From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Kendall Seasmeyer, your host.

We're continuing to feature major stories impacting students as the back-to-school season is underway.

Today, we confront one troubling question.

Why are students being fined by police and schools? Across the country, students are being disciplined through tickets with shocking frequency, burdening them with hefty fees and subjecting them to

the juvenile justice system,

all of which greases the skids on the school to prison pipeline.

The state of Illinois has become a hotbed for ticketing in schools.

To the extent that legislators and activists have proposed a House bill to end the practice, But as we await the passage of such a law,

students continue to pay the price. Last year, the Chicago Tribune in ProPublica published an investigation

on this issue, finding that nearly 12,000 tickets were written to Illinois students over three school years,

with black students being twice as likely to be ticketed compared to their white peers.

I do believe it was targeted in Naperville.

There's not really that many percentages of black people that live there,

and then especially in the high schools.

So I feel like if it was another white girl, this would have never gotten as far as it is now, because I am African American.

20-year-old Amara Harris is one of those students. She's entering her senior year at Spelman College,

finally free from an alleged theft fine that she received as a high school student in Naperville,

Illinois. Now, the state is considering legislation to end fees and fines in schools on the backbone of cases like

Amaras. She joined us to explain how a misunderstanding over a pair of lost AirPods led to a trial

four years in the making. Then, Gadamakushi, an advocacy and political strategist with the ACLU

of Pennsylvania, discusses her research on ticketing in Pittsburgh public schools

...