Tag Archives: ACLU

A lawsuit headed by the ACLU of Northern California is challenging the right of police to confiscate the cell phones of people they arrest and search through them without first obtaining a warrant. The case began when activist Bob Offer-Westort was arrested while protesting an anti-camping law in San Francisco. While he was handcuffed, the arresting officer scrolled through his phone and read his text messages aloud, over Offer-Westort’s objections. That was a violation of his privacy rights and his …

  Lawyers.com Editorial Director Betsy Kim brings you today’s Newsbreak, an update on legal cases from around the country. Betsy reports on why the 7th Circuit struck down Indiana’s law banning sex offenders from Facebook and other social media. The Indiana ACLU represented a group convicted of sexual crimes, who had completed their sentences. The state attorney general had argued the law was to protect children from sexual predators trolling the Internet. Our Newsbreak also explains a court decision granting …

  The government and private companies are using automatic license plate readers (LPRs) to gather the license numbers of cars on the streets of cities and towns across the country. These gadgets snap pictures of the plates, time stamp the photos and record the GPS coordinates. You don’t even have to be a criminal suspect. You just have to drive a car. Lawyers.com journalist Ed Alpern investigates how the LPR technology is affecting your privacy rights. Some people say the …

After a 7-year-old boy was accused of taking a $5 bill off the ground in a scuffle with classmates, New York police allegedly interrogated, handcuffed and hassled him at a police station for hours before releasing him to his mother, who is now suing the city.   Overreaction to Playground Scuffle Wilson Reyes, a third-grade student in a Bronx public school, got caught up on Dec. 4 in a playground scuffle with two other boys over the money. Although another …

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would take up two cases which challenge the constitutionality of bans on LGBT marriage. In one case, the court will rule on the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans federal recognition of same sex marriage, effectively blocking LGBT couples from tax benefits and other privileges of official partnership in the eyes of Uncle Sam. New York resident Edith Windsor challenged DOMA as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth …