimeter wave scanners to show only stick images of travelers rather than graphic images of their naked bodies.

The stick figures don't depict anyone's "junk."

If any unusual bulges or anomalies are caught by the scanners, those areas will be highlighted on the stick figure.

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The abuse is being perpetrated by the second largest American police force on American citizens. Police are beating, tear-gassing, pepper-spraying and even shooting rubber bullets at peaceful protestors.

In one shocking incident captured on video, a police officer even put his hands around an unarmed, sitting woman's neck, cutting off her circulation until she passed out.

This Americans subjected to this widespread abuse are a population that is greater in size than the populations of almost half U.S. states.

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Yep. You read that right.

A Washington State man tried to deposit a legitimate cashier's check at Chase Bank, and was arrested and thrown in jail for it.

His crime? Maybe it was being black and having a foreign name.

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Attitudes are changing, but we all must do more to increase acceptance of same-sex couples.

Here in Montana, the number of same-sex households took a big jump in the last U.S. Census, increasing by more than 54 percent since 2000. Still, some say that those numbers may not  reflect a jump in the number of gay and lesbian couples in Montana as much as they reflect those couples' increasing willingness to report themselves in the Census.

Gary Grant, a demographer at the UCLA Law School-based Williams Institute speculates that those Census figures may actually be a reflection of increasing acceptance of same-sex couples. "You're really capturing changes of attitudes and how big or small those are over time," Grant told the Missoulian.

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By now we're all aware at the alarming number of attacks on Planned Parenthood operations and funding at the national and state levels. But we've been mainly focused on how these bills and laws have violated our right to privacy.

They also violate the First Amendment right to free speech.

The full-on assault on reproductive health hit record levels this year. So far 19 state legislatures have enacted 80 anti-choice laws.

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A story in today's Los Angeles Times details the disturbing fact that crimes against gay, lesbian and transgender people rose by an alarming 13 percent in 2010.

Most often targeted were minorities and transgender women.Twenty-seven LGBT people were killed in hate crime violence. The data was compiled by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.

Among those killed was Colle Carpenter, a transgender Cal State Long Beach transgender student who was cornered in a campus restroom by an assailant who carved "It" on his chest.

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Imagine that your main contact with the world is through letters.

Imagine that contact being cut off.

That's what happened to the ACLU's client William Diaz-Wassmer at Montana State Prison when officials began refusing to send or allow him to receive any letters written in Spanish. Suddenly, he could no longer communicate with his family in California.

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By Niki Zupanic

Public Policy Director

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Back in primary school days when the Pledge of Allegiance was recited at the start of the school day, I stood up dutifully and recited along with everyone else. Of course, I had no idea what I was saying.

In later years when the issue has arisen I've at times said the pledge proudly, at others stood silently and most recently said the pledge minus the words "under God" added in 1954.

One beauty of the nation the pledge is for? That we have the right to say it or not.

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By Niki Zupanic

Public Policy Director

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We talk a lot about the First Amendment right to free speech, but not as much about a core component of that right -- the right to take that speech to your government in petition assembly and protest.

A Great Falls woman was forcibly thrown out of a City Commission meeting in 2007 and even briefly jailed for exercising that right. Last week she won her case against the city when a district court judge ruled that the city had violated her right to assembly, speech and government participation.

The ACLU has long fought for your rights to assemble, organize, petition your government and protest.

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Separation of church and state was so important to Thomas Jefferson that he designed his own tombstone to reference his drafting of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom in 1777, founding of the University of Virginia and writing the Declaration of Independence.

Being our nation's third president, didn't make the cut.

Jefferson, of course, is the Founding Father who famously explained that the Bill of Rights established a "wall of separation between the Church and State," but he's not the only one of our nation's early leaders who expressed the importance of religious liberty.

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If only it were simple.

But when it comes to medical marijuana in Montana, nothing is simple.

Between confusion over new Montana regulations taking effect today and no seeming end to federal raids of growers, medical marijuana providers face uncertain times.

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Independence Day is just days away, making now the perfect time to take action for America.

What better way to do that than to stand up for the First Amendment?

Politicians routinely wave the flag to show their patriotism. We don't have a problem with that.

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From family planning funding to increased restrictions on abortion, attacks on reproductive freedom are being launched at a frightening pace both in Washington, D.C., and in state legislatures across the country.

