This Week in Civil Liberties: Transgender Athletes, Cell phone Tracking, DOMA, and Prop 8

Each Friday, we’ll bring you updates on the latest civil liberties news from Maine and the nation.

Transgender Athletes:
The Maine Principals’ Association approved a policy for transgender athletes in Maine’s high schools. Equality Maine applauded the decision and the effort of the Maine Principals’ Association to make athletic participation more accessible to transgender students. Read the Bangor Daily News article here.
 
Marriage at the Supreme Court:
Prop 8
The Supreme Court this week heard two court cases dealing with same-sex marriage this week. On Tuesday, the court heard Hollingsworth V. Perry, Commonly referred to as the “Prop 8” case.  When the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, California passed Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution there to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision. It’s gone through some interesting legal turns since: see a break down here. The ACLU filed an amicus brief in the case that will hopefully end in marriage being legal, at a minimum, in California.
 
Defense of Marriage Act
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard United States v. Windsor, a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act brought in part by the ACLU. When her partner Thea died, Edie had to pay an extraordinary sum in taxes that she wouldn't have had to pay if the federal government recognized their marriage. Read more about how the ACLU helped get to this moment. Watch a moving video of Edie Windsor here.
 
Cellphone Location Data:
If somebody knows where you are, they can figure out who you are. That somebody could be the government or a private corporation, but in a report published this week, it was researchers at MIT and Harvard who revealed that, “anonymized cell phone location data demonstrate patterns of behavior that could be used to identify a person.” In this case, they did so with 95 percent accuracy. Read the Slate article here. Read Edwards blog post on cell phone tracking here.