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Videotaping or photographing police in public places is usually legal, so long as you don't interfere with their activities. Nonetheless, doing so will often get you arrested...
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College students suffer from an unfortunate lack of privacy rights in many situations. The university owns the dorm, so school officials can often search rooms at their own discretion. College students still have 4th Amendment rights that apply in other situations...
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Traffic stops typically occur as a result of suspected moving violations committed by the driver of the vehicle. Passengers cannot be held responsible for the driver's conduct and are generally free to leave, unless police become suspicious of them during the course of the stop...
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No. The Supreme Court has never ruled that police must present the warrant when performing a search. The purpose of the warrant is to...
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No. If a police officer asks your permission to search, you are under no obligation to consent. The main reason why officers ask is because they don't have enough evidence to search without your consent. Don't expect an officer to tell you of your right not to consent. Any time you consent to a search request you are naively waiving your constitutional rights.
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This is a tricky issue. The simple answer is that citizens who are minding their own business are not obligated to "show their papers" to police. In fact, there is no law requiring citizens to carry identification of any kind. Once you get passed the surface, however, things get much more complicated...
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Be aware that private security personnel outnumber police officers in the United States by three to one. As a result, you may be more likely to be confronted by a security guard than by a police officer. You must also be aware of the following places where security personnel (governmental or otherwise) are permitted to search you without a warrant...
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No. We believe that most police officers are good, hardworking people who are doing a tough job. We need police to safeguard the life, liberty, and property of all people. To do this best, police officers should...
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Yes. Police can, will, and often do lie; especially if it helps them make arrests. The rules regarding entrapment usually tip in favor of law-enforcement, so police won't hesitate to trick you into incriminating yourself or others...
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No. The courts have made it clear that police officers do not have to tell people that they can refuse to consent to a warrantless search. Also, contrary to the belief perpetuated by popular police television shows, a person will not be read their rights subsequent to being taken into custody. A person only needs to be Mirandized when...
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In addition to compromising your safety and the safety of others, driving drunk is one of the stupidest things you can do, and one of the easiest ways to create overwhelming legal problems for yourself. DUI laws vary from state to state, and they have become increasingly harsh over the years...
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Everyone should be trained to assert their constitutional rights under the 4th Amendment in order to avoid the hassle and humiliation of police misconduct and illegal searches. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report on citizen-police contacts...
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Generally not. The Bill of Rights protections that matter most during police encounters are mandated by the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, and all states are required to follow them. States can offer more protection of these rights, but not less. There are some variations regarding...
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The sad fact is that most people believe that they are under some kind of obligation to acquiesce when an officer contacts them and asks permission to search them or their belongings. The truth is exactly the opposite...
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Unfortunately, police may sometimes search you even if you refuse consent. If they find anything illegal, you'll have to get a lawyer and fight it out in court, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the search will hold up...
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Written by Courtenay Strickland, ACLU - Florida
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Wednesday, 06 May 2009 00:00 |
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But we called for your help, and you came through. Thousands of ACLU members contacted their legislators and Governor Crist. Your voices were heard: we will not allow our rights to be trampled on by the legislature! Thank you for making calls and sending e-mails. We couldn't have done this without you.
Many of the bills we tracked and opposed this session were important, but our energy was focused like a laser on defeating the voter suppression bills.
Here are some of the bills that we opposed, and thanks to you, were able to defeat:
- Mandatory ultrasounds, requiring doctors to perform an ultrasound on all women prior to receiving an abortion, preventing doctors from determining what's in the best interest of the patient;
- Religious license plates, which would have violated the Establishment Clause by creating government-sponsored religion; and
- Voter suppression (see below).
We also supported various pieces of legislation:
- Civil Rights Legislation: creating statewide protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Floridians. We hope this will be back next year.
- Adoption: Repealing the ban preventing gays and lesbians from adopting children. Although this legislation didn't come up, we continue to fight this bigoted and unique ban through our lawsuit against the state, which is now in the 3rd District Court of Appeals on behalf of a father of two foster children in North Miami.
- Prevention First: assuring that rape survivors have access to emergency contraception no matter what sexual assault treatment center they utilize, and ensuring that all women with valid prescriptions (if required) are able to access contraception.
- Healthy Teens: guaranteeing that schools choosing to provide sexuality education provide information that is medically accurate.
- Civil Rights Restoration: breaking the link between employment licensing and restoration of civil and voting rights for persons with past felony convictions. In a true sign of progress, the Senate voted in favor of this legislation this year after it successfully passed three committees. We will work for passage by the full legislature next year.
Voter Suppression Re-Cap
In what is being recognized as the largest group of organizations to ever come together in Florida to defeat a single piece of bad public policy, over 40 groups mobilized their members and created earned media -- including editorials in every major Florida newspaper and The New York Times -- to defeat the voter suppression legislation that was before the legislature. The groups varied from the ACLU to AARP, Progress Florida to Florida PIRG, NAACP to the League of Women Voters, and many others -- too many to name.
The House and Senate bills, if passed, threatened to:
- Further limit the number of IDs that voters could use at the polls, without offering a reasonable alternative;
- Further disfranchise disabled voters by adding a four-year extension to the date when paper ballots were to be available for voters with disabilities;
- Restrict voter registration efforts;
- Impose unnecessary restrictions on petition-gatherers;
- Force more voters to vote unnecessarily on provisional ballots, which have a high rejection rate; and much more.
We wouldn't have been able to defeat this legislation without you. Your efforts, combined with our lobbyists' work in Tallahassee, our Voting Rights Project based in Miami, and the critical mass of the over 40 organizations that the ACLU of Florida helped organize to fight for one single cause, brought this legislation to its knees.
We may have crushed these bills this year, but rest assured that we will face a similar battle in the years to come.
Thank you for your continued support of the ACLU, and for your activism. You have made a difference.
Sincerely,
Courtenay Strickland
Director, Public Policy
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