And it's not just abortion. It's sex education, contraception -- all aspects of our reproductive freedom -- that are under siege.

 Thankfully the ACLU and other reproductive rights organizations are hard at work in our nation's capital and in every state. We're even working to end U.S. funding for religious, abstienence-only sex education in Africa, where people are being told that God will protect them from AIDS.

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It seems the U.S. Supreme Court values some of your rights more than others. Free speech got a thumbs up this term, but the Fourth Amendment took a beating, even though the worst beating came at our own hands.

The Supreme Court also made several rulings in favor of big business to the detriment of everyday citizens.

ACLU National Legal Director Steven R. Shapiro reports on all the details, including the Supreme Court's strong stance for the First Amendment.

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 A cheer went up across the nation when New York legislators passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage.

It was the first time such a bill passed a Repbulican-controlled body, and in one day more than doubled the number of same-sex couples who can legally marry in the United States.

But New York isn't the only state where progress is being made on same-sex relationships.

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A few facts about who is imprisoned and what it costs us.

• Almost half of all prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes.
• Since 1987 spending on education has increased by 21 percent, while spending on prisons has increased by 127 percent.
• From 1970-2005 the population of the U.S. increased by 44 percent. During the same time period the prison population increased by 700  percent.

Locking more and more people up is not the answer to our nation's problems.

More facts in this informative infographic.

Earlier this week, Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in a brave New York Times article recounting how as young boy he left the Phillipines for a new life in America.

Sent by his mother to live with his grandparents in California, Vargas originally had no idea that he didn't have the proper papers. He only learned the truth as a teenager, when he tried to get a driver's permit.

For years Vargas lied about his immigration status. He feared being caught. But with his article, Vargas took a stand for himself and all other immigrants who share his story and hope for a solution.

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Study after study shows that executing people costs far more than imprisoning them for life without any possibility of parole.

Most recently, a study found that California is spending $184 million more a year on its death row inmates than it would had they been senteced to life without parole.

Costs include increased expense of capital trials and the condemned's legal representation as well as enhanced security on death row.

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Too often we hear the very untrue assertion that almost all churches oppose LGBT rights. Let's bust that myth right here, right now.

Clergy in Montana support same-sex couples. LOTS of clergy in Montana support our domestic partnership case.

Want proof? Here's a list of 66 who've signed onto a statement of support for our Donaldson and Guggenheim v. State of Montana domestic partnership case. And we know that list is only going to grow.

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If you're thirsty for justice and fairness for everyone or even just thirsty for water, you're in the right place.

Join the ACLU as a new member at the $35 level or higher today, and get one of these loud and proud ACLU of Montana water bottles.

They feature our logo on one side and our "Fair is Fair" logo promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people on the other side.

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The ACLU's mission isn't economically driven. It's about rights.

Still, sometimes the two issues do converge.

Take medical marijuana and legalizing marijuana in general. Clearly marijuana could be an economic benefit for both private businesses and the government.

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Such searches happened in April at Glasgow High School, and the ACLU of Montana wrote a letter to the school district seeking answers to why and how they were conducted.

The searches were conducted without warrants and, perhaps, without any concrete suspicions that any of the cars contained drugs. Executing such searches without any reasonable suspicion of wrong-doing would violate both state law and the district's own policy.

We hope to learn more about this search in the coming weeks as we work to protect students' rights in Montana.

Then 25 mph over the speed limit is barely speeding.

Federal surveillances just keeps getting worse. An article in the New York Times today reveals that the FBI is issuing new rules for its agents which will allow them even greater powers to investigate people and organizations for no reason, to dig around in your trash and to treat anyone they choose as a possible terrorist.

The FBI calls it "proactive" investigating. Hmm. More like a free-for-all witch hunt that allows agents to violate people's privacy with absolutely no cause.

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Good news for low-income same-sex couples in need of Medicaid services: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued guidance today that states may offer same-sex couples the same homeowners protections they extend to married couples.

At issue is a requirement that those needing long-term nursing home care exhaust their personal income and assets before qualifiying for the Medicaid benefit. That means the person must sell his or her home.

There have been protections in place allowing spouses of Medicaid nursing home residents to remain in their homes. Today's federal guidance says that states may now extend that same protection to same-sex partners.

