News & Commentary

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana is deeply saddened by the passing of former executive director Barbara Williamson, age 74, on Oct. 8. Williamson led the ACLU of Indiana from 1973 to 1979 after having volunteered at the organization. During her tenure, the then ICLU won an injunction that allowed it to rent a booth at the Indiana State Fair after it had been denied that right for being "too controversial." Under her leadership, the ICLU also successfully took on the Indiana Textbook Commission's efforts to add an overtly creationist textbook to the biology curriculum.

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana settled a lawsuit on behalf of a Whiting woman who was arrested while she was taking pictures of a house fire.

You may have heard Governor Pence, in his State of the State address, challenging all of us to find a way in which religious liberty can co-exist alongside civil rights laws, including civil rights laws updated to protect gay and transgender Hoosiers.

First Wednesdays in Bloomington, Dec. 2, 2015: "The Not-So-Private Lives of Hoosiers: How Technology is Threatening our Privacy." Panel included (L-R) Indiana University Professors Christine Von Der Haar, Fred Cate, Scott Shackelford and Kelly Eskew (not pictured). Photo by Katelyn Rowe, The Indiana Daily Student.

On January 7, 2015, after more than a year in which the fate of a Lafayette, Ind. health center was in potential jeopardy, a federal judge put to rest the question of whether the state of Indiana can constitutionally implement a law that regulates a clinic offering non-surgical abortion more strictly than physicians' offices providing the exact same procedure.

On October 20, 2015, Judge Sarah Evans Barker ruled on our challenge to an Indiana law, that would have made it a level six felony for a voter to take a ballot "selfie" at the polls or to share it on social networks.

A Fort Wayne mom who has early-stage Hepatitis C is one of thousands of individuals across Indiana whose lives could possibly be saved through an ACLU of Indiana class-action lawsuit filed in November, 2015.

In October 2015, the ACLU of Indiana brought a lawsuit against the Indiana Department of Child Services on behalf of a Greene County couple, Julie and David Arthur, who have been providing care for their three special needs grandchildren.