Legislative advocacy is a critical part of the NYCLU's interdisciplinary approach to protecting civil liberties, which also includes litigation, community organizing, and communications.
As part of its work to affect legislation the NYCLU distributes dozens of legislative memoranda each year. Legislative memoranda are position papers that the NYCLU distributes to the governor's office and to state legislators and their staffs laying out our views on bills under deliberation or on issues that we feel the Legislature needs to address.
Every pregnant individual has a right to be treated with dignity and to have the necessary resources and supports that enable them to truly exercise agency in their reproductive decision making. However, the reproductive rights and wellbeing of pregnant inmates are dangerously disregarded.
Chapter 834 of the Laws of 1940 allow police leadership to exercise complete control over all misconduct and disciplinary proceedings against officers, and prevent these proceedings from occurring anywhere other than a police department’s own trial room.
SLAPPs are frivolous lawsuits intended to punish First Amendment-protected speech. New York has laws that allow courts to quickly dismiss SLAPPs, but it’s narrow and out-of-date, applying only in the context of government permitting and licensing.
Contact tracing is a key public health strategy. For contact tracing to work, the public must have complete faith that their personal information will remain private and confidential and that it will not be misused or shared inappropriately.
The concept of equality under the law is a foundational principle of our democracy, yet our federal and state constitutions were written at a time when their promises of equality only protected the interests of a few. Today, our constitutional protections remain woefully inadequate.
Ongoing protests over the role of police in public life, and the excessive police response they have prompted, have rightly brought new attention to the technology and machinery used by local law enforcement.