This Friday, we celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility, an opportunity to celebrate the many contributions trans people have made to society as well as raise awareness for the work that needs to be done to achieve gender equality for all.  We are currently witnessing a wave of anti-trans legislation across the country, but the criminalization of trans people is nothing new. For over 20 years, Louisiana’s Crime Against Nature by Solicitation law (or CANS for short) made offering certain sexual acts for money a felony, with penalties including up to 5 years in prison, hard labor, and mandatory registration on the sex offender database. These harsh penalties never applied to the state’s other anti-sex work laws, and were specifically designed to target queer people, especially Black trans women. Louisiana strengthened CANS in 1992 and by 2011, 40 percent of people on the New Orleans sex offender registry were convicted under CANS. Of that, 75 percent were women, and 79 percent were Black. Our guests today have been fighting to make New Orleans a safer place for transgender and gender non-conforming people in the face of this pernicious law that targets and criminalizes them. In addition to building spaces for Black trans women to rest, learn, live and thrive, Wendi Cooper and Milan Nicole Sherry have dedicated their lives to repealing the law that once threatened their own lives. A recent documentary, "CANS Can’t Stand," highlights Wendi, Milan, and others’ fight against CANS and efforts to build community for trans women in New Orleans and beyond. We are so excited to speak with them all about their tenacious activism and the experience of releasing “CANS Can't Stand” at a time of such backlash against LGBTQ rights and representation.

Keeping kids safe is one of our greatest responsibilities as adults. But what if the main tool we use to protect children is actually preventing everyone from getting the resources they need? Every state in the nation has mandatory reporting laws that require professions such as teachers, coaches, nurses, and more to report any suspected or observed instances of child abuse to the state. While this sounds logical, its application has effectively made a surveillance apparatus out of educators, health care, and social workers, which leaves the families most in need of help afraid to ask for it, at the risk of opening an investigation.    The pitfalls of mandatory reporting are especially evident in Pennsylvania. In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed sweeping reforms expanding mandatory reporting and the definition of child abuse to include low-level neglectful circumstances that often arise from poverty. Since reforms were implemented in 2014, reports have skyrocketed, but recent studies have shown that this increase has not turned up any additional victims of child abuse but has rather over-stretched the system. Within the first five years of the reforms, one million calls were made to the state’s child abuse hotline. 800,000 regarded low-level neglect allegations stemming from poverty, and nine in ten were dismissed following traumatic housing searches and family questioning that disproportionately target Black and brown families.  
Here to help explain the mandatory reporting system and its consequences are Director of Client Voice at Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services, April Lee, who experienced firsthand how mandatory reporting can traumatize families, and Anjana Samant, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project

Today we are talking about one of the most revolutionary forces in America — teenage girls. Throughout history, teenage girls have consistently stood on the frontlines for change. At 16, Sybil Ludington outran Paul Revere in warning American troops of the impending threat of the British. At 15, Barbara Johns staged a school boycott that helped initiate Brown v. Board of Education. At 19, Heather Tobis tried to help herself and other girls around her navigate a pre-Roe world by starting Jane — a clandestine network that connected young women with access to safe abortions. Never heard of these girls? Yeah, neither had we. The achievements and contributions of girls and young women are often under-recorded and dismissed. A new book, "Young and Restless: the Girls who Sparked America’s Revolutions," by Mattie Kahn interrupts this cycle of erasure. Mattie brings to the forefront girls' and young women’s trail-blazing activism, from the labor movement of the late 19th century to the fight against climate change now. Author, writer, and editor Mattie Kahn joins us today to talk about the revolutionary power of girls, the challenges they face, and how they rise up consistently to meet the moment.

It’s March, which means it’s Women’s History Month. This month, we’ll speak with women about their activism and resistance to fight for their rights and those around them. Today, we’re talking about the very sexy idea of constitutional interpretation. The Constitution, like any text, is open to interpretation. Where this gets hairy is when different judges, or justices, have vastly different methods of interpretation, typically based on their own bias, education, and lived experience. Where it gets even hairier is when women’s rights are on the line, and when one certain theory of constitutional interpretation is applied — one in which women aren’t even people in the eyes of the law. It’s called originalism. Originalism dictates that present day readings of the Constitution should be dependent on the document’s “original public meaning,” meaning that we have to look back to the time of the Constitution’s writing and ratification to interpret its intent. The problem is that only certain people at that time had civil rights at all: white, land-owning men. While initially this was a fringe theory, originalism has grown to become a dominant legal framework, one followed by five of the nine justices on the Supreme Court. Many legal scholars are alarmed at its increased use because the stakes are so high. In decisions across the country, originalism is being used to threaten the safety of women and bodily autonomy at large. As our guest Madiba K. Dennie wrote, “American law has not historically been good to women, and whatever progress there once was is now vulnerable to regression.” Madiba K. Dennie, former counsel at the Brennan Center’s Democracy program, recently explored the consequences of using the Constitution in this way in an article for The Atlantic, “Originalism is going to get women killed.” She joins us today to discuss.

Housing is the bedrock of American society, and one of the major determinants for life outcomes like health, income, and educational opportunity. Because of its importance, housing has long been the site of discriminatory policies aimed at marginalizing Black and Brown people in America, be it through zoning, redlining, crime free housing ordinances, racial steering, and more. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 aimed to address this history and outlaw discrimination, but vague guidelines and weak enforcement mechanisms have left a lot unaddressed. In January, the Biden administration reinstated the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, which adds federal heft to the Fair Housing Act and mandates that localities submit plans for actively addressing segregation and proposes that cities and states that fail to meaningfully work towards their stated goal could face loss of funding. Throughout her career in civil rights law, ACLU President Deborah Archer has studied housing discrimination and infrastructure. She’s the Associate Dean and Co-Director of Clinical and Advocacy Programs, Professor of Clinical Law, and Co-Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Inequality and the Law — all at the NYU School of Law. We’re excited to have her here today to give us a primer on housing discrimination and explain why it’s part of the ACLU’s push for equitable systems across so many facets of society.