Earlier this week, the ACLU, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Lambda Legal filed another brief before the California Supreme Court urging the court to strike down Prop 8 which attempted to take away the right of gay people to marry in the state. This brief was filed in response to the brief filed by the California Attorney General and the anti-gay organizations that supported Prop 8. What is noteworthy about this brief is that while we differ slightly in our legal analysis, we agree with the Attorney General Jerry Brown that Prop 8 should be struck down. We also argue — again in agreement with the Attorney General — that Proposition 8 cannot be applied to invalidate existing marriages because new laws and amendments are presumed to apply only on a prospective basis.

To shed some light on the many questions raised by the passage of Prop 8, we put together a FAQ . If you’re concerned about how Prop 8 will affect your marriage or just want to learn more about our efforts to have it overturned, please check it out. You can read a copy of the brief filed this week as well as the other legal documents in the case here.

Saturday’s New York Times profiled the ACLU’s al-Marri case, in which we’re challenging the military’s indefinite detention of a legal U.S. resident in a South Carolina Navy brig. This case will be heard by the Supreme Court this term, and the government’s brief is due on February 20.

It goes without saying that we’re hoping for a complete 180-degree turnaround from the current administration’s claim that the president can order the military to seize legal residents from their homes in the United States and detain them indefinitely without charge, and seeking an elimination by the Supreme Court of the dangerous precedent created by the lower court’s decision upholding that claim. ACLU attorney Jonathan Hafetz, who’s representing al-Marri, tells the Times:

If, as President-elect Obama has pledged, the rule of law in America is to be restored…then Mr. al-Marri’s military detention must cease and the lower court’s ruling upholding the president’s power to order the military to seize legal residents and American citizens from their homes and imprison them without charge, must be overturned.

To learn more about Mr. al-Marri, watch a video of Jonathan and ACLU Legal Director Steve Shapiro discuss the case at our annual Supreme Court briefing.

In this month’s issue of the New York Review of Books, Georgetown law professor David Cole references Administration of Torture, the book by ACLU attorneys Amrit Singh and Jameel Jaffer. The book shows, through documents released under the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the connection between the highest levels of the Bush administration and the torture of prisoners that took place in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and other U.S.-run overseas detention facilities.

Cole writes:

Must we then settle for the judgment of history that Ashcroft worried about? In some sense, that judgment has already begun to take shape, thanks to the efforts of Sands, Ratner, enterprising journalists like Mark Danner and Jane Mayer, and especially the ACLU, which forced the disclosure of over 100,000 documents on the interrogation policy by filing a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. Administration of Torture, a guide to those documents with excerpts from the most interesting, will prove an immensely useful resource for future historians.

In its final, waning days, the Bush administration continues to assert that torture works, despite much evidence to the contrary. We’re asking the incoming Obama administration to put a stop to this shameful practice and to restore America’s moral standing in the world.

Traveling during the holidays is already a nightmare, but for Juan Fernando Gómez, cancelled flights are the least of his worries. You see, Gómez’s is one of more than a million names on the TSA’s watchlist—and he’s therefore subject to what he calls his “own private travel hell”—a.k.a. extra screening—every time he flies.

In an essay titled “Why Can’t I Get Off This List?” in Sunday’s Washington Post, Gómez describes the feeling on impending doom every time a flight he’s on touches down, and his familiarity with the many waiting rooms where he’s subjected to that extra screening (Miami: good; Dulles: less good). He writes:

Time and time again, I’ve been cleared for entry into the United States. So why does my name remain on the list? Will I have to go through this for the rest of my life? In desperation, I always ask airport-security officers how my name can be removed. I’ve heard it all, from writing to my congressman (as if that would do any good) to filling out a form (never mind that no one has been able to produce the document or tell me where I can find it). The most honest answer came from a young, Afghan American officer at Dulles a couple of weeks ago: “There’s absolutely nothing you can do.”

