Exactly one year ago today, a 17-year-old boy named Trayvon Martin was gunned down in his quiet Florida suburb in a tragedy that left our country shocked and ashamed. The incident set off a national conversation about racial profiling and the role race played in his death and subsequent police action.
Racial profiling violates the Constitution by denying equal protection under the law, as well as freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. Furthermore, the Constitution requires treaties to be treated as the "supreme law of the land," and racial profiling runs afoul of America's human rights treaty obligations.
While the court proceedings around Trayvon's death are still ongoing, Washington D.C. seems to be treading water on the issue of racial profiling. The 112th Congress concluded without a vote on the (ERPA), a crucial piece of legislation that would, among other things, provide training to help police avoid responses based on stereotypes and unreliable assumptions about minorities. It did, however, see the first Senate hearing on profiling in over a decade, since before 9/11. The hearing included testimony from police representatives and civil rights advocates, including ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.
But the hearing was just a first step in what looks to be a long road to eliminating the practice of racial profiling. If the current Congress were to take up and pass ERPA, it would send the strong message that the Constitution requires that people be judged by what they do, not by what they look like or what God they pray to. Looking to our past, the case is clear: racial profiling is unfair, unjust, and .
This isn't an issue that's new to President Obama. As a state senator, he a bill that effectively ended racial profiling by law enforcement in Illinois. Obama even during his 2008 campaign to pass a ban on the practice, but he's been very quiet on the issue during his time in the White House. The ACLU has repeatedly called on President Obama to address racial profiling on the federal level, just as his predecessor did. President Bush vowed to end the practice, and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft racial profiling "unconstitutional" and said it "[undermines] the confidence that people can have in law enforcement."
When the state condones racial profiling, it implicitly sanctions that kind of behavior among private citizens. Washington D.C. must find a way to ensure that young men like Trayvon are not the victims of vigilante justice and racial profiling. Beyond that, our country has to recognize that this incident raises concerns that go beyond the actions of one man in Florida. Failing to take a real look at the ongoing association of young men of color with crime ensures that stories like Trayvon's will continue leaving us to ask how many young people must die before we address the serious underlying problem of racial denigration and bias in the United States.
Laura Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, said it best in her blog post last year about the fears she has for her son: "We cannot be satisfied with legal equality when for many of us, it is of limited value in the face of our actual day-to-day experience. Unless Americans work together to end the practice of racial profiling – not just in law enforcement but in the larger social fabric – the precautions I and many other parents of color take may never be enough."
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Racial Justice
ACLU Statement on House AI Task Force ReportACLU Statement on House AI Task Force Report
WASHINGTON — Today, the House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) issued its final report, marking an important step in recognizing the serious risks of discrimination and bias posed by AI systems — particularly in law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology. The report recognizes that discrimination and bias may arise in AI systems due to their design, training data, or failures by end users. The report also investigates the complex considerations around deepfakes, open AI systems, and free speech, and urges Congress to pass narrow legislation to address concrete harms. In response to the House AI Task Force final report, Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, issued the following statement: “The ACLU commends the Task Force for recognizing that AI systems are harming people right now through discriminatory outcomes and supercharged surveillance. Curbing those abuses of AI is not a partisan issue, and more concrete action is needed to protect civil rights, while maintaining states’ authority to build on those protections. The Task Force is appropriately cautious when wrestling with issues around deepfakes, open-source AI, digital identity, and other issues, recognizing that legislators should consider a wide array of tailored tools to address real, not speculative, harms while respecting civil rights and civil liberties.” The House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence report can be found here. -
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Racial Justice
Human Rights
Why the Fight for Racial Justice is a Human Rights IssueWhy the Fight for Racial Justice is a Human Rights Issue
On International Human Rights Day, the ACLU is advocating for a long-sought after reparatory justice to end the continued abuses against Black and brown communities. -
Press ReleaseOct 2024
National Security
+2 Issues
ACLU Warns that Biden-Harris Administration Rules on AI in National Security Lack Key ProtectionsACLU Warns that Biden-Harris Administration Rules on AI in National Security Lack Key Protections
WASHINGTON — The Biden-Harris administration today released its National Security Memorandum on Artificial Intelligence (AI), establishing guidelines for how the U.S. government uses AI in national security programs, such as counterterrorism, intelligence, homeland security, and defense. The use of AI to automate and expand national security activities poses some of the greatest dangers to people’s lives and civil liberties. Agencies are increasingly exploring the use of AI in decisions about who to surveil, who to stop and search at the airport, who to add to government watchlists, and even who is a military target. While the government’s policy includes some important steps forward — such as requiring national security agencies to better track and assess their AI systems for risks and prohibiting a subset of dangerous AI uses — it falls far short in other critical areas, leaving glaring gaps with respect to independent oversight, transparency, notice, and redress. The policy imposes few substantive safeguards on a wide range of AI-driven activities, by and large allowing agencies to decide for themselves how to mitigate the risks posed by national security systems that have immense consequences for people’s lives and rights. As we have repeatedly seen before, this is a recipe for dangerous technologies to proliferate in secret. “Despite acknowledging the considerable risks of AI, this policy does not go nearly far enough to protect us from dangerous and unaccountable AI systems. National security agencies must not be left to police themselves as they increasingly subject people in the United States to powerful new technologies,” said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “If developing national security AI systems is an urgent priority for the country, then adopting critical rights and privacy safeguards is just as urgent. Without transparency, independent oversight, and built-in mechanisms for individuals to obtain accountability when AI systems err or fail, the policy’s safeguards are inadequate and place our civil rights and civil liberties at risk.” For years, the American Civil Liberties Union has been urging far stronger safeguards and transparency about the AI tools that national security agencies are deploying, the rules constraining their use, and the dangers these systems pose to fairness, privacy, and due process. -
Press ReleaseOct 2024
Racial Justice
ACLU Comment on the Department of Labor’s AI Guidelines for Employers and VendorsACLU Comment on the Department of Labor’s AI Guidelines for Employers and Vendors
WASHINGTON — Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released a roadmap for artificial intelligence (AI) best practices, designed to ensure that emerging technologies such as AI enhance job quality, benefit workers, and comply with existing employment laws when they are used in the workplace. The best practices, pursuant to President Biden’s executive order on the development and use of AI, include recommendations for AI system developers and employers that prioritize workers’ experiences and empowerment throughout the entire AI lifecycle – from design to use and oversight. These practices also call on employers and developers to create standards and processes to identify and mitigate risks from AI systems, such as threats to health and safety, civil rights, privacy, fair labor rights, and labor organizing prior to a developer marketing them or an employer deploying them, and recommend turning to different systems when sufficient mitigation is not possible. “We applaud DOL for issuing best practices for use of AI that center workers’ empowerment, civil rights, privacy, and safety protections and call on developers and employers to adopt critical guardrails in developing, procuring and using AI systems. Employers and developers should take note, as many have been burying their heads in the sand on their risk of legal liability with respect to AI tools,” said Olga Akselrod, senior staff attorney of the ACLU Racial Justice Program. “Following these best practices for AI can help employers and developers ensure that they do not violate existing civil rights and other employment laws that protect workers.” The best practices also recommend transparency measures through conducting and publishing impact assessments, notice and recourse for impacted workers, and measures to minimize worker displacement. The DOL also stated that employers should minimize electronic monitoring and avoid unnecessary collection or retention of worker data.