For the third time in two years, the ACLU has sued Kentucky for blocking access to abortion. We’ve been here before. Once again, the Kentucky General Assembly passed a bill that limits abortion access and, once again, Gov. Matt Bevin signed it into law.

The new law, signed yesterday, makes it a crime for doctors at Kentucky’s last remaining abortion clinic to perform a safe and medically proven abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation, or “D&E.” Leading medical experts such as the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists oppose this type of abortion restriction. Earlier this month, an evidence-based and non-partisan report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine described D&E as a “superior method” of abortion after 16 weeks, finding that it is extremely safe with minimal complications.

While the law was being considered in the legislature, two obstetrician-gynecologists testified against the ban, pointing out that a woman’s health, not politics, should drive important medical decisions. But lawmakers disregarded the comments and expertise of these medical professionals and passed the bill anyway.

The advocacy director of the ACLU of Kentucky also testified in opposition to the bill, stating that similar bans in Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas have all been blocked when challenged in court. But lawmakers disregarded her comments, too. Women came to the Capitol to share their abortion stories and faith leaders came to ask legislators to respect peoples’ autonomy to make their own decisions. Lawmakers disregarded all of their comments.

This restriction is part of a national strategy to push abortion out of reach. Since January 2011, state lawmakers around the country have enacted more than 400 new restrictions on abortion that force patients to delay care, shut down clinics, and make abortion care unaffordable. Last year in Kentucky, the ACLU sued and successfully blocked an attempt to force doctors to narrate an ultrasound before an abortion procedure. The state is now appealing that decision. We also sued to keep the doors at Kentucky’s last clinic open when the state attempted to enforce unconstitutional and medically unnecessary restrictions that would have forced the clinic to shut down. We’re waiting for a judge’s ruling in that case.

Kentucky politicians are determined to limit a woman’s ability to get safe and affordable abortion care. But we won’t turn from this fight. We are determined to battle them in court so that Kentuckians can get the care they need and the right to decide what happens to their bodies.

On Tuesday morning, President Trump reacted to the news that the FBI searched the office of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, by tweeting “Attorney–client privilege is dead!” On Monday night, he called the search “an attack on our country.” Nothing could be further from the truth. While all the facts are not yet known publicly, all indications thus far are that the search was conducted pursuant to the rule of law, and with sign-offs from Trump appointees. 

We don’t say this lightly. The ACLU is the nation’s premier defender of privacy, and we’ve long maintained that the right of every American to speak freely to his or her attorney is essential to the legal system. These rights are protected by the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, and we are second to none in defending them — often for people with whom we fundamentally disagree.

But we also believe in the rule of law as an essential foundation for civil liberties and civil rights. And perhaps the first principle of the rule of law is that no one — not even the president, let alone his lawyer — is above the law.  And no one, not even the president, can exploit the attorney-client privilege to engage in crime or fraud. 

The attorney-client privilege has always included a “crime-fraud exception,” which provides that if you are using the attorney-client relationship to perpetrate a crime, there is no privilege. You have a right to talk in confidence with your attorney about criminal activity, but you can’t use your attorney to accomplish a crime. A mobster suspected of engaging in bribery can consult his attorney about the facts of his alleged bribery without fear that the attorney will disclose those communications. But he has no right to have the lawyer deliver the bribe for him.    

The ACLU has long recognized this exception. In fact, the ACLU cited the crime-fraud exception in our efforts to stop the government from concealing evidence of illegal torture by citing the attorney-client privilege.

While the crime-fraud exception is well-established, it is also narrow. And searches of lawyers’ offices should be tightly restricted. The Justice Department’s own guidelines recognize that searching an attorney’s office is not to be done lightly. Unlike ordinary searches, searches of attorney offices require extraordinary approvals from high-level officials — in this instance, from Trump appointees in the Justice Department. 

