The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world—a rate five to ten times higher than those of countries like Canada, France, and the UK.
The ACLU has long fought to protect Americans’ basic right to privacy—the right to be left alone in our homes and our private lives, without fear of government intrusion. Today, new and emerging technologies are outpacing the privacy protections on which we have long relied.
The authors of the Declaration of Independence outlined a bold vision for America: a nation in which all people would be free and equal. More than two hundred years later, it has yet to be achieved.
As enshrined in the First Amendment, religious freedom includes two complementary protections: the right to religious belief and expression and a guarantee that the government neither prefers religion over non-religion nor favors particular faiths over others.
Protecting the reproductive freedom and civil rights of Vermonters has always been central to the ACLU of Vermont’s work. In 1970, three years after its founding, the ACLU joined a legal challenge to overturn a Vermont law that prohibited abortions.
In America, students do not lose their constitutional rights “at the schoolhouse gate.” Unfortunately, however, schools continue to demonstrate a disturbing willingness to abridge students’ rights.