News & Commentary

The ACLU of Vermont, The Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, and the Women’s Justice and Freedom Initiative are raising concerns about a proposal that would expand Vermont’s correctional system and are calling on decision makers to continue pursuing community-based alternatives.

This commentary was originally published on VTDigger on April 11, 2018.

Yesterday the Vermont House Committee on Transportation considered H. 237, a bill to implement roadside saliva testing for THC and lowering the permissible BAC limit from .08 to .05 for any person with “any detectable amount” of THC in his or her blood.

Vermont’s legislature is back in session, and when it comes to civil rights there’s a lot at stake this year. Working with legislators, allied organizations, and ACLU members and supporters, the ACLU of Vermont is pursuing an ambitious agenda to protect and advance the rights and liberties of all Vermonters.

An ACLU-VT review of panhandling ordinances on the books in several Vermont municipalities shows that local laws contain provisions that are similar to panhandling laws in three other states recently thrown out by three different federal courts.

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The number of people in American jails is staggering -- 2.2 million, or one in every 100 American adults. Vermont has done better than many other states in bucking the trend. Nonetheless, despite low crime rates, we've been putting more people behind bars, leading to full prisons and the transfer of inmates to private out-of-state jails. The ACLU-VT is part of a coalition, Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, that's working with the national group "Grassroots Leadership" to cut Vermont's ties with private, for-profit prisons and bring Vermont inmates home. You can help -- sign the "Locked Up and Shipped Away" petition to bring Vermont inmates home.

The ACLU of Vermont has filed suit on behalf of a motorist who was stopped and had his car seized, leaving him stranded on the side of the road eight miles from his home in Rutland, because a state trooper said he smelled marijuana but otherwise had no evidence of a crime. At issue is not just an illegal traffic stop but whether police can continue to use a "sniff test" as evidence of a drug crime when possessing small quantities of the drug (marijuana) is no longer a crime.