According to the Justice Department’s guidelines on searching the office of an attorney, a “search warrant should be drawn as specifically as possible, consistent with the requirements of the investigation, to minimize the need to search and review privileged material to which no exception applies.” The guidelines go on to say that to protect the attorney-client privilege, “a ‘privilege team’ should be designated, consisting of agents and lawyers not involved in the underlying investigation,” in order to “minimize the intrusion into privileged material.” The burden of proof is on prosecutors to show that they made no use of privileged material and their investigation was not influenced by it. These protections may or may not be sufficient in particular circumstances, but they show that the Justice Department recognizes, and seeks to safeguard, the attorney-client privilege even in those rare circumstances where it seeks to search an attorney’s office.

The New York Times reports that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee, signed off on the search.  Indeed, all of the top officials involved in the decision to go forward with the search are Republican:  Robert Mueller, Rosenstein, and FBI Director Christopher Wray. The interim U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman, is also a Republican, although he reportedly recused himself.  That all of these Republican officials approved the search refutes any suggestion that it is a partisan “attack.” And most significantly, the search was conducted pursuant to a warrant issued by a nonpartisan federal magistrate judge.

We don’t know all the reasons and circumstances for the FBI search of Cohen’s office and home. News reports suggest that the focus is on Cohen’s payments to two women, adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to suppress their stories of affairs with Donald Trump, and that these payments may have been illegal. But what is clear is that prosecutors had to overcome high hurdles to obtain the search warrant. That the warrant was issued is not a sign that the attorney-client privilege is dead. It is, on the contrary, a sign that the rule of law is alive.

Last week, the Minneapolis Police Department announced an overhaul of its body camera policy, claiming that it will now have “teeth.” The actual policy, however, is a mixed bag — with neither MPD Police Chief Medaria Arradondo nor Mayor Jacob Frey publicly acknowledging the rollbacks they are making to the previous policy changes last summer.

The issue of police body cameras is a tough one. When the city mandated camera use, the ACLU of Minnesota worked to promote police accountability and minimize the potential privacy violations the cameras pose. But we have yet to see body cameras used effectively to help address police misconduct. Instead, we have found ourselves tied up in legislative battles trying to prevent laws that would keep footage from body cameras secret, even when there is a strong public interest in the video.

The problem hasn’t solely been in the policy — it’s been the unwillingness of the MPD to hold their officers accountable. Deputy Chief Henry Halvorson admitted in February that the department was not tracking compliance, claiming that it was too labor intensive. And not a single officer has yet been disciplined for noncompliance.

The ACLU-MN was encouraged last summer when then-Interim Police Chief Arradondo announced changes to the body camera policy. Chief Arradondo announced police officers would be required to activate their body cameras at dispatch — a behavior that could hopefully become routine for officers and contribute to greater compliance. Chief Arradondo also announced that noncompliance in body camera activation would result in a minimum level of discipline, consisting of either a written reprimand or a documented oral reprimand as well as up to 40 hours’ suspension in certain circumstances.

Now we are seeing those advancements rolled back, leaving us to question whether there is will to hold officers accountable to a set policy.

In part due to concerns about data storage, officers will now be required to activate body cameras two blocks away from their destination rather than the clear directive to activate immediately on dispatch. There will always be trade-offs when implementing technology. The priority, however, should be on policies that maximize compliance.

We are also very concerned that only now is Chief Arradondo implementing tiered discipline levels for various infractions. Failure to active body cameras in situations involving reportable use of force, injuries, or significant property damage now will result in a minimum 40-hour suspension. For any other situation, however, the minimum suspension discipline was reduced to nondisciplinary actions, such as coaching, to help correct the behavior.

It’s puzzling that the city now says the new policy is intended to “maximize the number of times [the body camera] is supposed to be turned on.” The previous policy did require body cameras to be turned on every time at dispatch. Indeed, we learned last week from Chief Arradondo that body camera usage increased substantially after he directed officers to activate their cameras upon dispatch. And there was a policy to discipline officers who didn’t comply.

One positive change that the MPD is making is tasking additional staff with compliance monitoring. That's a start, and we have no doubt that when the MPD decides to implement and enforce best practices for body cameras, the policy will, in fact, have “teeth.” But a policy is merely a tool — and the MPD has to use it if it is ever going to work.