by Scott Clements

There’s not much that my brother Brian fears. 
 
He’s 10 years older than me, a bear of a man physically, and his entire life he’s been a ball of energy. He coached my football team when I was a youth. He dreamed of becoming a business owner. The cleaning service he started from the trunk of his car grew into several companies with 50 employees. After a terrible car accident, he got a prison sentence, and has made it his goal to use that time to improve himself. He has a team of family and friends rooting for him, but no one is more optimistic than Brian about all of the things he’ll contribute once he’s out.
 
But when COVID-19 hit, that fearless outlook changed. The virus spread like wildfire through the New Jersey prison where he is incarcerated. Since March, he’s been scared out of his mind. 
 
If my brother gets COVID-19, he’s never coming home. His release date is February 2021. If Brian contracts the virus, he will not make it. He’s 59, and has Type 1 diabetes, heart disease, and weight issues — all risk factors. During his sentence, medical staff left a catheter in for several months longer than they should have, and he nearly died from sepsis.
 
For my brother, every single day is literally the difference between life and death.
 
New Jersey has a shameful distinction when it comes to COVID-19: Despite success in containing the virus in other ways, the death rates in our prisons are the worst in the country.
 
There is currently legislation pending that could make New Jersey a leader in containing the pandemic, rather than a cautionary tale. This legislation, S2519/A4235, sponsored by Sens. Nellie Pou and Sandra Cunningham, Assemblyman Raj Mukherji, Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, and Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, would release people from prison who have less than eight months to go on their sentence, advancing public health in two critically important ways. First, it would allow people to distance themselves outside of prison, an environment that’s like a cruise ship on steroids, where social distancing is impossible. Further, it would lower the prison population to make social distancing possible — not just for the people who are serving time, but for employees, medical staff, and the families they go home to.
 
Everyone who would be released under the legislation is getting out soon anyway. This bill would lessen the chance of dying in the short period of time before they can come home. Having passed through the New Jersey Senate last month, the bill must now be voted on in the assembly in order to go to the Governor’s desk.
 
If this legislation fails, the state of New Jersey sends the message that six extra months in prison is worth my brother’s life. As we’ve known since the pandemic began, it is imperative to reduce the prison population as quickly and safely as possible if we are to protect as many lives as we can from this deadly virus.
 
The possibility of death is extremely real. Through the course of fighting for my brother’s life, I’ve come to know Bernice Ferguson. Her son Rory had just celebrated his 39th birthday and was scheduled for release from prison within a matter of weeks. Bernice never got to throw the party she was planning to celebrate his homecoming. Instead, because he contracted COVID-19, she had to plan a funeral.
 
We are all human. We all make mistakes. My brother knows he made a serious one. He regrets it every single day, and he lives every day to make himself a better person. My 16-year-old son, inspired by the entrepreneurship of his uncle and godfather Brian, started a lawn care business of his own. For Brian’s 59th birthday, on Aug. 7, he sent his uncle a card with one simple message: “I just want my godfather to come home, so we can work together.”
 
Of the 3,000 people who would be eligible for release under S2519/A4235, Brian is in some ways luckier than most despite his health. He has me, our three other siblings, our mother, and a host of friends and family who love him, and who have the energy and knowledge to do what we can to fight for his release. But without legislation, there’s only a limited amount we can do. 
 
Whenever another group of people in his prison leave en masse for quarantine, we talk and cry, worrying he could be next. We’ve had several conversations about end-of-life care. The reality of death is everywhere.
 
In recent weeks, we as a nation have surpassed yet another heartbreaking milestone: More than 1,000 people have now died of COVID-19 in prisons across the country. More must be done to save lives. Passing S2519/A4235 in New Jersey would do just that.
  
From the beginning of his sentence, my brother has worked to become a better person than he was when he was first locked up. Before that fateful accident, my brother had built successful companies and strengthened our community — he helped his employees get citizenship, helped families purchase their first home, gave people their first jobs. 
 
When Brian puts his mind to something, he does it. Outside of prison, he’ll make an even greater impact than before. But to get that done, we have to get him home.
 
New Jerseyans, send a message to lawmakers to vote YES on S2519/A4235 and urge Governor Murphy to swiftly sign it into law.

An earlier version of the op-ed originally appeared in The Star Ledger.

