Three months after Adelanto city officials arbitrarily denied a permit to a community group organizing a small political protest at City Hall because they couldn't afford a million-dollar insurance policy for the event, officials moved this month to fix the city's misguided permitting scheme.

The ACLU of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) commends the City Council for moving to address the problem by adopting a new ordinance for events on public land, and for dismissing misdemeanor charges brought against the organizer of the event.

Under the new rules, the city manager must use specific criteria to determine whether to issue or deny a permit and may exempt groups participating in political protests from the requirement that they obtain insurance. The city's new policy also increases the size of a group that can protest without a permit from 25 to 75, allowing groups of fewer than 75 people to gather on city property without first seeking permission from the city.

The new policy rightfully recognizes that the First Amendment prohibits the government from arbitrarily restricting citizens from speaking out, particularly when it comes to core political speech like a protest directed at government officials. As we noted in a previous post, Adelanto's permitting scheme raised grave constitutional concerns because it gave city officials unbridled discretion to impose conditions on permits or deny permits outright to groups seeking to protest government action.

The city's new policy, however, still leaves the city manager with a great deal of discretion in deciding when and to whom to grant a permit. We will be closely following events in Adelanto to ensure that city officials exercise this discretion in a manner that allows all residents to exercise their First Amendment rights, without arbitrarily denying permits or imposing excessive conditions on permits—such as requiring exorbitant last-minute insurance policies that price residents out of exercising their constitutional rights.

Michael Kaufman is staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. ​Follow ACLU_SoCal.

By Amanda Goad, @ACLUAmanda

Her name was Lamia Beard. She was from Virginia.

Her name was Taja DeJesus. She was from California.

Her name was Penny Proud. She was from Louisiana.

Her name was Ty Underwood. She was from Texas.

Her name was Yazmin Vash Payne. She was from California.

Her name was Bri Golec. She was from Ohio.

Her name was Kristina Gomez Reinwald. She was from Florida.

Seven transgender women that we know of have been murdered in this country since 2015 started. At least five were women of color. It's a horrifying litany already, and it's only February.

Trans lives matter

Writer and activist Janet Mock blogged on Monday about how she maintains hope in the face of these tragedies because recent media visibility for transgender women of color, like herself and Laverne Cox, is gradually helping "reshape the narrative of trans women's lives." At the ACLU, we also feel a responsibility to do whatever we can to change the landscape for trans people in the United States. Through litigation, policy advocacy, and education, we're working to enhance safety, increase opportunity and foster dignity for all transgender people, but especially for trans women of color.

Toward this end, much of the ACLU's work in recent years has focused on getting policymakers and the public to appreciate the basic human dignity of transgender individuals. It goes without saying that transgender people have the right to do everything non-transgender people do, from using restrooms in peace to accessing medically necessary health care to serving in the military, but unfortunately there are still people and institutions denying this basic truth. Conversations in the halls of power and in the media about righting these exclusions help Americans understand what it means to be transgender and appreciate trans people's humanity.

Another thread of our work has involved protecting the safety of transgender people, often in relation to the criminal justice system. Disproportionately forced into survival economies because of widespread discrimination and stereotyping based on both gender and race, transgender women of color are particularly vulnerable to cycles of arrest, incarceration, trauma and violence.

We've both responded to individual instances of these problems and worked to raise awareness of the underlying issues, such as by helping Monica Jones fight a Phoenix police practice of profiling and arresting trans women of color as presumed sex workers, and helping Connecticut teenager "Jane Doe" resist officials' efforts to imprison and isolate her without criminal charges.

Where feasible, we've also worked with governments to secure policies and training that increase law enforcement sensitivity to the needs of transgender people. The LGBT Project's work on these issues dovetails with that of many other advocates, including our colleagues within the ACLU at the Racial Justice Project, the Criminal Law Reform Project, the Campaign to End Mass Incarceration and affiliate offices around the country.

Finally, we've been striving to ensure that transgender Americans have equal opportunity to achieve economic security. This includes pushing to enact and enforce local, state, and federal laws protecting transgender workers from discrimination. It also encompasses our extensive advocacy to ensure that transgender students are respected at school and able to focus on learning.

Being able to participate fully in education and in the workplace won't guarantee that transgender girls and women of color are safe from violence, but it will reduce the vulnerability that comes from economic marginalization. Further, seeing transgender peers succeed at work and at school will help other Americans work through their prejudices and misconceptions regarding transgender people.