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By Katy Heitstuman

ACLU of Montana Operations Manager

I was born on the last day of 1986, almost 14 years after the Roe v. Wade decision acknowledged a constitutional right to privacy. Growing up so many years after this hard fought battle had been won often left me complacent, with a false sense of security in my right to make private medical decisions in the confines of my doctor's office, and not in the courthouse, or on the Senate or House floor. This right however, isn't secure, and should never be something I, or young women anywhere, take for granted.

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There are many reasons to oppose capital punishment -- the depressing number of innocent people sentenced to death, its overwhelming use on minority and poor populations, a committment to preserving life...

But today let's just talk about one reason.

Money.

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Protecting civil liberties is serious business, but it doesn't have to always be glum!

Pride is a prime example of the joyful work that we do at the ACLU. So how to make it even happier? A pet photo contest, of course.

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Pets don't discriminate. They judge people by their character and the way they behave, not by their race, age, religion, gender identity

We sure love them for it.

These pooches are pretty darn eager to get their Pride on in Bozeman on June 18. Send a photo of your pet dolled up for Pride to aclu@aclumontana.org and we'll add it to the blog and our Facebook gallery.

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The short answer to the question of what we have 40 years after President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs is that we have more people in prison, devastated communities of color and are $1 trillion poorer for it. There certainly hasn't been a decrease in demand or supply.

The War on Drugs has deeply wounded our country.

The ACLU has long sought common-sense drug policy, including fair sentencing with an emphasis on treatment rather than overincarceration.

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A boxful of sunshine was delivered to our office today. Fitting for the first day of June that the rainbow sashes we ordered for Pride would arrive.

They're for our "fabuliffs" to wear in the Pride Diversity March on June 18 in Bozeman. We wanted to honor these remarkable couples who are suing the state for domestic partnership recognition in our case, Donaldson and Guggenheim v. State of Montana. They're our parade royalty.

We're really looking forward to Pride. The positive energy always gives us a boost, and it's so much fun to see you all face-to-face.

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Nope. Not talking about whether the Yankees are the greatest team in the world or the most reviled -- though you could start a few fights over that one.

According to a Gallup poll taken just this month -- physician aid in dying is the moral issue that most divides America. Forty-five percent of respondents said it is morally acceptable, with 48 percent saying it is not.

With just a three percent margin between those who approve and disapprove of aid in dying, opinion is much more evenly split than on any other issue. The next most divisive is abortion with a 12 percent gap between those who support choice and those who oppose it.

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Four deaths in six months. Cascade County Jail is a dangerous place to be these days.

Two of the deaths were ruled suicides, one is presumed to be from a drug overdose and the latest appears to be another suicide.

The most recent death happened on Wednesday evening when 39-year-old Michael Kimball was found hanging in his cell.

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And thank YOU ACLU supporter for taking a stand today against extending the Patriot Act.

The outlook on the issue right now is discouraging.

Despite Sen. Rand Paul's last-ditch moves to stall a vote on the Patriot Act, it appears that it's highly likely that it will ultimately pass without meaningful reforms.

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Congress wants to give the President unlimited authority to take action on the war on terror.

President Barrack Obama says he doesn't want it.

Yesterday afternoon, Obama threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) if it contains provisions granting the President unilateral authority over a war without end and limiting transfer of Guantanamo prisoners and where they may be tried.

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I know I've written about this a few times, but it's so important, and we really need you to contact Congressman Dennis Rehberg now. Congress will vote on worldwide war authority this week.

The Defense Authorization Bill contains an amendment that would allow the President to commit the U.S. to any action in the "War on Terror" without approval from Congress.

Please call Rep. Rehberg today at (202) 225-3211 and ask him to vote against worldwide war authority.

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For the first time since Gallup began asking the question, a majority of Americans say they support same-sex marriage.

The results this year flip-flopped from last, with 53 percent in favor of gay marriage and 45 percent opposed.

Some speculate that the Obama administration's decision to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of excluding openly gay and lesbian military service members may have contributed in part to the change in attitude over the past year.

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Justice may be blind, but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel a few coins in her palm. At least that's the way justice is working in much of the country these days.

We see it in the judicial system and death penalty which disproportionally punish the poor through sentencing disparities between powder cocaine and crack, blue-collar and white-collar crime or access to counsel and trial experts. And we see it in terms of government assistance -- cut programs to help the needy but leave tax breaks for wealthy corporations intact.

And now states across the country are mandating that welfare recipients undergo drug testing. Mind you, corporate executives benefiting from the bailout aren't told to pee in a cup.

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When are snail mail and land lines better than e-mail and cell phones? When it comes to privacy.

While technology has been improving at a breakneck pace, protections for the information we share via e-mail and cell phone are stuck back in the 1980s.

Yep. The 1980s. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act was passed in 1986 when brick phones were your mobile phone option and the World Wide Web hadn't even been created.

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The Hungry Beast put that question to the test, holding blue books emblazoned with "face" and posing personal questions to complete strangers in an offline social network experiment.

Not surprisingly, people weren't overly enthusiastic about sharing details of their habits, predilections and contact informaton to two odd men on the street.

But how many of us do just that each day via Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites?

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Last week we blogged about a new provision of the pending National Defense Authorization Act which would enable the President of the United States to unilaterally decalare war anywhere and anytime against terrorists.

What we didn't talk about is that such war could be declared within our very own borders, allowing the U.S. Military to attack people in the United States.

This is unprecedented in our nation's history. And it is very dangerous.

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Thanks go out to Gov. Brian Schweitzer for vetoing two bills the ACLU opposed this legislative session.

The first, Senate Bill 97, was an attempt to revise Montana's unconstitutional parental notification act. It would have required pregnant teens under the age of 16 to notify their parents before getting an abortion, or to obtain judicial approval to bypass their parents.

This bill would have put some teenagers in harm's way by delaying medical care and potentially subjecting them to domestic abuse.

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It's an elementary civics lesson. The checks and balances of our three-prong federal government -- executive, legislative and judicial branches -- were created so that we would be free from tyranny.

But now some members of Congress are eager to give up that system of checks and balances on a matter of as great importance as war. They want to pass legislation to enable the President of the United States to unilaterally declare worldwide war without a vote of Congress.

That's  a mistake.

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Many were cautious in 2009 when the Department of Justice issued a memo telling U.S. Attorneys that drug enforcement priorities should not be focused in medical marijuana states on those who were in compliance with those states' laws.

Turns out they had reason to be leery.

Earlier this year federal agents raided Montana medical marijuana businesses and U.S. Attorneys in medical marijuana states across the country have issued letters in recent weeks warning that they will prosecute those who are growing and distributing marijuana even if they are following state laws.

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By ACLU of Montana Legislative Intern Jim Kearns

It has been quite a ride! I am the legislative intern for the ACLU of Montana. I started in early February, not quite knowing what was in store for me, but I jumped in with both feet. So much has happened and I have learned so much from my experiences. Over the course of this legislative session I have made some truly great friends and worked with some amazing people. I got to testify on some important bills and I helped draft important documents.

My coworkers have truly been a wonder. They took me into their close-knit family and have included me in everything they have done. The easy camaraderie in the office, even through this tough session has just been amazing. The playful atmosphere often helped defuse the stress and tension of this often trying period. I was made to feel like part of the team from day one. I was trusted with meaningful and important tasks, and I did my best to meet expectations.

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Gotta love a parade, especially one as creative and fun as Helena's Vigilante Parade. The high school kids go all out on their floats depicting scenes from Helena history.

Some of it isn't too pretty.

In the Wild West days of our state, there wasn't much of a criminal justice system. Get caught up to no good, and after a perfunctory "hearing," you'd be hanging from a tree.

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Awed today by Bozeman High School senior Kevin Challender.

Somehow missed the wonderful Bozeman Daily Chronicle story last month about the eloquent and confident teenager and his video on YouTube about coming out as a gay teen in Montana.

 Wow. Kevin definitely has wisdom beyond his years. He talks about the bullying he endured in middle school, about his struggles with his own sexuality, and finally about the liberation of coming out to his family and friends.

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Going into the 2011 Legislative Session, some of us here in the ACLU of Montana's Helena office were less-than optimistic. Ok, we were downright pessimistic.

