News & Commentary

A Vermont inn will pay a fine of $10,000 and will place $20,000 in a charitable trust as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by a lesbian couple who were told the inn wouldn't host their wedding reception because they were gay.

Plates of interest. Hot lists. Geo-fences. Intelligence resource. Never heard of the Vermont Justice Information Sharing System, either? Get to know the acronym, for VJISS is working with local, county, state, and federal police agencies "to deploy a first in the nation statewide License Plate Reader (LPR) data sharing system."

Two years after the arrest of an African-American man in his own home, the ACLU-VT has won Anne Galloway of the investigative online news site VtDigger.org the right to access information for a story on possible racial profiling by the Hartford Police Department.

A Vermont superior court has ruled in favor of a Franklin woman who challenged her town's inclusion of prayer in town meeting proceedings.

For the first time in 10 years, Marilyn Hackett was not subjected to listening to a Christian prayer while attending the Franklin town meeting. On Tuesday, the moderator of the meeting announced that due to the pending litigation against the town, the town's legal counsel had advised no prayer be said this year. The meeting then began as other town meetings in the state begin -- getting down to the town's business.

The Vermont Supreme Court has reversed a trial court decision barring a Windham County man from obtaining routine police records. The decision makes clear that police agencies are not exempt from the state's Access to Public Records Act and that they should follow a general standard of disclosing a record unless harm can be shown.

Vermont police are looking at the state Health Department's prescription drug database in a way they promised they never would -- as a law enforcement tool that they should be able to snoop through at will.

Think of the Web as one big vacuum, sucking up every bit of information possible from the sites you visit, the things you click, the little bit of bio you might provide (log-in name, birthday, income, hobbies, favorite movie, etc.) Then put all that information together, where it can be used to create a specific profile of you and others like you. It's the Holy Grail of advertising, targeting an ad message for small affinity groups or even one specific individual.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Vermont has sued a Vermont resort that refused to host a lesbian couple's wedding reception due to the owners' personal bias against lesbian and gay people. Vermont law prohibits denying access to public accommodations based on sexual orientation.