ACLU Report Reveals that Black New Jerseyans are more Likely to be Arrested for Marijuana Possession Despite Equal Usage Rates

Cape May County Student Denied Access to Co-Educational Classes

Rite Aid Apologizes to ACLU-NJ Client Who Was Denied Plan B at Store

ACLU-NJ Demands Pharmacies End Discrimination in Sales of Emergency Contraception

Judge Rules in Favor of Same-Sex Couple in Discrimination Case

Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association broke state’s discrimination law when it denied use of its pavilion for couple’s civil union ceremony

Harriet Bernstein & Luisa Paster

NEWARK – A state administrative law judge has ruled (50k PDF) that the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association violated the state’s Law Against Discrimination when it denied Ocean Grove residents Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster the use of its boardwalk pavilion for their 2007 civil union ceremony. The association had allowed members of the public to rent the pavilion and had never before declined a permit other than for scheduling conflicts until it received Paster and Bernstein’s reservation request. The association rejected the couple’s application to use the space, stating that civil unions violated its Methodist doctrine.

“The Camp Meeting Association could have used the pavilion exclusively for its own purposes,” said Lawrence Lustberg of Gibbons, P.C., who represents the couple as a cooperating attorney for the ACLU-NJ. “The judge found, however, that the association opened the pavilion up to the public and thus was obligated to follow anti-discrimination laws.”

“We are pleased with the judge’s findings,” said Harriet Bernstein. “When we first started planning our civil union, we had no idea that it would come to this. We weren’t asking the association to change their beliefs. We just wanted them to give us the same opportunity to use a beautiful space that we had seen open for public use.”

Paster and Bernstein celebrated their civil union at a fishing pier in Ocean Grove, a quarter mile from the pavilion on June 30, 2007. By then, the community rallied around the couple, showing support by raising flags around town that symbolized LGBT equality.

“Fortunately, out of this painful incident, Ocean Grove residents have a renewed sense of community and have come together to support equality,” said Luisa Paster.

In his written decision, Judge Solomon A. Metzger of the Office of Administrative Law found that in March 2007, when Paster and Bernstein filled out a reservation form, the pavilion was a public accommodation. The judge determined that the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association breached its agreement to make the pavilion available to the public on an equal basis. The association was also required to make the pavilion public in exchange for a state tax exemption it received that requires equal access on a non-discriminatory basis. Metzger also noted that while the association is free to practice its mission without government oversight, it had never attached any religious ministry to the wedding venue until it received Paster and Bernstein’s application.

“(The association) was not, however, free to promise equal access to rent wedding space to heterosexual couples irrespective of their tradition and then except (Bernstein and Paster),” Judge Metzger stated.

The administrative law judge’s decision is sent to the Director of the Division on Civil Rights who has 45 days to adopt, modify or reject it as part of the Director’s final decision; otherwise, it becomes a final decision. Once a final decision is issued, a party may appeal to the Appellate Division of the Superior Court.

Bernstein, 70, a grandmother and retired school administrator and Paster, 64, a retired academic librarian, met at a retreat in the Poconos in 2000. The couple decided to celebrate their commitment with a civil union in 2007, shortly after New Jersey passed a law allowing for civil unions. The couple, who live in the Ocean Grove section of Neptune, wanted their ceremony to take place at the Ocean Grove Boardwalk Pavilion, an open-air wood-framed seating area facing the Atlantic Ocean.

The pavilion was used for community and charitable events and the owners of the property, Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, received a tax exemption from the state Green Acres program, which provides exemptions to non-profit organizations who use their property for recreational or conservation purposes. An important condition of the exemption is that the property be “open for public use on an equal basis.”

In March 2007, the couple went to the office of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association and filled out an application to reserve the pavilion for their civil union. Days later, association officials denied their application and returned their $250 deposit. When Paster and Bernstein sought an explanation, they were told civil unions violated the group’s Methodist principles.

Paster and Bernstein filed a complaint with the state Division on Civil Rights.

In December 2008, the state Division on Civil Rights found probable cause that the association violated the state’s anti-discrimination law. The case proceeded to the state Administrative Law Judge for disposition.

