The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan applauds the decision of U.S. District Judge Paul L. Maloney that holds the City of Grand Rapids responsible for permitting police officers to arrest innocent people for trespassing at local businesses during operating hours—even when business owners didn’t ask them to leave.

The court’s decision about the policy—which resulted in African Americans being stopped at more than twice the rate as whites under the initiative—comes after years of litigation brought by the ACLU.

The ACLU of Michigan today released “Blueprint for Smart Justice: Michigan,” a new report that outlines how the state can cut its prison population by more than 23,ooo inmates by 2025 and  save taxpayers more than $1.8 billion over the next seven years.

Key changes that can reduce Michigan’s prison population and save taxpayers money include:

As the world pauses today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,  it occurs to me that many were not around when it happened. He was killed in my home state when I was nine years old, and I vividly recall the pervasive feeling of not just deep sorrow, but utter despair that fell on the all-black world that I lived in at the time.

The following is a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan Executive Director Kary L. Moss regarding the Facebook post of Michigan State Police Director Kriste Etue:

The ACLU is hailing a recent decision by the Grand Rapids Police Department to end a policy that permitted police officers to arrest innocent people for trespassing at local businesses during operating hours—even when business owners didn’t ask them to leave.

Regardless of your ethnicity, you have ancestors who were living somewhere in the world on the historic day of June 19, 1865.  For the black residents of Galveston, Texas, however, the day was like no other. On that day, a Union general arrived to Galveston, making the belated announcement that slavery had ended in the former Confederate states, including Texas—two and a half years prior. 

In an effort to remind the public about its First Amendment rights and to reassure immigrants that constitutional protections extend to them as well, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan on Monday launched a public-education campaign that features the First Amendment printed in Arabic, Spanish and English.

The “We the People” campaign rolled out with the unveiling of an electronic billboard featuring the First Amendment in all three languages posted on Cobo Center in downtown Detroit. The ad will appear on the billboard throughout June.

As we honor Martin Luther King, Jr and his legacy this week, it’s important to examine the intersection of two issues that he devoted energy and attention to: race relations and economic equality. Though his fight for economic equality of the United States’ black citizens occurred decades ago, countless examples let us know the disparities still persist. One such example is in Michigan.

Because enslaved Africans were known to attack their masters, burn plantation crops, destroy farm equipment and organize insurrections, laws governing their conduct called “slave codes” placed severe limits on when they were allowed to congregate. The very idea of Africans meeting in groups of three or more for purposes other than religious worship terrified the slave-owning class.