Linda Burt, the executive director of the Wyoming American Civil Liberties Union, had planned to push hard for juvenile justice reform during the upcoming state legislative session. Wyoming is the only state from which the federal government withholds funds under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act because it fails to meet the law’s standards.
She prepared a presentation for an April 14 meeting of the legislature’s joint judiciary committee that outlined how most Wyoming children are processed in adult courts, many are jailed alongside adults and few receive protections afforded by traditional juvenile systems.
But Burt never gave her presentation. On April 10, the ACLU’s national office shut down its Wyoming chapter, laying her off and two other employees, leaving just one grant-funded staffer working on LGBT issues through August. Wyoming is now the only state in the nation without an ACLU chapter.
“People are asking me, ‘Where am I going to go now? Who’s going to help me?’” Burt said. “And I don’t know where, and I don’t know who. We were the only people who did certain kinds of work.”
TVNL Comment; American Facism is spreading. 'Deeply conservative' means deeply religious. Wake up America.
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