While residents living in Zone A areas head to shelters, and the rest of the city hunkers down for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, one group of New Yorkers who live on a tiny island between Queens and the Bronx are staying put: prisoners at Rikers Island. In a press conference yesterday, Mother Jones reports that Mayor Bloomberg said, "We are not evacuating Rikers Island." As the city's Department of Corrections tells the New York Times, "no hypothetical evacuation plan for the roughly 12,000 inmates that the facility may house on a given day exists." more ›

No good deed comes unpunished, right? The ACLU today filed a lawsuit [PDF] against pretty much everyone in Newark (not to mention Governor Chris Christie) to get to the bottom of Mark Zuckerberg's not-at-all-suspicious $100 million donation to the city's school system last year. They don't want to stop the donation, they just want to find out how it came to be, and the Newark is not making that easy. Essentially the suit seems to come down to the question "whose leg do you have to hump to get some transparency here?" more ›

A police source tells the NY Post they "inadvertently" omitted Romero from the weekly press package. Given the ACLU's often adversarial relationship with police, it's not immediately clear why they'd do anybody at the ACLU any favors. But the ACLU's reticence on the incident raised eyebrows. Wendy Kaminer at The Atlantic writes, "You might expect an organization advocating for government transparency (including a transparent criminal justice system) to consider a DWI charge a public matter; you might even expect the ACLU Executive Director to inform national board members of his drunk driving charge and pending court date. But... Anthony Romero has a history of keeping secret his own embarrassing or wrongful behavior." more ›

It seems that people just can't be reasonable when it comes to porn and prisons: the ACLU filed a lawsuit against a South Carolina jail which allegedly didn't allow prisoners to receive any reading materials other than the Bible. In response, the prison's lawyers argue that the ACLU is just saying that because they want to give prisoners lots of fetishistic, violent porn. Has the world really learned nothing from Buttwoman 2: Behind Bars?? more ›

In an encouraging sign for teenage vampires everywhere, the ACLU is threatening to sue a New Jersey school that wants to hold commencement ceremonies at the same place they've been doing it for over 60 years: the Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove, which belongs to a Christian ministry. Apparently a student's grandmother complained about the Christian iconography at the church after last year's graduation, and the ACLU demands that the Neptune High School board change the location. But they're not budging, and the two sides are at a standstill. Will graduation be like totally ruined? more ›

Watch your back, haters: The ACLU aims to counteract your abhorrent trash-talking with a new advertisement in Times Square. The video billboard (watch below) starts with a photograph of a woman in hijab standing before graffiti reading "Muslims Go Home." This is followed by a photo of "young Americans" holding signs reading "Support Freedom of Religion" and "Love thy Neighbor." (We're pretty sure this photo is from the "Ground Zero" mosque counter-protests over the summer.) The ad's message is "Fight Hate Speech With More Speech." Ironically, it's silent. But maybe you are supposed to provide the soundtrack with some love speech? more ›

Since the 1990s, local council members in Point Pleasant Beach have begun their meetings with the hit Christian prayer "The Lord's Prayer." And then along came local resident Sharon Cadalzo, who regularly attends council meetings and isn't a fan of "The Lord's Prayer" kicking things off. So she's gotten the New Jersey chapter of the ACLU to file a lawsuit to stop the tradition, which the ACLU says is forbidden by the Constitution. more ›

Last month a right-wing group threatened the MTA with a lawsuit in order to get their ad against the "Ground Zero" mosque onto city buses. Now the ACLU and NYCLU have chimed in with their own ad, seen here, supporting the Islamic community center proposed for Park Place. The ad will start appearing on buses on September 20th. Last month, the ACLU and NYCLU joined more than 100 groups in forming New York Neighbors for American Values, a coalition "devoted to the core American values of religious freedom, diversity, and equality that has supported the right of the community center to be built in its proposed location." The group will be holding a vigil tonight near Park51, on the eve of the planned 9/11 protest outside the site of the proposed mosque. more ›

