Read the ACLU letter to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake
Contact: Meredith Curtis, 443-310-9946, media@aclu-md.org
The following can be attributed to Deborah Jeon, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland:
"The ACLU supports the call being voiced by many in Baltimore City to lift the curfew, which is continuing at the expense of Baltimore residents' constitutional freedoms. In a letter to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake today, we encouraged her to follow through on her office's statement that the curfew would be lifted if "calm and order" were restored. We believe those conditions have been met, and therefore the curfew is no longer serving its intended purpose. The ability to walk freely in public without police interference, as long as no laws are being broken, is a fundamental part of living in a free country, and necessary to the exercise of all First Amendment freedoms, including spontaneous expressive activity, and restricting it exacerbates, rather than solves, Baltimore's current problems."
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