The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

With the passage last week of a bill to repeal the death penalty, Maryland will become the sixth state to end capital punishment in the last six years and the first below the Mason-Dixon Line.

On June 25th, the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life sentences without parole for offenders who were younger than 18 when their crimes were committed violate the Constitution’s 8th Amendment provision prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

• A Critical Tool for Protecting Women. The Leadership Conference this week welcomed the passage of S.1925, the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA), in the U.S. Senate. The bill is now awaiting action in the House.

• Restoring Balance on the Use of Criminal Background Checks. A coalition of 55 national and local civil rights organizations this week applauded the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for clarifying the standards how employers should use criminal background checks.

• Keeping Student Loans Affordable. The Leadership Conference this week welcomed the introduction of the Stop Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012.

Earlier this week at its 102nd Annual Convention in Los Angeles, the NAACP issued a resolution entitled, “A Call to End the War on Drugs, Allocate Funding to Investigate Substance Abuse Treatment, Education, and Opportunities in Communities of Color for A Better Tomorrow.” While the text of the resolution will not be available until its national board approves it in October, a press statement following the vote criticized the drug war as discriminatory, costly, and counterproductive.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has endorsed a limited form of retroactive application of sentencing guidelines designed to take into account the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the discriminatory sentencing disparity between powder cocaine and crack cocaine offenses.