Rights for All Will Put Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Front and Center in the 2020 Presidential Race
Jose Ivan Parga is a member of a multi-status, Mexican-immigrant family in Minnesota. Even though he is a citizen, every day he witnesses the fear and uncertainty that his extended family has because of their immigration status. For decades they have worked, worshiped, and raised families in the state. Yet at any moment, immigration agents could — and have — detained a member of his family without warning or cause, despite their deep roots in the community. With no clear path to citizenship, Jose Ivan’s family is forced to live in the shadows of a broken immigration system.
Jamie Miller is a survivor of sexual assault. As a teen, she was assaulted at a party by a boy from another school who didn’t even know her name. Jamie became pregnant and decided to have an abortion. Since that time, she has fought for women in her home state of West Virginia to have that same option. She wants to make sure they have access to abortion and reproductive care, regardless of where they live or how much money they make.
These are the people we fight hard for every day. And it’s these voices that we want to elevate in the 2020 presidential race. Today we’re launching our Rights for All campaign to ensure people like Jose and Jaime — and all the rest of us — have a say in what our next president prioritizes.
The next president of the United States must be committed to protecting and advancing the civil rights guaranteed to all of us in the Constitution. It’s up to us to ensure those who are running make their positions clear and hold them accountable. The best way to do this is to make sure candidates are hearing from voters who care about these issues.
We won’t be endorsing or supporting individual candidates, but we will be asking them pressing questions about civil liberties and civil rights — the questions that our supporters and activists want each candidate to be able to answer. We’re empowering volunteers, especially in the states with early primaries and caucuses like New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada, to meet the candidates on the trail and record their answers on what they will do about criminal justice reform, access to voting, reproductive freedom, and immigrant justice. We’ll then share candidates’ answers on the newly launched Rights for All website and social media for everyone to hear.
Volunteers who don’t have a chance to meet with candidates face-to-face will engage with them online by asking impactful questions on their social media feeds. We’ve also asked all our supporters to take the Rights For All pledge, promising to vote for a president that will uphold these rights.
Already, ACLU volunteers in New Hampshire have asked Elizabeth Warren and Bill Weld about the mass incarceration crisis in communities of color, Pete Buttigieg about reproductive healthcare access, and Beto O’Rourke and Kamala Harris about voting rights. To continue and expand this work, we’ve hired 10 organizers across the early states to support our volunteers.
Keeping with our nonpartisan principles, we’ll question presidential candidates on both — and neither — side of the aisle, including, if given the opportunity, President Trump.
It’s not enough for us to ask them about these issues. We want candidates to adopt bold policies that advance civil liberties. So we’ve drafted our own policy platform on these key issues. When we cast our ballots, we want to know that they have embraced specific policies that advance Rights for All.
We are asking candidates to commit, at minimum, to:
- Reproductive Freedom: Ensure that all people, regardless of where they live or how much they make, can access abortion care, including by lifting bans on insurance coverage of abortion
- Voting Rights: Ensure every American of age can vote, including those currently incarcerated
- Criminal Justice Reform: Cut incarceration by 50 percent in federal prisons, and everywhere in the country
- Immigrant Justice: Overhaul our immigration system by creating new paths to citizenship and dismantling the inhumane and unfair immigration and border enforcement regime
In addition to pushing the candidates to embrace these policies, we will be following up with questionnaires and developing a comparison tool that will allow voters to compare and contrast candidates on these issues. We also plan to host a national candidate forum further putting civil liberties issues in the spotlight.
As primaries and caucuses approach, we will stay true to our nonpartisan values by mobilizing all voters, regardless of party, to cast a ballot, and we will continue this work through the general election.
Between now and November 2020, the ACLU will spend $28-30 million engaging candidates and voters in our Rights for All effort, as well other down-ballot candidate races and ballot initiatives where civil liberties and civil rights are on the line.
All this work will hopefully mean fewer stories like those of Jose and Jaime. Our goal is to move candidates to take stronger positions on these issues and ensure the next president supports rights for all of us – but we need the help of everyone to make sure they hear from voters across the country. Join us at .