The landscape was looking pretty bleak for civil liberties issues. But when it comes right down to it, civil rights won more often than they lost.
All told, we testified on 59 bills covering topics ranging from aid in dying to reproductive rights, to DUI legislation to voting rights. And while 10 bills we supported did not become law this year, so far only two bills we opposed have been signed into law. Three more will be put to voters and eight still sit on the governor's desk.

In baseball, that's a pretty darn good batting average.

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Safe and free has been the mantra of the ACLU for a few years now. We believe that Americans don't have to give up all their freedoms to be safe and protected. In fact, giving up our freedoms can actually make us less safe by making us more vulnerable to our own government.

A great op-ed in the Boston Globe today examined America's journey down the road of sacrificing freedom for security, and what some are doing to fight back against the Patriot Act.

While the assertion that the ACLU only cared about topless bars and the Pledge of Allegiance during the 1980s and 1990s is inaccurate, the op-ed is spot on that we musn't give up what makes this nation great for a false sense of security.

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When we think of courageous soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors, most of us think of daring acts of heroism in the heat of battle.

But what about the acts of courage that require troops to stand up to their superior officers or fellow servicemen and servicewomen? After all, fighting for America is more than shooting at the enemy, it's doing what it takes to stand up for American rights and principles of justice. Sometimes that means doing what's right rather than simply what is ordered.

Today the New York Times ran an op-ed urging President Obama to honor the men and women who stood up for what is right by refusing to take part in torture.

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It's happened again.

Another person jailed in Montana has died in custody. This time a 27-year-old woman is reported to have committed suicide in the Missoula County jail.

This should not be happening. When a person is deprived of his or her freedom, it is prison and jail officials' responsibility to make sure that prisoner is safe.

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A Utah teenager, victimized by a convicted felon who used her to produce pornography and impregnated her, is hundreds of miles from an abortion clinic. She has little money to pay for an abortion and hotel stay to meet the 24-hour waiting period. Even if she did, she has no driver's license.

In  a desperate attempt to miscarry, the 17-year-old girl pays someone $150 to beat her. She does not miscarry.

Did the state of Utah give her mental health treatment and counseling? No. She was arrested and charged with criminal solicitation of murder. Thankfully, the judge tossed her case out, but Utah abortion opponents were outraged.

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The worst of the worst. We're not talking about the people held in Guantanamo. We're talking about some of the reasons they were kept there.

The most recent trove of documents from Wikileaks provides some disturbing information about why the U.S. captured, tortured and imprisoned some of Gitmo's inmates:

• A sharecropper because he was familiar with mountain passes,
• A man owned a Casio watch,
• An Al Jazeera cameraman might offer information about how the network operates -- tortured and held for six years,
• An 89-year-old man with dementia who officials wanted to talk about documents belonging to his son.

It makes you sick to your stomach.

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You can hear it in their voices. The passion and determination of those who know they are right.

Our same-sex domestic partnership plaintiffs (I call them "fabuliffs because they are anything but plain) aren't giving up.

Two of our couples were featured on news reporters overnight. Kellie and Denise in Billings on KULR-8, and Jan and Mary Anne in Helena on Montana Public Radio.

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The Supreme Court blew it today. No other way to put it.

When the Court ruled that prisoners cannot seek monetary damages from states or state officials when their rights are violated under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law meant to protect the religious rights of prisoners, they gave prisons and prison officials a "gimmee."

That's because suing for monetary damages is often the only redress prisoners and former inmates have. It's their only way to hold prison officals' feet to the fire.

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Time's up for you to get your taxes into Uncle Sam and the state of Montana.

It's a good time to remember that a government's ultimate policy document is its budget.

When Congress tries to defund Planned Parenthood or some Montana legislators attempt to institute a voucher program for private, religious schools, it's about more than money. It's about our ability to exercise our rights under the Constitution.

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Want to know what the U.S. will look like in 20 years? Take a look at what's going on in our schools.

We're not just talking about the quality of education and how well students are being taught reading math and science. We're talking about how they are being schooled to treat each other.

Today students across the country are marking the Day of Silence by taking a vow of silence for the day in protest of the bullying and harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students.

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The stories just keep coming.

First it was a woman with a prosthetic breast and a man with a catheter who were humiliated by TSA screeners.

Now it's children. The latest scandal involves the patdown of a 6-year-old girl in Louisiana.

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Today Gov. Brian Schweitzer fired up his veto brand to destroy 17 bills.