As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on, people across the country face the economic devastation left in its wake. Along with staggering unemployment numbers, millions of renters now face eviction — a situation made even more dire by the global health crisis. Congress responded by instating an eviction moratorium for more than 12 million rental units across the country. But that moratorium expired on July 24th. This week, the Center for Disease Control introduced another moratorium, protecting certain renters in certain circumstances until the new year. But that still leaves many unprotected, and those who are protected remain burdened with a hefty bill due in 2021.

ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Sandra Park has monitored this situation since the start of the pandemic and has litigated discriminatory eviction policies in the U.S. for almost two decades. She joined us this week to explain the current crisis.

Why Evicting Millions During a Pandemic is Bad for Our Democracy

Why Evicting Millions During a Pandemic is Bad for Our Democracy

As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on, people across the country face the economic devastation left in its wake. Along with staggering unemployment numbers, millions of renters now face eviction — a situation made even more dire by the global heal...

As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on, people across the country face the economic devastation left in its wake. Along with staggering unemployment numbers, millions of renters now face eviction — a situation made even more dire by the global heal...

Listen to this episode

By Joshua Block, ACLU Senior Staff Attorney

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday ruled in favor of American Civil Liberties Union client Gavin Grimm, deciding that restroom policies segregating transgender students from their peers and denying transgender student accurate transcripts are unconstitutional and violate Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education.
 
The decision comes after a five-year long court battle that began when the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Virginia filed a sex discrimination lawsuit against the Gloucester Country School Board for adopting a discriminatory policy requiring Grimm and other transgender students to use “alternative private” restrooms.

 Here are four highlights from the decision today: 

“Grimm’s four years of high school were shaped by his fight to use the restroom that matched his consistent and persistent gender identity. In the face of adults who misgendered him and called him names, he spoke with conviction at school Board meetings. The solution was apparent: allow Grimm to use the boys’ restrooms, as he had been doing without incident. But instead, the Board implemented a policy that … sent him to special bathrooms that might as well have said ‘Gavin’ on the sign. It did so while increasing privacy in the boys’ bathrooms, after which its own deposition witness could not cite a remaining privacy concern. We are left without doubt that the Board acted to protect cisgender boys from Gavin’s mere presence — a special kind of discrimination against a child that he will no doubt carry with him for life.” 

“The proudest moments of the federal judiciary are when we affirm the burgeoning values of our bright youth, rather than preserve the prejudices of the past. …  How shallow a promise of equal protection that would not protect Grim from the fantastical fears and unfounded prejudices of his adult community. It is time to move forward. The district court’s judgment is Affirmed.” 

Judge Wynn issued a second opinion in agreement, called a concurrence, adding: 

“Th[is] is indistinguishable from the sort of separate-but-equal treatment that is anathema under our jurisprudence. No less than the recent historical practice of segregating Black and white restrooms, schools, and other public accommodations, the unequal treatment enabled by the Board’s policy produces a vicious and ineradicable stigma. The result is to deeply and indelibly scar the most vulnerable among us — children who simply wish to be treated as equals at one of the most fraught developmental moments in their lives — by labeling them as unfit for equal participation in our society. And for what gain? The Board has persisted in offering hypothetical and pretextual concerns that have failed to manifest, either in this case or in myriad others like it across our nation. I am left to conclude that the policy instead discriminates against transgender students out of a bare dislike or fear of those ‘others’ who are all too often marginalized in our society for the mere fact that they are different. As such, the policy grossly offends the Constitution’s basic guarantee of equal protection under the law. 

“I see little distinction between the message sent to Black children denied equal treatment in education under the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ and transgender children relegated to the ‘alternative appropriate private facilit[ies]’ provided for by the Board’s policy. The import is the same: ‘the affirmation that the very being of a people is inferior.’ (Martin Luther King, Jr.)”  

Today’s ruling follows a recent decision from the Supreme Court that it is illegal to fire someone for being LGBTQ. The ACLU argued in the case of Aimee Stephens that federal civil rights laws that prohibit sex discrimination protect LGBTQ people. Today the court once again ruled that Title IX, which also prohibits sex discrimination, applies to transgender students.

While the summer has brought legal wins for the LGBTQ community, the fight is not over. In 2020, over 200 anti-LGBTQ laws were active in state legislatures, including dozens targeting transgender youth. The ACLU and its partners fought many of those and won, and will continue to fight for transgender youth across America.