The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 on January 12, 2005 that the government violated the law by indefinitely detaining “Mariel” Cubans who cannot be deported because Cuba will not allow their return.

“Once again, the Court has rebuked the administration for claiming the authority to indefinitely imprison immigrants,” said Judy Rabinovitz, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and an author of the ACLU’s friend-of-the-court brief who has successfully argued against such policies in the lower courts. “Today’s ruling is a vindication of the ACLU’s position that the government has been violating immigrants’ rights in disregard of the Supreme Court’s 2001 decision prohibiting indefinite detention.”

A federal judge recently ruled that placing disclaimer stickers warning that evolution is “a theory, not a fact” in public school science textbooks is an unconstitutional government intrusion on religious liberty.

The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit against the Cobb County School District brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia on behalf of five local parents. The parents argued that the disclaimer stickers would send the message to their children that they should reject the scientific theory of evolution in favor of religious viewpoints on origin.

“The school district gave evolution second-class status among all scientific theories and, at the same time, gave advantage to a specific religious viewpoint that rejects evolution,” said Maggie Garrett, an ACLU of Georgia staff attorney who argued the case.

Following one of the closest and most contentious elections in recent memory, pundits across the country identified “moral values” as the social fault line dividing America. Two and half months later, as President Bush begins his second term and as we celebrate the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade – the landmark Supreme Court decision recognizing abortion as largely a private matter – we would do well to revisit the question of abortion and more broadly of women’s reproductive health care and ask, “Whose moral values?” For just as reproductive health care is much broader than abortion, the assaults on reproductive rights reach far and wide and play no part in a moral nation.