Our Liberties We Prize And Our Rights We Will Maintain

by Ralph Scharnau

Founded in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) strives to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States. The modern civil liberties movement owes much to one of the ACLU’s founders and its longtime director, Roger Baldwin.

The ACLU operates on a nonprofit and nonpartisan basis, and current membership stands at about 500,000 with chapters in every state and Puerto Rico. The ACLU’s yearly budget tops $100 million, but it receives no funding from government sources. Its revenue comes from membership dues as well as contributions and grants from private individuals and foundations.

The ACLU focuses on First Amendment rights of religion, speech, press, assembly, petition, and on Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection and due process of law. The ACLU relies on court actions to correct injustices while engaging in lobbying and community empowerment projects. It appears before the U.S. Supreme Court more than any other organization except the U.S. Department of Justice.

The organization has defended war protestors, collaborated with the NAACP, and fought measures that restrict voting rights. Current positions of the ACLU include opposing the death penalty and torture; supporting same-sex marriage; eliminating discrimination against women, the poor, minorities, the disabled, and lesbian, gay, bisexual; and transgendered people; supporting the rights of prisoners and workplace rights of employees.

Critics have smeared the ACLU as communist, anarchist, anti-Christian, or simply an arm of the Democratic Party. From its formation, the ACLU has been dogged by controversy. The organization’s insistence on the separation of church and state has put it at loggerheads with a number of religious groups. Criticism of the ACLU also stems from those who argue that civil liberties should be restricted in favor of security during times of war or crisis. The ACLU considers, for example, certain provisions of the Patriot Act and National Security Act as illegal because they violate speech, privacy, or due process rights.

From time to time, the ACLU itself has been riven by strife among board members on policy, ideological and personal grounds. Unyielding on principle, robustly democratic, and unusually tolerant of dissent, the organization occasionally displays, not surprisingly, raucous disagreements. This internal discord, however, rarely gets media coverage, and the organization continues to serve as a beacon for those in the society attacked for their unpopular or even abhorrent views, ideas, and actions.

On at least two occasions in the 1940s, the ACLU retreated from its uncompromising commitment to freedom and liberty. It condoned the incarceration of Japanese American citizens during the Second World War. During the cold war, it adopted a resolution to exclude communists from leadership positions. Director Baldwin had private misgivings about both actions and later recanted his official support for them.

Realizing that the work of defending freedom never ends, the ACLU has a long history of fearless stands for civil rights. In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) the organization took the lead in a court case that upheld the free speech rights of high school students suspended for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. Perhaps the most controversial case occurred in 1978 and involved successfully defending a Nazi group that wanted to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie where thousands of Holocaust survivors lived. The notoriety of the case resulted in the ACLU’s significant loss of membership, income, and volunteer support.

More than any other organization, the ACLU has promoted an expansive interpretation of the Bill of Rights. Its tactics involve public relations initiatives, ground-breaking litigation, and confrontations with public officials. The ACLU has played a powerful and extraordinary role in helping implant civil liberties into U.S. law and society.