“This decision affirms New Jersey’s strong protections against discrimination,” said Jeanne LoCicero, ACLU-NJ Deputy Legal Director. “When you open your doors to the public, you can’t treat same-sex couples differently.”

The case is captioned Bernstein et al v. Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, OAL DKT. NO. CRT 6145-09.

ACLU-NJ Probes FBI Mapping Based on Ethnicity

NEWARK - The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey today filed a Freedom of Information Act request with New Jersey's FBI field offices asking for records regarding the agency's collection of racial and ethnic data in local communities. Joining 31 other ACLU affiliates nationally, the ACLU-NJ seeks more details concerning the FBI's authority as described in the 2008 FBI operations guide to map businesses, behaviors, lifestyles and traditions considered "ethnic-oriented."

"The potential abuse that could stem from the FBI's mapping of America by race demonstrates exactly why transparency is so crucial to a democracy," said ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs. "The public has a right to know what kinds of information the government gathers about ordinary Americans, and the public has a right to know how that information will be used."

The FBI's 2008 Domestic Intelligence and Operations Guide (DIOG) refers to agents' power to collect, use, and map racial and ethnic data to assist its "domain awareness" and "intelligence analysis" activities. The DIOG, first released with heavy redaction in September 2009, was released with fewer redactions this January in response to a lawsuit filed by Muslim Advocates. Still, the public has little access to information about the FBI's implementation of this authority.

"The FBI's mapping of local communities based on race and ethnicity, as well the ability to target investigations based on supposed racial and ethnic behaviors, raises serious civil liberties concerns," said Michael German, ACLU policy counsel and former FBI agent. "Creating a profile of a neighborhood based on the ethnic makeup of the people who live there for law enforcement or domestic intelligence is unfair, un-American and unable to stop crime."

In addition to New Jersey, FOIA requests for the same kinds of information were also filed in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, DC, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.

Related Documents

• The DIOG provisions in question are available online at:
  http://www.muslimadvocates.org/DIOGs_Chapter4.pdf

• The entire DIOG is at:
  http://www.muslimadvocates.org/latest/profiling_update/community_alert_seek_legal_adv.html

ACLU-NJ Celebrates 50 Years on the Front Lines of Freedom

Newark, N.J. - For five decades, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has been a gale force in the most critical social debates of our time and a vigilant guardian of civil rights for all.

In June, the ACLU-NJ will mark the 50th anniversary of its founding and celebrate its standing as one of the largest and most active affiliates in the nation. Created to counter the growing pressures on civil liberties in the state, the affiliate's first official meeting took place on the night of June 16, 1960. Since its start, the affiliate, which has continued to keep its headquarters in Newark, has seen its membership multiply nearly 10-fold, from 1,600 people to more than 15,000.

"We believe that the liberties in the Bill of Rights belong to every American, to all the people in New Jersey regardless of their political beliefs, race, religion or national origin," ACLU-NJ founder and longtime President Emil Oxfeld said in the original press release announcing the formation of the state's affiliate. "We believe these freedoms must be exercised if democracy in our state is to grow and thrive."

Oxfeld went on to list issues that desperately needed attention at the time - due process, racial discrimination, the separation of church and state, and freedom from censorship - all principles the ACLU still defends daily.

"While some of the issues raised in our cases over the years seem archaic by today's standards, many haven't changed at all," said ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs, who has led the affiliate since 1999, including during the biggest membership spike in its history. "The law has advanced remarkably in areas like women's rights, lesbian and gay rights, and safeguarding personal privacy, but with issues like free speech, police practices and religious freedom, no fight ever stays won."

"The ACLU of New Jersey has been a leader in the crucial civil liberties battles of our time," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the national ACLU. "While each new era brings a wave of assaults on freedom, the ACLU of New Jersey responds swiftly and decisively, protecting the rights of all Garden State residents. It has proven its value on the American political landscape."

Since opening its doors and springing into action - its first official undertaking was commending the Clifton Library's stance against banning books like Lady Chatterley's Lover - the ACLU-NJ has doggedly worked for justice and equality in New Jersey.

