American Civil Liberties Union

views updated

American Civil Liberties Union

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a private nonprofit organization devoted to the defense of civil liberties. Civil liberties are those rights enjoyed by individuals over and against the power of government. The civil liberties agenda of the ACLU includes First Amendment rights, including freedom of speech, the press, and assembly, the free exercise of religion, and the prohibition of governmental establishment of religion; equal protection under the laws, including equality for racial and ethnic minorities, women, and other groups that have experienced discrimination; due process of law, including protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and protection against self-incrimination; and the right to privacy, including a woman's right to an abortion.

The ACLU was founded in January 1920. It was an outgrowth of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB), which was created in 1917 to protect freedom of speech during World War I (1914–1918). After the United States entered the war in 1917, the government began to suppress free speech and violated other civil liberties. The NCLB was founded and led by Crystal Eastman (1881–1928) and Roger Nash Baldwin (1884–1981), both of whom were political activists opposed to U.S. involvement in World War I. Eastman soon withdrew because of health problems and Baldwin became the principal NCLB leader. Following the end of World War I, Baldwin and others recognized the need for a permanent organization to fight for civil liberties, and they created the ACLU. Baldwin served as director of the ACLU from 1920 until his retirement in 1950. During those years he was recognized as the principal advocate of civil liberties in the United States.

The ACLU has been involved in many famous cases and controversies, and through its litigation the organization has had a major impact on the development of constitutional law. When it was founded in 1920, there were no U.S. Supreme Court cases upholding First Amendment protection of freedom of speech or other civil liberties. One historian estimates that the ACLU was involved, directly or indirectly, in 80 percent of all recognized landmark civil liberties cases decided by the Supreme Court in the twentieth century. Initially, the ACLU primarily filed amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs in court cases, addressing the civil liberties issues involved.

In the 1960s it began providing direct legal representation to its clients, handling all aspects of a case. In addition to representing people in civil liberties court cases, the ACLU maintains an active lobbying program in Congress and all fifty state legislatures, as well as a public education program on civil liberties issues.

The first major ACLU case involved a challenge to a 1925 Tennessee law outlawing the teaching of evolution in the public schools of that state. The ACLU represented biology teacher John T. Scopes (1900–1970) at his well-known trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in the summer of 1925. The Scopes case is one of the most famous controversies in American history, embodying the principle of freedom to teach unpopular ideas and opposition to the government's establishment of religion.

The ACLU has also been involved in many cases and controversies involving freedom of speech for unpopular ideas. Beginning in the late 1930s, it began to win Supreme Court cases upholding the free-speech rights of communists and other advocates of radical political ideas. One of the most controversial First Amendment controversies occurred in 1977 and 1978, when the ACLU defended the right of a small American Nazi group to hold a demonstration in the heavily Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois. The ACLU was severely criticized for defending the rights of a group associated with the Holocaust, and the organization lost many members as a result. Eventually, the federal courts upheld the ACLU's position on the free speech and assembly rights of hate groups.

During World War II (1939–1945) the ACLU defended the rights of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans who had been evacuated from the west coast of the United States and interned in concentration camps. Because of popular support for the war effort, the ACLU was the only national organization willing to provide significant support for interned Japanese Americans, representing them in several important Supreme Court cases. The Supreme Court upheld the government's actions in Hirabayashi v. United States (1943) and Korematsu v. United States (1944), but public opinion and subsequent court cases have supported the ACLU's argument that the harsh treatment of Japanese Americans during the war was a gross violation of civil liberties.

In the 1960s and 1970s the ACLU's agenda expanded enormously to include new areas of civil liberties, including women's rights, prisoners' rights, children's rights, a woman's right to choose an abortion, and the rights of homosexuals and lesbians. The ACLU has also been involved in issues related to war and national security. It fought violations of civil liberties associated with the Vietnam War (1964–1975) and the war on terrorism that began after September 11, 2001.

Throughout its history the ACLU has been an extremely controversial organization. Because of its support of free speech for communists and other dissidents , political conservatives have repeatedly attacked it as being radical and "un-American." Because of its support of the separation of church and state, including prohibitions on prayer in public schools, many religious leaders have accused the ACLU of being "godless" and of undermining the moral fabric of American society.

The ACLU is a national organization with almost 400,000 members. It maintains a national office in New York City, a legislative office in Washington, D.C., and staffed affiliate offices in all fifty states. The work of the ACLU is financed by members' dues, tax-deductible contributions, and grants to support specific projects. Grants from private foundations and donors support a series of special projects related to such issues as reproductive rights, women's rights, and voting rights.