As another year in the fight to protect civil liberties draws to a close, it’s time to look back at the ACLU-NC’s Top 10 stories from 2014, in reverse chronological order:
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a decision blocking a 2011 N.C. law that would have required doctors to show a woman an ultrasound and describe the images in detail four hours before performing an abortion, even if the woman objects. The ACLU and other groups had challenged the law on behalf of health care providers.
- The ACLU-NC won two federal lawsuits giving LGBT couples the freedom to marry and to adopt their partner’s children.
- The ACLU-NC helped uncover information about law enforcement’s use of secretive Stingray surveillance technology in Charlotte, Durham, Raleigh, and Wilmington.
- ACLU lawyers twice argued against North Carolina’s voter suppression law, widely considered the worst in the country, in federal court. The full trial will take place this summer.
- The ACLU released a report finding that the majority of SWAT raids in N.C. and other states are for low-level crimes and disproportionately target people of color.
- The N.C. House passed a bill to “raise the age” of juvenile jurisdiction so that 16 and 17 year olds charged with misdemeanors would no longer be automatically sent to adult prisons following advocacy from the ACLU-NC and others.
- An ACLU-NC report showed that virtually all of North Carolina’s county jails failed to comply with new federal regulations set by the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
- The ACLU-NC and others helped protect the freedom to read by defeating a ban on Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits” at Watauga High School in Boone.
- A federal appeals court unanimously ruled North Carolina’s one-sided “Choose Life” license plate law unconstitutional. ACLU-NC Legal Director Chris Brook argued the case.
- The ACLU-NC teamed up with student Basil Soper to persuade Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College to allow transgender students to use their preferred name on public documents.