In its first decade the ACLU-NJ took strong action following the 1967 Newark Rebellion. Staffers took to the streets in the aftermath, painstakingly cataloguing police abuses to the ACLU-NJ would refer to in its demands for reform. The New Jersey affiliate also emerged even more progressive than the national ACLU, becoming one of the first state affiliates to take a stand against the Vietnam War.

Since those early years, the ACLU-NJ has grown into one of the country's largest and most active state affiliates, with a record of milestones that has earned it a role on the national stage. Among its accomplishments, the ACLU-NJ:

• Defended the rights of women in schools, from a tennis star (represented by Ruth Bader Ginsburg) who won the right to play on the high school boys' tennis team, to the Princeton student who turned its Ivy League all-male eating clubs co-ed.
• Blocked a bill requiring a "one-minute period of silence" for prayer in public schools in 1983.
• Defended 12 motorists who had been racially profiled on the New Jersey Turnpike in the late 1990s.
• Propelled New Jersey to become the first state in the nation to grant equal standing to gay and lesbian couples jointly adopting in 1997.
• Successfully challenged the state's ban on late-term abortion in 1998 and a law requiring parents to sign off on a minor's abortion in 2000.
• Challenged secret detentions and organized locally, fending off attempts to chip away at individual rights following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
• Defeated local laws written to exclude immigrants from housing, won humane working conditions for immigrants, and helped enforce the rights of young immigrants to attend public school.
• Established stronger First Amendment protections in schools and malls, as well as developments run by homeowners associations.

The ACLU-NJ is celebrating the clients, attorneys, leaders and volunteers - many involved in the cases highlighted above - who have built its legacy, from its founders to its future. The stories of these 50 Faces of Liberty can be found at the ACLU-NJ website, http://www.aclu-nj.org

"Society has changed dramatically since our founding, but we've never lost the fire that fuels the ACLU's advocacy," Jacobs added. "We can't always predict what challenges lie ahead for liberty in a changing world, but whatever they are, the ACLU stands ready to defend the fundamental rights of ordinary Americans."

The year-long commemoration will culminate November 4 at the NJ Freedom Fest: A night of laughter and liberties, hosted by comedian Jimmy Tingle and featuring faces from the ACLU past and present, to be held at the Heldrich Hotel in New Brunswick.

ACLU-NJ Exploring School's Ban of LGBT Book

Newark - The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey sent an Open Public Records Act request Friday to the Rancocas Valley School District for documents that will shed light on the district's decision to remove the book Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology from the Rancocas Valley High School library. The book, which shares gay students' coming-out stories and reflections on identity, won the School Library Journal's Adult Books for High School Students Award in 2001.

"The ultimate decision of whether a book can be removed does not rest simply on whether a few individuals or students may be offended," said ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs. "Decisions to censor literature should only be based on a standard set of neutral criteria unrelated to the political or social themes in the book."

The school district made its decision after a political group specifically singled out books with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender themes. The ACLU-NJ filed its request in order to learn whether the school district's policies were applied fairly, without discrimination.

"Educators and school librarians are the best qualified to determine what kinds of books and materials schools should keep in their libraries," said Jacobs. "Neither political groups nor parents have a right to impose their decisions, morals, or values on all students and families."

In 1982, the United States Supreme Court held that school boards have only a limited right to remove books from school libraries. "Local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books," the Court explained. Rather, removals should be based only on "educational suitability," with school boards taking the input of educators into account.

"If we started removing every book that one group or another objects to, our libraries' shelves would practically be bare," Jacobs noted. "The idea is to expose students to a diversity of themes and views, not to tightly restrict the information they receive."

More Information

• Rancocas Valley Regional OPRA Request (99k PDF)

ACLU Renews Call for Equality with Marriage Lawsuit

TRENTON - Standing with the state's leading civil rights and minority rights organizations, the ACLU-NJ today called for the end of New Jersey's unequal system of civil unions and demanded the beginning of an era of equality where all people have an equal right to marriage, regardless of their sexual orientation.