Well, that’s not totally true. Juan Fernando Gómez, all it will take is an act of Congress to have you name removed from the list. Barring that, you, like the many Robert Johnsons before you, will continue to remain in your own private travel hell for the rest of your life. (If you happen to be a Nobel prize-winner like Nelson Mandela, that act of Congress might just come through for you.)

You can learn more about the TSA’s watchlist at www.aclu.org/watchlist and sign a petition asking Congress to fix it. And take our fun—albeit horrifying—quiz to learn more absurd facts about the watchlist.

Today the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the state of Arkansas’ newly passed Act 1. Slated to take effect January 1, Act 1 bans any unmarried person who lives with a partner from serving as an adoptive or foster parent in the state. In our lawsuit, we argue that Act 1 violates the federal and state constitutional rights to equal protection and due process. Read the release.

This week on Salon Radio, Glenn Greenwald interviewed Admiral John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General for the U.S. Navy, now Dean and President of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. Dean Hutson was among a group of retired military officers who met with members of President-elect Obama’s transition team — which included Attorney General nominee Eric Holder — earlier this month to talk about the country’s policies towards torture, rendition and detention.

Dean Hutson is also a supporter of the ACLU’s John Adams Project. Dean Hutson recorded this video explaining why this effort to assist with the legal representation of detainees prosecuted under the military commission system at Guantánamo is important to America’s justice system.

Today, in partnership with Brave New Foundation, we released a new video for our Close Gitmo campaign. This video features interviews with three military commission defense lawyers and a former military commission prosecutor talking about the military commissions system that was set up to prosecute detainees in U.S. custody. They use words like “disgrace,” “sham,” “kangaroo court,” and “deeply unethical” to describe the system. See for yourself:

Today, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero is at Guantánamo to observe the pre-trial hearings of the detainees charged with crimes related to the 9/11 attacks. Today we learned the group of four detainees offered to plead guilty to the crimes.

President-elect Obama has said that he will close Guantánamo. Let’s hope he puts this shameful chapter of American justice to an end on Day One.

Good news on the free speech front: Today we learned that our ideological exclusion case on behalf of renowned South African scholar Adam Habib will proceed in court. Judge George O’Toole of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts denied the government’s motion to dismiss the case, so the case moves forward.

In June, the government argued that it didn’t have to explain or justify its decision to bar Professor Habib from attending speaking events in the United States based on vague national security grounds. The government also argued that the court lacked jurisdiction (the power) to hear the case. But Judge O’Toole agreed with the ACLU that the government has to supply a valid justification for barring Professor Habib because his exclusion harms our clients’ First Amendment rights. Specifically, their right to hear Professor Habib’s ideas and engage him in face-to-face debate (our clients are the American Sociological Association, the American Association of University Professors, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Massachusetts, and the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights – all of whom have invited Professor Habib to speak in the United States).

You can listen to Professor Habib talk about this case in this podcast.

Last week, the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation were back before a judge in San Francisco arguing against the government’s motion to dismiss in Hepting v. AT&T, the granddaddy of class-action lawsuits against just one of the telecoms accused of colluding with the NSA to spy on Americans’ calls. ACLU of Illinois Legal Director Harvey Grossman spoke with Glenn Greenwald about Tuesday’s hearing on Salon Radio. You can read the transcript, or listen here. It’s a fascinating discussion for the FISA and wiretapping buffs among you.

From our press release:

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a legal challenge today to prohibit the government from censoring prisoners’ testimony about torture and abuse in their military commission proceedings. Currently, the government cuts off the audio feed whenever a detainee testifies about CIA abuse so that observers cannot hear descriptions of brutal interrogations. In its motion, filed with the judge overseeing the prosecution of five defendants charged with involvement in the 9/11 attacks, the ACLU also seeks the immediate release of all transcripts of past proceedings in which the audio was turned off.

This kind of censorship threatens the American public’s right to know about the abusive interrogations and torture being done in our names. Read the brief here.