Civil Rights

In a year where we have seen much progress from the White House and from the Department of Justice in addressing the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) survivors of violence, there is one national body that has failed to act. The 112th Congress has left much undone and has been slow to compromise or propose solutions to a myriad of issues and concerns facing the country – including for LGBTQ survivors of violence.

On August 21, 1789, the House of Representatives adopted amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which later became known as the Bill of Rights. The fourth of these amendments was introduced to protect private citizens from unlawful search and seizure by government agents. Last Thursday, members of Congress once again sought to protect the citizens they represent from unreasonable searches by agents of the government.

As President Obama’s first term wore on, a signature plank of his 2008 campaign – his pledge to close Guantánamo – went from policy pillar to policy pariah. The political and popular hurdles to closure – legislation, funding restrictions, outcry in some quarters over terrorist trials – multiplied. The President’s bold act on his first day of office -- an executive order requiring closure of the detention center within the year -- gave way to the ratification of military commissions as an alternative to trials in federal courts, detention without charge was embraced, and transfers from the facility slowed to a trickle.  

After going mum on the topic for most of his 2012 campaign, Obama finally renewed his pledge to close Guantánamo during an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart show in late October. This pledge will be put to the test even before his second term begins. The reauthorization of the National Defense Authorization Act, soon due for a final vote in Congress, will either offer the president more leeway to restart the machinery of Guantánamo closure, or offer another excuse to maintain the current paralysis. If the president’s campaign pledge means more this time around than it did in 2008, he must use the mandate he won in early November to veto this year’s NDAA if it hinders progress on Guantánamo.

Like a hard calculus equation, the conundrum of what to do with the 166 detainees still housed at Guantánamo is best addressed by breaking the problem into parts and solving them one by one. The obvious starting point is the 55 Guantánamo detainees who the administration named this September as cleared for transfer. Many of these men have been held in the facility for a decade or more where there are no grounds for continued detention. These are the relatively easy cases, men who the administration has no intent to charge with any crime. While the details of many of the cases remain secret, some Guantánamo experts assert that many if not all of these men may be cleared for release entirely, meaning that they are entitled to their freedom yet remain captive.

One well-known example in this group is Shaker Amer. He is a U.K. citizen, and the British government has repeatedly requested his transfer to be reunited with his wife and children in London. He remains held without charge. He said back in November 2005 that, "I am dying here every day, mentally and physically... We have been ignored, locked up in the middle of the ocean for four years."

Three elements are critical right now to advance the transfer of the Guantánamo 55 and help close Guantánamo.

To watch the Senate floor, you’d never guess that we are just weeks away from the sunset of the FISA Amendments Act – the expansive law that authorized warrantless wiretapping.


While the House passed a five-year extension earlier this fall, the Senate has yet to debate an extension, consider amendments or hold a vote. The list of ‘must-do’ items is long, but making sure the FISA amendments get a meaningful debate and amendment process must be a priority.

Women immigrants are at risk. Changes to two significant bills – the Violence Against Women Act and the STEM Jobs Act – threaten to endanger this vulnerable group in the final days of the lame duck Congress.
 
Last May, the House of Representatives passed a deeply flawed version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) by a vote of 222-205 that would eliminate a number of VAWA’s historical protections for battered immigrant.

The elections showed that, nationally, the landscape of who is engaging with political representation in this country is changing. By all accounts the votes of women, immigrants, people of color, Native people, LGBT people and youth changed the presidential and some state elections. For the national conservative platform, relying on an agenda that often alienated these communities ('legitimate rape,' anyone?), the 2012 election results revealed a need for a change of rhetoric.

Activists around the world are engaged in the “16 Days of Activism to End Gender Violence” campaign, calling on governments to take action on crimes from rape in war to domestic abuse by International Human Rights Day on December 10. In the United States, activists have added motivation for pushing policymakers to act within this timeframe. Congress is at an impasse over renewing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the country’s primary national legislation addressing domestic abuse, sexual violence, and stalking. With the remainder of the 112th Congress now a matter of weeks, it is a very real possibility that the act will not be renewed.
 
If that happens, it will constitute an alarming failure of Congress as a whole and in particular of members of the House of Representatives who rallied against a progressive renewal bill.

Today, if the police want to come into your house and take your personal letters, they need a warrant. If they want to read those same letters saved on Google or Yahoo they don’t. The Fourth Amendment has eroded online.

Americans for Tax Reform and the American Civil Liberties Union are members of the Digital Due Process Coalition, a wide-ranging group of privacy advocates, think tanks and businesses, like Microsoft, Google, Apple, AT&T, that often disagree on different issues. However, we can agree on consistent privacy protection for digital documents. 

President Obama unquestionably owes his historic victory to an overwhelming 71 percent of the Latino vote. In 2004, George W. Bush won 44 percent of Hispanics. Four years later, John McCain, the author of an immigration reform bill, took 31 percent of Hispanics. And this year, Romney captured only 27 percent of Hispanics. Last Tuesday’s result shows that being against the DREAM Act and immigration is no longer good politics for the Republican Party. In fact, for the past eleven months, undocumented youth from across the nation rallied to expose the extreme position of Mitt Romney on immigration in swing states, including his threat to veto the DREAM Act.
 
But the election is over and it’s time for genuine leadership on immigration and the DREAM Act: it begins not only with the president, but also with Congress, specifically Republicans.

This year marks the first Veterans Day since President Obama became the first sitting president to embrace the freedom to marry (and win reelection on a freedom to marry platform). Explaining his change of heart – the same change in favor of the freedom to marry that a majority of Americans have made – the commander in hief cited his conversations with, and respect for, lesbian and gay service members, their spouses, and their families.
 
But because of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), gay and lesbian people serving our country continue to be treated unequally, and their families denied critical protections provided to all others.