"A separate system of rights for a particular minority group has once again failed to fulfill the actual promise of equality, as has been the case throughout history," said Vice Dean of Rutgers-Newark School of Law Ronald Chen, who authored the amicus brief in the case on behalf of the ACLU-NJ and seven other notable minority rights and civil rights organizations.

Although courts have allowed legislatures to enact separate systems of rights for minorities in the past, the ACLU brief explains that judges have always struck down those systems when they are shown to perpetuate disparities. Moreover, the ACLU-NJ argues that a history of excluding a minority group from access to rights is not in itself a public interest that can justify continued exclusionary practices.

The brief cites the evidence that civil unions have not provided the equal protection the court promised in 2006, when it issued a ruling in the first iteration of this case. Since then, couples in civil unions have learned firsthand that an institution so poorly understood cannot actually protect their rights. Couples have found themselves justifying their relationship to those with influence over their lives - from their children's public school teachers to the administrators of county hospitals - who understand marriage, but not the separate new structure created only for them.

"By devaluing certain families and setting them apart from others, it affects how those families are treated in schools, in hospitals, and in almost all daily transactions. And children are most harmed of all," said ACLU-NJ Legal Director Ed Barocas. "Civil unions institute inequality in ways both mundane and profound. Our state must end the daily struggle it imposes on our fellow citizens by having denied them the right to marry."

The ACLU-NJ joined the first filing of Lewis v. Harris in 2002 on behalf of seven same-sex couples seeking the right to marry. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously in October 2006 that granting lesser rights to same-sex couples violated the Constitution. However, the court entrusted the legislature to enact a solution, which resulted in the civil union folly that continues today. Two years later, in 2008, the state's Civil Union Review Commission found the institution fell far short of the equality the court had intended to provide. In January 2009, after an ardent campaign waged on the ground in New Jersey, the New Jersey Senate failed to pass marriage equality when the bill came up for a vote at the end of the legislative session.

The other signatories to the brief submitted today are the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Garden State Bar Association, the Hispanic Bar Association, Legal Momentum, and the National Organization for Women of New Jersey.

Documents

• Lewis - Brief

NJ Overturns Unjust Sentencing Law

Judges will now have discretion in sentencing for non-violent offenses

TRENTON — In a landmark victory for civil rights, the New Jersey Senate today passed a bill (S1866) revising a decades-old policy that had punished people more harshly for committing non-violent drug crimes within several hundred feet of schools, unfairly targeting city dwellers. Once signed into law, individual judges will be able to use their discretion to issue fair sentences appropriate to the crimes committed.

"This legislation is smart on crime, not soft on crime. It marks a major step forward toward achieving justice in New Jersey's criminal justice system," said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the ACLU-NJ. "New Jersey's judges will now have authority to sentence people based on the severity of the crime, not the location."

This legislation overturns the drug-free school zone law, which mandated lengthy sentences for any drug crime committed near a school. As a result, people in New Jersey's more densely packed areas — for example, cities like Newark, Camden, Jersey City or New Brunswick — have been subject to a stricter standard of justice than those in the suburbs. Over the course of the drug-free school zone policy, 96 percent of those arrested for drug-free school offenses in New Jersey were black or Latino.

The Assembly passed the companion legislation, A2762, last year, and will need to vote on it once again to concur with the Senate version. Gov. Jon Corzine has said he will sign the bill once it reaches his desk.

This legislation promises fairness not only to New Jersey citizens relying on the criminal justice system, but to taxpayers. New Jersey's prisons and jails are dangerously overcrowded and many non-violent offenders are serving sentences much longer than needed. Judges will be able to decide the appropriate punishments, and New Jerseyans will know that everyone, everywhere across the state has a fairer shot at justice.

Changing this law has been a top priority for the ACLU-NJ over the past decade, in a broad coalition with organizations including the Coalition of Community Corrections Providers of New Jersey, Corporation for Supportive Housing, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Hispanic Directors Association, Latino Leadership Alliance, New Jersey Association on Correction, Volunteers of American Delaware Valley and Women Who Never Give Up. In addition, cities like Newark and Camden have passed resolutions supporting S1866.