Past Legislative Sessions

Legislative Highlights: 2009 – 2010

Voting Rights
Support AB 353 /SB 240, the Wisconsin Democracy Act
This bill would restore voting rights to people with felony convictions upon release from incarceration. The Restore the Vote coalition is working to change the state law to allow people with felony convictions to vote immediately upon release from prison instead of after they have finished with probation, parole and extended supervision. These U.S. citizens live, work, pay taxes, go to school, and raise families in our communities while they are learning to reintegrate into society. The 42,000 WI citizens who would be enfranchised by AB 353/SB 240 would already have the right to vote in 20 states around the nation.

Reproductive Rights
Support AB 458 /SB 324, the Healthy Youth Act
The Healthy Youth Act would raise state standards for human growth and development curriculum (a.k.a sex ed) to a comprehensive sexuality education model. Comprehensive sexuality education would ensure that Wisconsin public school students get effective, age-appropriate and medically accurate information about reproduction.

State's Secrets
Civil liberties groups have been working to guard against erosions in Constitutional rights since 9/11. As groups like the ACLU work to uncover evidence of surveillance, torture and other abuses by the government, both the Bush and Obama administrations have used “state’s secrets” privilege to justify immunity from legal action. Legislation has been introduced, and co-sponsored by Wisconsin’s Representative Tom Petri, to bring back reasonable standards by which the government can use this privilege.

For background on how the state’s secrets privilege changed from being a tool to protect national defense to something abused by the government for legal immunity, read the ACLU’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on why legislative change is necessary.

You can find out more about the work the ACLU is doing nationally to protect innocent people from government abuse of state’s secrets privilege on the national website.

Other Resources:
Find a full list of bills of interest to the ACLU of Wisconsin during the 2009-2010 legislative year on the state’s ethics page. The ethics page shows bills we support, oppose, or have questions about with links to the original bills.

Do you know who represents you in government? Our Take Action page has ways to look up your federal, state and local representatives and tools to help you communicate your civil liberties priorities.

For more information or news on civil liberties issues in Wisconsin, visit the ACLU of Wisconsin’s Issues page.