AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF RI

The American Civil Liberties Union is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to upholding and protecting the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Founded in the 1920s by a small group of devoted civil libertarians, today the ACLU is comprised of more than 500, 000 members and more than fifty affiliates and chapters nationwide.

The Rhode Island ACLU is comprised of two separate corporate entities: the Rhode Island Affiliate, American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation of Rhode Island.

The RI ACLU performs its work in three major ways: litigation, legislation and education. The cases that we take, the bills we lobby on and the public education activities that we sponsor, are designed to help preserve and protect the civil liberties of all Rhode Islanders against government infringement. As a general rule, the issues with which the RI ACLU gets involved break down into the following categories:

First Amendment rights (freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion)

the right to due process of law

the right to equal protection of the laws

the right to privacy

open government issues

The Rhode Island ACLU is comprised of two separate corporate entities: the Rhode Island Affiliate, American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation of Rhode Island. Although both are part of the same overall organization, it is necessary that the ACLU of Rhode Island have two separate organizations in order to do a broad range of work in protecting civil liberties. These two organizations are referred to collectively as the Rhode Island ACLU.