By Melissa Goodman A decade ago, voters in Buffalo approved a local law that provided full civil rights protections to transgender residents. But New York State, despite its proud, progressive history, has fallen behind its second-largest city — and 16 states — in protecting the essential civil rights of hundreds of thousands of transgender and gender non-conforming residents. For these New Yorkers, the simplest and most fundamental parts of their identity — their clothing, their appearance, their name—expose them to hostility, exclusion and sometimes even violence.

By Corey Stoughton Medical experts released a report last week confirming for the first time that Tasers — the electronic stun guns that are becoming ubiquitous among cops in New York — can kill you. The report says that these weapons, which deliver up to 50,000 volts of electricity through barbed wires or direct contact with the skin, can set off irregular heart rhythms and deadly heart attacks.

By Amol Sinha and Taylor Pendergrass Every year, thousands of people, most of whom have not yet been convicted of any crime, are kept in squalid conditions at county jails in Suffolk and Nassau counties. The New York Civil Liberties Union has sued both counties over the inhumane conditions at their respective jails. The appalling conditions at local county jails must be remedied immediately, but meeting minimum standards is only a temporary solution to a symptom of a much larger problem: over-incarceration.

By Udi Ofer New York State’s heralded anti-bullying law is about to go into effect July 1. But the state Board of Regents recently took some teeth out of the law, known as the Dignity Act, when it said that charter schools don’t have to provide in-class instruction to schoolchildren about the dangers of discrimination and harassment, leaving their students without a key protection from bullying.

By Christopher Dunn Though the constitutionality of the health are law has consumed most of the Supreme Court’s attention recently, the Court of course continues to grapple with other weighty matters. One of the most important of those was argued on March 21, when the Court took up the issue of constitutional liability when law-enforcement officers arrest people in retaliation for the exercise of their First Amendment rights.

By Corinne Carey No doubt you’ve sat in an examination room as a doctor scrawled notes about your treatment or diagnosis. You’ve probably had to describe your medical history to new doctors, or endured the hassle of transferring your paper records from one physician to another.

By Donna Lieberman The religious congregations at the heart of a recent controversy about the separation of church and state — nearly all of them Christian — are upset that a recent federal appeals court decision is forcing them out of the New York City public schools they have long called home. This is an unconstitutional attack on religion, they say, claiming to have been singled out for eviction simply because their community group is religious.

By Udi Ofer The United States Supreme Court refused in December to intervene in a 16-year legal battle against New York City’s prohibition on the use of schools for religious worship services. Some 160 religious congregations, almost all Christian denominations, now have until Feb. 12 to stop using schools as houses of worship. They won’t go quietly and have enlisted the help of state and city lawmakers. On Thursday, the City Council‘s education committee has scheduled a hearing on a resolution to allow religious groups access to schools.

By Christopher Dunn A United States Supreme Court that has been systematically diluting the Fourth Amendment rights of criminal defendants dropped a bombshell last week with its unanimous ruling in United States v. Jones that police use of GPS devices on the vehicles of suspects is a search under the Constitution.

By Udi Ofer We have known for years that the New York Police Department handcuffs misbehaving schoolchildren as young as 5. But just how deep and wide the use of punitive tactics against young children has been unclear — until now.