Every year, the ACLU of RI lobbies on hundreds of bills during Rhode Island's annual Legislative Session. Below are some of the bills we have tracked and testified on before the General Assembly. For more info on advocating for the issues you care about, check out our Advocacy 101 Guide. To see how your Reps and Senators voted on various bills over the past few years, visit our Legislative Scorecards page.
We strongly supported a bill which would have proposed an amendment to the Rhode Island constitution guaranteeing the right to an adequate education.
We opposed legislation which lowers the age which would define an “elder” from 65 to 60 years old for the purposes of the criminal offense of “exploiting an elder."
We strongly supported a bill which would have prohibited the questioning of a juvenile suspected of criminal activity without a parent or legal guardian present.
We supported legislation which would have promoted the pretrial release of individuals without the requirement of monetary bail.
We opposed this legislation which would have carved out a new crime for the making of threats of mass violence and false reports of threats to any education or religious institution, or any social, civic,...
While we supported provisions of this bill which would have extended the temporary authority for entities subject to the Open Meetings Act to hold remote meetings in light of the Covid pandemic, we...