Stop the violence against transgender women of color

Unfortunately, there's no lawsuit the ACLU can file, no bill we can push through Congress and no report we can issue that will immediately stop violence against transgender women of color. But that does not mean we can throw up our hands and dismiss the issue as irrelevant to our legal work. We stand with advocates around the country in honoring the lives of trans women, by working to address the causes of these tragedies. We stand with those who say not one more.

For further discussion of how legal and policy work can help save trans lives, check out this article from The Nation.

Amanda Goad is staff attorney with the ACLU LGBT & AIDS Project. Carl Charles, Skadden fellow with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, also contributed to this post. Follow ACLU_SoCal.

By Chauncee Smith, @ChaunceeSmith

Last Friday, on the heels of recent decisions not to prosecute the officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office declined to criminally indict four SFPD officers who killed Alejandro “Alex” Nieto, a 28-year-old, Latino male.

The officers fired 59 bullets at Nieto. At least 14 rounds landed and caused his death.

The D.A.’s Office concluded that the officers’ actions were “clearly reasonable” because Nieto was carrying his licensed Taser, which the officers mistook for a gun. He had the Taser because he was a security guard on his way to work.

The killing of Nieto, and other black and brown males, such as Tamir Rice and Ezell Ford, seems all too familiar.

Indeed, their deaths have made many wonder whether differences in the ways police interact with people of color and whites should be viewed as the product of systemic injustice, rather than mere lapses.

Would Nieto and others of color still be alive if they were white?

With fairer skin, would their deaths have been deemed legally justified in absence of prosecutions?

At least one recent poll gives credence to the idea that the results of these cases may have turned on race. It found that most Californians (55%) believe that blacks and other people of color are treated less equally than whites in the criminal justice system. Residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, where Nieto was killed, are the most likely (62%) to hold that view.

This perspective is not restricted to everyday people. Last week, for instance, FBI Director James Comey declared that “[m]any people in our white-majority culture have unconscious racial biases and react differently to a white face than a black face.”

In light of this sentiment – that our system of justice is racially unjust – a pressing civil liberty issue for Californians to consider is what reforms would help ensure that marginalized people are more adequately protected?

To add, how might community trust in law enforcement be advanced?

Racial profiling

In 2000, California enacted a bill that banned racial profiling by law enforcement.

However, in 2002, Michelle Alexander, then-director of the ACLU of Northern California’s Racial Justice Project, authored a report which found that our state’s racial profiling statute had no practical effect because it required nothing more than the constitutional minimum.

That same year, the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) concluded that California’s definition of racial profiling was too vague. It added that, because of such vagueness, some law enforcement agencies resisted following the definition and recommended that it be revised.

Since then, the federal government, states and localities around the county have considered or adopted anti-profiling measures that seek to prevent discrimination by law enforcement through the following:

• Expanding protected identity classifications beyond race and ethnicity to also include gender, religion, national origin, and sexual orientation.
• Implementing data collection and analysis systems for stops, searches and seizures.
• Requiring that information on profiling be publicly reported on a routine basis.
• Providing a private right of action to victims of profiling.
• Creating independent entities that investigate and audit police departments for illegal profiling patterns and practices, and propose reforms.

Use of force

In his speech, FBI Director Comey questioned whether Americans can “address concerns about ‘use of force’” and “officer-involved shootings if we do not have a reliable grasp on the demographics and circumstances of those incidents?”

He added that “we simply must improve the way we collect and analyze data to see the true nature of what’s happening in all of our communities.”

In California, all state and local law enforcement agencies must report any death that occurs in custody to our state attorney general. Such reports include deaths that occur during arrest as a result of a use of force.

However, the Attorney General’s Office has not publicly disseminated the information it receives on a routine basis.

California can start resolving its law enforcement use of force problems through the following:

• Expanding the existing reporting requirement from deaths in custody to also include any use of force that results in serious bodily injury.
• Require that demographic information (such as race, gender, religion, national origin, and sexual orientation), along with the type of force used, be included in law enforcement agencies’ reports to the attorney general.
• Require the attorney general to publicly release the use of force information it receives every year.

At bottom, the recent death of Nieto and many other people of color at the hands of police has exacerbated distrust in law enforcement.

In absence of public trust, the legitimacy of law enforcement is placed in question, if not downright undermined.

To restore confidence, and better understand how to improve community safety, robust reform and transparency on racial profiling and use of force policies and practices is necessary.

We cannot wait any longer.

Chauncee Smith is racial justice advocate at the ACLU of California Center for Advocacy & Policy. Follow ACLU_SoCal.