On May 1st, Pascal Abidor, a 26-year-old doctoral student and dual U.S.-French citizen, was on an Amtrak train from Montreal to New York when a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer examined his two passports, which had visas for Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Although the officer had no reasonable cause to search and seize Abidor's property, he ordered him to turn on his laptop and enter his password so that his computer could be searched. The student was subsequently handcuffed, taken off the train, and kept in a holding cell for several hours before being released without charge. 11 days later, he finally got his computer back. Welcome to America, American citizen! more ›

Does that headline make some of you trolls a tad concerned that the bridge is collapsing down on top of you? Because it is, so stop being so nasty! Okay, we're bluffing, but not completely: Six commenters on a website about Elizabeth, Pennsylvania could have their identities revealed within a month, after a judge ruled in favor of Township Supervisor Thomas DeRosa, who is trying to determine who defamed him on the site's online bulletin board. The ACLU had been fighting on behalf of the commenters, but recently decided not to appeal and has turned over their I.P. addresses. more ›

Two Brooklyn women have filed a lawsuit against the NYPD, accusing two officers of wrongly arresting them outside the Marcy Houses last August. Taneisha Chapman and Markeena Williams claim they stopped by officers and asked to produce identification. They refused, pulling out a flyer issued by Assemblyman Nick Perry and the ACLU which states "It's not a crime to refuse to answer questions. You can't be arrested for merely refusing to identify yourself on the street." Cops arrested the two anyway, though they were later released and the unspecified criminal charges were dismissed. However, a spokesman for the Brooklyn DA said they could find no record of the arrest. more ›

The New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has joined a lawsuit filed by gay rights groups claiming the state government hasn't complied with the 2006 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that granting lesser rights to gay couples in civil unions was unconstitutional. The ACLU has issued an amicus brief on the subject, arguing that "When courts discover that their original remedial schemes for achieving equality through parallel structures have not achieved the intended results, they have ordered that the system of separate rights or privileges be discarded." They also argue that exclusion from rights is not a justifiable public interest. more ›

Five middle school and high school students are suing the Police Department over allegations that cops and school safety officers wrongfully arrested them and used excessive force. The plaintiffs in the class-action case — who range in age from 13 to 15 years old — say that "inadequately trained and poorly supervised police personnel engage in aggressive behavior toward students when no criminal activity is taking place and when there is no threat to health and safety," and often "confront and arrest students over minor disciplinary infractions such as talking back, being late for class or having a cell phone in school." more ›

The NYPD's stop and frisk policy shows no signs of abating. The latest data on the controversial program shows that the NYPD is on track to stop a record number of New Yorkers this year. more ›

Back in the day, being able to say, "Hey it's that Eyewitness News van!" after a run-in with the news vehicle was enough fodder to get through cocktail parties for the month to follow. Nowadays that sort of excitement is reserved for spotting the Google Street View vehicle, currently at the tail end of a month where it is traversing the five boroughs in order to update the nerd's eye view of New York on Google Maps. Street View is so popular that it's even spawned a website dedicated to capturing and sharing some of the more unusual images caught by the Google vehicle. While some of those pictures include being able to detect New Yorkers at specific spots around town, a concern for the local ACLU, Google spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo told the Times, "The spirit of Google Maps is not to tie in a specific person to a specific place." We passed along a Street View sighting by Nylon last month; the Times mentions the car's appearance on Jeremiah's Vanishing New York. While Google keeps many details of the car on the DL, the driver did tell one New Yorker that his next stop was Dubai. more ›

When 8-year-old Jaiden Haber appeared at her Amityville elementary school wearing a pink shirt reading "N the 'N-word'! It's Time!", Newsday reports she was sent to the principal's office and asked to change her shirt. Now, her mother and school officials disagree about whether or not an 8-year-old and her shirt should be what prompts dialogue on race. more ›