Congress has signed off on a bill that preserves federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. A legal expert in Wisconsin says it should help to keep legal rights for these couples secure.

The Respect for Marriage Act came together out of fears that a conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court would overturn a 2015 decision that effectively legalized same-sex marriages. The act doesn't force states to issue marriage licenses if that happens, but they'd have to recognize marriages from states that do.

Wausau-based attorney Andrew Schmidt said his office has helped same-sex couples exercise the legal rights that have been afforded to them for awhile now.

"We did powers of attorney for health care and advanced-directive medical directives," he said. "We also did an advanced directive on finances, or a power of attorney for finances, and wills."

Supporters of federal protections also have noted they can allow these couples to file their taxes jointly. In 2006, Wisconsin voters approved a same-sex marriage ban, but several years later, a court ruled that amendment was unconstitutional. The ACLU has said it believes the Wisconsin ruling would still hold if the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 ruling is overturned.

As for the Respect for Marriage Act, supporters have said it has some provisions they disagree with, such as still allowing vendors to deny services to same-sex couples based on their own religious beliefs. Schmidt said he feels bill negotiators should have done more to prevent discrimination.

"There are people out there who will refuse to bake a cake or refuse to offer a taxi ride," he said.

Meanwhile, advocacy groups worry that should the Supreme Court decision fall, same-sex couples with little money would find it hard to travel to get a marriage license if there's a ban where they reside. Republican lawmakers and conservative groups who criticized the act said marriage should be defined as being between one man and one woman.


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Groups fighting for Palestinian rights are praising a new fact sheet on religious discrimination from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, because of what it left out.

The document does not include a definition of antisemitism written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Former President Donald Trump issued an executive order in 2019 requiring federal agencies to consider the IHRA definition when investigating Title VI complaints of discrimination.

Lina Assi, advocacy manager for Palestine Legal, said the definition and the accompanying examples conflate criticism of the Israeli state with antisemitism.

"We mostly have seen it with shutting down events and punishing students and professors that speak about life as a Palestinian," Assi recounted. "And we believe that definition not only violates our constitutional right to free speech, but also perpetuates anti-Palestinian racism and discrimination."

In a statement, IHRA said the working definition is non-legally binding, and the organization does not track implementation of it at the state or local level. Last year, pro-Israel attorneys filed a federal discrimination complaint against University of California-Berkeley after student groups passed a bylaw pledging not to host Zionist speakers.

Assi noted last March, the student government at Arizona State University questioned an event with a pro-Palestinian poet and journalist before ultimately allowing him to speak.

"A student government committee first attempted to condition the approval of the event to say that the speaker needs to refrain from criticizing Israel," Assi pointed out. "Student government officials stated falsely that the university and the federal government had adopted IHRA and that they were required by law to adhere to the definition."

The pro-Israel Brandeis Center has called for the IHRA definition to be codified into a formal rule.

Meanwhile, 17 civil rights groups wrote to the federal government, asking for the IHRA definition to be excluded from the fact sheet.

Lawmakers in the Commonwealth are considering legislation to ensure police use of facial-recognition technology also protects people's privacy and civil rights.

Massachusetts was one of the first states to implement restrictions on the technology as part of a sweeping police reform law in 2020. A special legislative commission, which included police and civil liberties activists, then developed even greater restrictions on use of facial-recognition software.

Kade Crockford, Technology for Liberty program director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, called the latest bill a 'win,' both for police and the public.

"The police can use the technology to help them solve very serious crimes," Crockford pointed out. "And the public can benefit not only from that, but also from regulations that protect our basic privacy and civil rights at the same time."

The current bill would require police to obtain a warrant to perform a facial recognition search and ensure the results of the search alone cannot be used to arrest someone or obtain a search warrant.

Facial-recognition technology can be faulty and has resulted in the false arrests and incarceration of people across the country.

A federal study found the majority of algorithms are less accurate with Black, Asian and Native American faces, while other research finds some algorithms misidentify Black women nearly 35% of the time.

Crockford argued by passing the legislation, lawmakers can prevent those types of mistakes from happening here.

"Because if they do, it would make Massachusetts a leader, not only here in the United States, but really, worldwide," Crockford asserted.

The legislation passed the House last session, but failed to get a vote in the Senate. Crockford hopes former Attorney General, now Gov. Maura Healy's previous support of the bill will improve its chances this year.

By nearly every measure, voter fraud in U.S. elections is rare, but that isn't stopping the Texas Legislature from considering dozens of bills this session, some of which a voter rights group calls "extreme."

The Texas Republican Party has made election security one of its legislative priorities this year, with bills introduced to further restrict access to the ballot box. In contrast, Democrats are pushing legislation to expand voting access.

Texas ACLU senior attorney Matt Simpson said he believes some of the bills, including one to change the penalty for illegal voting from a misdemeanor to a felony, will create fear and intimidate people at the polls.

"If you take a step back, and you try to identify where the election fraud is that's being targeted - all of these proposals, more or less, amount to solutions in search of a problem," he said, "and Texas hasn't really had an election-fraud problem."

Following the defeat of Donald Trump by President Joe Biden in 2020, Texas' GOP-dominated Legislature approved multiple new voting restrictions including rules for voting by mail, a prohibition on drive-through and 24-hour voting, and a reduction in local initiatives meant to make it easier to vote.

One Republican proposal would create a new law-enforcement unit to prosecute election crimes, modeled after a law authorized by Florida's Republican governor. The Texas unit, to be led by state "election marshals," would prosecute election and voting crimes.

Simpson, who has monitored actions at the Capitol since 2009, isn't convinced it's needed.

"There's, like, a very small segment of Republican voters that that's a priority for," he said, "and yet we're seeing just this large number of proposals - a lot of conversation about it - and I just wonder where the mismatch is."

A 359-page audit of the 2020 election was released by the Texas secretary of state's office. It reviewed the two largest Democratic counties and two largest Republican ones and found some "irregularities," but concluded they were largely related to holding an election during a pandemic.