This Week in Civil Liberties

Another busy week! We filed a lawsuit seeking declassification of the State Department cables released by Wikileaks, appealed the dismissal of our lawsuit on behalf of Jose Padilla against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, got a Louisiana school board to stop denying children equal educational opportunities in the classroom and more.

"If the Law Does Not Protect Jose Padilla . . . It Protects No One"
In February, a federal district court in South Carolina dismissed our lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld and other current and former government officials for their roles in the detention and torture of American citizen Jose Padilla. This week we appealed that dismissal.

Louisiana School Board Suspends Sex-Segregation Program
A local school board in Vermillion Parish, Louisiana, voted to suspend a program at a public middle school that has for two years separated girls from boys in core curriculum classes.

Pretending WikiLeaks Doesn't Exist: Government Secrecy Reaches Absurdity
We filed a lawsuit after the State Department failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the declassification of 23 State Department cables disclosed by WikiLeaks and widely disseminated online and in the press.

The War on Drugs=A War on Family, Women, Privacy and Livelihood
In our blog series marking 40th anniversary of the declaration of "war on drugs", we had several winners this week:

• Joseph Casias has been fighting sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor for more than a decade. Now the war on drugs has forced him to fight for his livelihood, too.
• This crude, barbaric and inhumane response to the social and public health problem of drug abuse has had ugly repercussions in seemingly unrelated areas. Privacy for one...
• The 40-year-old "war on drugs" is a war on women and families. It's a war of little success but huge casualties. The collateral damage of this war far exceeds any benefits.

This is your week in civil liberties. Let us know if this is useful or if you'd like to see changes. Share your thoughts: ideas@aclu.org

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