Learn More About the Issues on This Page
-
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Civil Liberties
We Need to Know More About State Supreme Court CasesWe Need to Know More About State Supreme Court Cases
State Supreme Courts interpret laws that impact some of the most intimate parts of our lives. Communities have a right to know what’s on the docket. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
Civil Liberties
New ACLU Report Reveals Most State Supreme Courts Fail to Meet Key Transparency MeasuresNew ACLU Report Reveals Most State Supreme Courts Fail to Meet Key Transparency Measures
NEW YORK — Nearly half of all state supreme courts across the country fail to regularly post new cases they are considering, with only six meeting four key transparency measures already implemented by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a new report published today by the American Civil Liberties Union. The report identifies significant steps that state supreme courts should take to inform the public about their cases, which have only grown in importance as the federal judiciary has become more hostile to protecting core rights and advocates have turned to state protections and state court litigation in response. Based on an analysis of the practices and policies of the highest courts in each state, including D.C., the report “Scorecard for State Supreme Court Transparency: How Does Your State Stack Up?” ranks each state supreme court in five tiers based on compliance with four key transparency measures. These measures include posting new cases online in a timely manner, providing timely information about legal issues presented by cases, making dockets accessible and free for the public, and making merits briefing accessible and free for the public. “State courts regularly hear — and are the final word on — cases affecting abortion rights, voting rights, criminal justice reform, and more. Yet, in many instances, the highest state courts do not provide meaningful public access to information about cases affecting the rights and liberties of millions of people. We urge state supreme courts to bring more transparency to the critical work they do,” said Julie Murray, co-director of the ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative. “In the face of a federal judiciary increasingly unwilling to protect core rights and an incoming administration that threatens to exacerbate that problem, state courts are an important defense for our liberty. They should be leaders in transparency, too,” said Bridget Lavender, Skadden Fellow with the Initiative. The report emphasizes that state courts “play an outsized role” in many parts of the law, but their ability to “guard our liberties depends in significant part on whether those courts adopt transparent processes.” It further highlights that state supreme courts have led the way on enormously consequential decisions in recent years. In particular, some state supreme courts have recognized the right of same sex couples to marry, and did so long before federal courts. They have also declared the death penalty unconstitutional under state law despite contrary federal law, protected access to reproductive health care as a right even as that right was being stripped away at the federal level, and provided more robust protection to people subject to unreasonable searches and seizures. The report urges state supreme courts to take action to improve their transparency practices, taking notes from the courts that have already implemented these measures. It notes that regularly posting new cases and the issues they represent, and providing timely access to dockets and merits briefing allows the public, the press, and the legal community to track cases as they unfold, identify cases with statewide consequences, and understand what’s at stake. -
Press ReleaseNov 2024
National Security
+2 Issues
ACLU Urges House to Kill Bill that Could Give Trump Admin Power to Crush Dissent and Go After Political EnemiesACLU Urges House to Kill Bill that Could Give Trump Admin Power to Crush Dissent and Go After Political Enemies
WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union strongly urges the House of Representatives to vote NO on H.R. 9495, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would grant Donald Trump and his handpicked secretary of the Treasury power to investigate and effectively shut down any tax-exempt organization — including news outlets, universities, and civil society groups — by stripping them of tax-exempt status based on an unilateral accusation of wrongdoing. “Passing this bill would hand the incoming Trump administration a dangerous new tool it could use to stifle free speech, target political opponents, and punish disfavored groups,” said Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU. “The freedom to dissent without fear of government retribution is a vital part of any well-functioning democracy, which is why Congress must block H.R. 9495 before it’s too late.” While there is a 90-day “cure” period in which a designated nonprofit can mount a defense, it is a mere illusion of due process. The government may deny organizations its reasons and evidence against them, leaving the nonprofit unable to rebut allegations. This means that a nonprofit could be left entirely in the dark about what conduct the government believes qualifies as "support," making it virtually impossible to clear its name. Last month, the ACLU and a diverse array of over 130 other tax-exempt organizations — including human rights, reproductive health, and immigrants’ rights groups — wrote to Congress urging them to vote no. The letter also explains that the groups do not oppose the provisions in H.R. 9495 that relate to preventing the IRS from imposing fines and penalties on hostages while they are held abroad. Indeed, these provisions have already passed the Senate on their own, and if the House of Representatives were to pass a version of this bill that did not include the text of H.R. 6408, it could be sent immediately to President Biden for his signature. -
News & CommentaryNov 2024
Civil Liberties
Donald Trump Will Return to the White House in January. The ACLU is Ready.Donald Trump Will Return to the White House in January. The ACLU is Ready.
Starting in 2016, the ACLU filed more than 400 legal actions against Trump and his administration. As Trump returns to the White House, we’re ready to return to the courts and Congress to fight for our civil liberties.