Three of those bills are legislation that the ACLU of Montana opposed, and we are so grateful that they will not become law:

• HB 456 to limit sex education by forcing parents to "opt-in"
• HB 180 to end same-day voter registration in Montana
• HB 161 to repeal Montana's voter-approved medical marijuana act

In addition, Gov. Schweitzer already vetoed SB 176 to prohibit insurers in the state exchange from covering abortion.

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From our legislative intern, Jim Kearns:

Out of all of the issues that I have worked on this session during my time at the ACLU, the one that has become most important to me is the abolition of the death penalty. Initially I was very conflicted about this issue. I believed that certain crimes were so heinous and some people so far beyond redemption that the only answer was to terminate them. That has changed however since I began working on this issue. I have learned so much about the bigger picture.

I learned that the death penalty is used unfairly, that minorities and the poor are more likely to receive a death sentence then a rich, white defendant. I learned that prosecutors will use the threat of the death penalty to coerce a false confession. The death penalty does not act as a deterrent. States which perform executions have a higher on average murder rate than those that don't. A death penalty case makes a murderer a celebrity, while making the victim and his or her family a side show. With this information in mind I altered my position on this important issue.

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What do you do when facts don't seem to matter to your opponents?

That's been a huge problem for the ACLU and its allies this session in Montana and in Washington, D.C.

Nevermind that just 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's services are abortions. As The Colbert Report points out, just round it up to 90 percent. After all, an elected legislator's statements aren't meant to be factual. Really!? In most places they call that lying. I guess when you know that people won't buy into cutting funding for things like pap smears and mammograms, lying may seem like a good option. We don't agree.

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It's that time of year again... Not tax time. Something equally scary -- prom time.

You may remember that last year the ACLU represented a Mississippi student who was prohibited from wearing a tuxedo and bringing her girlfriend to prom. When Constance McMillen won her case, the school cancelled its prom rather than allow her to attend.

It was a sad story, but ultimately spoke of the power of one student to make a change for the better.

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Happy news today that the ACLU of Montana has reached a settlement with Lake County over the treatment of pregnant prisoners with opiate dependencies.

The settlement is the culmination of a lawsuit we and the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project brought against the county in 2009 on behalf of Bethany Cajune, a pregnant mother who suffered serious medical complications while incarcerated in the Lake County Detention Facility for traffic violations.

Bethany was four months pregnant at the time and was undergoing medical treatment for opiate addiction. Despite her doctor's warnings, Lake County Detention Center staff denied Bethany her medication. She underwent rapid withdrawal, causing her severe dehydration, fainting, vomiting and other complications that endangered her pregnancy.

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A bit of good news on reproductive choice emerged from the Montana State Capitol this week. Governor Brian Schweitzer vetoed a bill to prohibit health insurance plans offered through the state's health insurance exchange from covering abortion services.

Of course, we all know where veto power on reproductive rights attacks should, and must, ultimately rest. With women. Each of us has a right to privacy that includes the final say about what is or is not done to our bodies.

Attacks on choice have been coming fast and furiously in Montana and across the country.

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Today marks the 43rd sad anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in Memphis.

Today King is largely (and rightly) extolled for his work on racial justice. Many forget that the reason he was in Memphis was to support the city's sanitation workers in their fight for the right to collectively bargain. He was as much for economic justice as he was for racial justice. King knew that people needed fair wages and benefits to take advantage of the American Dream. The ACLU continues work in this area today.

While the effort to end racial discrimination is not over, there has definitely been progress in the past four decades to ensure that people are treated equally no matter the color of their skin. True, there is still much to be done, including fighting off attacks against immigrants and Arab-Americans. But it is no longer socially acceptable in most of America to use racial slurs and to vilify people of other races. That's good, and we'll keep working to advance the cause.

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Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- all are declared rights under the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

The ACLU primarily focuses on the rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, but today's rally in Helena is a good reminder that without basic needs met -- food, health care, housing -- it's incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to exercise our rights to free speech, privacy, voting...

Turning away federal dollars for social services, cutting funding for family planning, medical care, child services is a blow against the right to human dignity promised Montanans in our state constitution.

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Imagine being caged in a 3-foot by 8-foot room.

A concrete slab is  your bed. Concrete walls surround you. No window. No sound. The harsh, fluorescent lights are on 24-hours-a-day. Or they aren't on at all and you are plunged into complete darkness.

You don't know if it is night or day.

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Congress rushed to pass the Patriot Act just 45 days after the Sept. 11 attacks. We have paid a huge price in loss of privacy ever since. Anonymous roving wiretaps, limitless library record searches and warrantless demands for Internet records are just some of the intrusions the federal government can now initiate with no oversight. We don't even get to know who they are spying on.

Today the American Civil Liberties Union testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Terrorism and Homeland Security about the dire need to reform the Patriot Act.

"By expanding the government's authority to secretly search private records and monitor communications, often without evidence of wrongdoing, the Patriot Act has violated our most basic right -- the freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into our private lives -- and thwarted constitutional checks and balances," said Michael German, ACLU Senior Policy Counsel and former FBI Special Agent, in his testimony. "Under the Patriot Act, the government has the right to know what you're doing, but you have no right to know what it's doing."

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Last night, inboxes in Helena were dinging with an e-mail from Montana Sen. Christine Kaufmann. In her message, Sen. Kaufmann described budget cuts to services for needy children, senior citizens, people with disabilities and more. Kaufmann, who opposed the cuts, said the budget slashing wasn't based on a budget of poverty, but rather, a poverty of spirit.

It's an apt description of much of what has happened in the Montana Legislature this session. The Capitol has been a court of judgment rather than a  house of compassion.

Just today, the House of Representatives voted down a blast motion by Rep. Diane Sands to  bring Sen. Tom Facey's bill to end the codified vilification of gay men and lesbian women by removing gay sex from the state's deviate sex code to the House floor. It had earlier been tabled by the House Judiciary Committee.

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The ACLU's 90th Anniversary Exhibit made a very visible and very powerful stand for civil liberties Monday, March 7, 2011, in the Montana Capitol Rotunda. Hundreds of people viewed the exhibit over the course of the day, and ACLU Washington Legislative Office Director Laura W. Murphy inspired the lunchtime crowd with her words of encouragement for the struggle for civil liberties here in Montana and in Washington, D.C.

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Dear Rep. James Knox,

We don't need your kind of discrimination in Montana.

Your bill to deny Americans the fundamental protections of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is wrong and unconstitutional. House Bill 392 requiring Montana to deny citizenship to many U.S. citizen babies born in the U.S. to immigrant parents is akin to the post-Civil War laws in Confederate states that sought to keep former slaves and their children from having equal rights. The bill contradicts the long-standing 14th Amendment guarantee that all people born in the U.S. and under its jurisdiction are citizens of the U.S. and the state in which they reside and equal under the law.

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The ACLU of Montana filed today a response to the State's motion to dismiss and requesting summary judgment in our case Donaldson and Guggenheim v. State of Montana. Plaintiffs, who are six long-term, loving, same-sex Montana couples are suing the state of Montana for failing to provide them and their families with legal protections in violation of the Montana Constitution's rights of privacy, dignity and the pursuit of life's basic necessities and its guarantees of equal protection and due process.

Although marriage is unavailable to same-sex couples in Montana because of the marriage amendment, the State still has a constitutional obligation to recognize and protect same-sex couples and their families through another relationship status like domestic partnerships.

The goal of this lawsuit is ensure that same-sex couples are able to protect their families with the same kind of legal protections that opposite-sex couples are offered through marriage.

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Is "God hates fags" protected speech?

It's certainly offensive, and horrible, especially in the setting in which the message is delivered -- at military funerals. But is it protected?

 That's the question that the US Supreme Court considered today when it heard arguments about a multi-million dollar judgement issued against the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church over its protest at a military funeral and the emotional distress it caused the dead Marine's  father.

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Recently you may have seen some of the media coverage of our case to help teenage prisoner Raistlen Katka.

Raistlen's case is an alarming one. At just 16 years of age he was incarcerated at the Montana State Prison after a minor altercation with two guards at Pine Hills Correctional Facility, a juvenile jail.

Due to post traumatic stress disorder caused by abuse as a child and other mental illness, Raistlen had trouble conforming to all the prison's rules. Rather than treat his psychological issues, however, prison officials placed Raistlen in solitary confinement. He lived in torment there for 1-1/2 years.

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