ACLU of Kentucky

The 2010 General Assembly got under way on January 5^th and, by all accounts, we’re in for a very tough session.  Each year ACLU of Kentucky staff and members travel to Frankfort to lobby the legislature on important civil liberties issues.  This work is made possible through the money raised from ACLU membership dues.  So if you’re not yet a member, or you need to renew, this is the perfect time of year to do so.

            While it’s early in the session, and many bills have not yet been filed, we do have several priority issues that we are proactively working on.   We continue to seek the restoration of voting rights for former felons and statewide protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  We want to see comprehensive sexual education taught in our schools and the death penalty abolished from our judicial system.  And we will advocate for more inclusive hospital visitation rights and a couple’s right to choose if, when, and how to become parents.

The Reproductive Freedom Project is advocating for comprehensive sexual education legislation, which will provide Kentucky’s students with medically accurate and age appropriate healthcare information, so they can make healthy decisions. We are encouraged this year by the Federal government’s recent move away from funding abstinence-only programs and towards teen pregnancy prevention programs.  Additionally, Federal incentives and state legislation passed in 2009 for education reform favor innovative programs – a real opportunity for comprehensive sexual education to make headway in 2010.

            Years of work to abolish the death penalty in Kentucky have led us to a virtual tipping point.  This past fall the ACLU of Kentucky brought the Journey of Hope tour to seven college campuses across the state, addressing alternatives to capital punishment from the perspectives of murder victim family members and exonerated death row inmates.  Just this month the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the death penalty adopted as part of the Model Penal Code, disavowed the structure they’d created as irretrievably broken; a moral and practical failure.  Additionally, in the last year Ohio switched to a single chemical for lethal injections and New Mexico repealed its death penalty entirely.  In light of the current climate, we feel that legislation introduced to ban capital punishment for individuals with severe mental illness has a good chance of passing the Kentucky General Assembly.

            We continue to push for statewide Fairness protections and legislation has already been filed to amend Kentucky’s Civil Rights chapter to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in housing, employment, and public accommodations.  We are also promoting second-parent adoption legislation which would provide additional security for children by redefining stepparent to include any non-relative adult person who the court finds shares parental responsibility for the child.  Similarly, legislation has been proposed that would allow patients over the age of 18 the ability to designate an individual not legally related as an immediate family member.  In effect, this legislation would guarantee hospital visitation rights so that individuals can take care of their loved ones in a time of need.     

            And the campaign to restore the right to vote to former felons who have paid their debt to society is gaining steam.  Kentucky is one of only two states left in the country that continues to disenfranchise people in this way and it’s time for a change.  This legislation has gained additional supporters every year and after Sen. Damon Thayer refused to give the bill a hearing last year because he “hadn’t heard from his constituents” that the issue was important to them, the ACLU of Kentucky and our allies spent a lot of time in Thayer’s district over the past nine months.  There were several editorials and letters to the editor that appeared in the local paper and hundreds of Sen. Thayer’s constituents contacted him because of these efforts.

            Legislation will undoubtedly be put forth that threatens civil liberties as well, and we will be steadfast in our efforts to defeat such efforts at every turn.  If you would like to lobby with us in Frankfort between now and April, please contact the ACLU of Kentucky office at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .  And please consider joining or renewing your membership, or making an additional donation during the General Assembly to support our endeavors to shape public policy for all Kentuckians.

            You can track these issues and more during the 2010 General Assembly through ourLegislature Update page!  Stay informed by following the ACLU.

By Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, Reproductive Freedom Project

This morning, the Kentucky Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of Cochran v. Commonwealth, a case that could have enormous consequences for healthy moms and babies in that state.

Ms. Cochran's road to Kentucky's Supreme Court has been a long one. Almost four years ago, Ms. Cochran gave birth to a baby girl. Her daughter allegedly tested positive for cocaine, and for that alone, Ms. Cochran was charged with felony child abuse. However, before her case could go to trial, the court dismissed the prosecution. The court was right: Ms. Cochran never should have been charged. In 1993, in Commonwealth v. Welch (the ACLU represented Ms. Welch in that case), the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that Kentucky's criminal laws could not be used to punish women who become and choose to remain pregnant despite a substance abuse problem.

You might think that the court's dismissal of her case would have been the end of Ms. Cochran's ordeal; unfortunately it was not. The state appealed, arguing that in later cases the Kentucky Supreme Court had actually reversed itself, even though it could point to no explicit language where the court had done so. Surprisingly, the appeals court agreed (though not one of the three judges on that court agreed for the same reason). With the law now totally in flux, the state Supreme Court accepted the case to settle the issue — again — of whether becoming and remaining pregnant is ever a crime in the state of Kentucky.

The ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Ms. Cochran, not only because we believe Welch is still good law, but, more fundamentally, because using criminal laws to punish pregnant women who are struggling with addiction makes for bad law and even worse public policy. If a pregnant woman can be charged with a crime for potentially harming her fetus, then literally everything she does or does not do — including choosing to continue her pregnancy to term despite an underlying health condition — could land her in jail. What if a pregnant woman has a glass of wine with dinner now and then, or lives with a smoker; what if she drives over the speed limit, fails to get regular pre-natal care, or works in a coal mine, as many women in Kentucky do?

Allowing the government to exercise such unlimited control over women's bodies, and every aspect of their lives, would essentially reduce pregnant women to second-class citizens, denying them the basic constitutional rights enjoyed by the rest of us.

Moreover, from a public health perspective, these prosecutions are simply counterproductive. Fifty-nine organizations and experts, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Kentucky Psychiatric Medical Association, joined friend-of-the-court briefs in this case, explaining that punitive approaches to improving fetal health just don't work. Seems obvious, right? By forcing doctors to turn in their own patients, these prosecutions only drive women away from the health care and treatment they need. If the state of Kentucky was truly interested in supporting healthy moms and babies, these groups point out, it would not be violating its own laws to throw the pregnant women who need health care the most in jail.

We are hopeful that the Kentucky Supreme Court will agree and uphold nearly two decades of sound law and policy in the state of Kentucky. Indeed, the court's decision will have ramifications beyond Ms. Cochran's case. At least two other women have been charged with similar "crimes" since Ms. Cochran's arrest. Our efforts should be focused on ensuring that pregnant women with underlying health conditions can get the care they need. Hopefully, this case will set us squarely on that path.