The ACLU is watching YOU

No freedom of information for you, terf.

A woman was interested to know how many inmates in Washington state identify as transgender, and how many of those transgender identified inmates have been given transfers to go from men’s prison to women’s prison, and the reverse. To get this information, she filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Instead of getting the information she requested, she got sued by the ACLU.

I’ll wait while you stare in disbelief. It took me quite some time.

To be clear, at no point had this woman contacted the ACLU to tell them she was filing a FOIA. She had used ACLU resources to figure out how to file a FOIA, but that was freely available on their website. The state of Washington is under no obligation to let the ACLU know about every FOIA request they receive, so it remains entirely unclear as to how the ACLU became aware of this woman’s FOIA in the first place.

And as for what business it is of theirs…

Nonetheless, instead of receiving the information she requested, she received an injunction. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against a private citizen for requesting public records from the Washington State Department of Corrections on the number of inmates in state custody who identify as transgender and the number of male inmates who are housed in women’s facilities.

So private citizens don’t get to have civil liberties? Or freedom of information?

The citizen sent her request on March 18.

The Washington Public Records Act guarantees that citizens have the right to access public records, and requires the government to respond to requests within five days. Only personal student or patient information, employee files, and some investigative records are exempt.

Yet by April 8, instead of the information she requested, she received an email that the ACLU of Washington Foundation and Disability Rights Washington, along with their clients “who are current and former transgender, non-binary, and intersex inmates and in the custody of Washington Department of Corrections,” had personally named her in a lawsuit to prevent the information she requested from being released.

So not only are women in prison forced to have men locked up with them, women in general are not allowed to ask questions about it.

Washington state radio host Dori Monson has detailed several accounts of women who are housed in women’s prisons in the state and have been raped by gender non-conforming males who identify as transgender and have successfully been transferred into women’s prisons. Monson writes that there were “two inmates moved from male to female prison. One is a serial killer who admitted to killing prostitutes and hating women, another is a sex offender charged with having sex with a 12 year old.”

But we can’t ask questions about it. If we try we’ll be sued.

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