Ahead of our digital release of The Fight on 31 July, we’ve put together some of the most interesting facts about the American Civil Liberties Union and its essential work to protect civil rights across the US.
it’s recently been a busy time for them
This year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ACLU - a not-for-profit organisation created "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States”. Before President Trump came into power, few people outside the USA would have known the acronym or organisation. Just seven days after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, the ACLU filed the first of over 140 lawsuits against the administration to date. (Source: The Fight).
It’s pretty big
The ACLU is the U.S. largest public-interest law firm, with staffed affiliates covering the 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. More than 100 ACLU attorneys at the national and affiliate offices collaborate with approximately 2,000 volunteer attorneys in close to 6,000 cases annually. The ACLU appears before the U.S. Supreme Court more than any other organization except the U.S. Department of Justice. (Source: ACLU).
RBG helped quite a bit
Ginsburg joined the faculty of Rutgers Law School in 1963, but her status as a woman still put her at a disadvantage. When she discovered that her salary was lower than that of her male colleagues, she joined an equal pay campaign with other women teaching at the university, which resulted in substantial increases for all the complainants. Prompted by her own experiences, Ginsburg began to handle sex discrimination complaints referred to her by the New Jersey affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. Ginsburg envisioned that men and women would "create new traditions by their actions, if artificial barriers are removed, and avenues of opportunity held open to them." The ACLU Women's Rights Project was born in 1972 under Ginsburg's leadership, in order to remove these barriers and open these opportunities. That same year, Ginsburg became the first woman to be granted tenure at Columbia Law School. (Source: ACLU).
IT WAS FOUNDED TO SUPPORT CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS
Created as the Civil Liberties Bureau after World War I broke out in 1917, the ACLU was founded to, in part, oppose the creation of a draft and protect conscientious objectors to World War I, who at the time were subject to routine harassment and restrictions on what they could say for their choice to avoid service. It was initially a committee within the American Union Against Militarism, but split off due to disagreements about the organization’s vocal opposition to the government’s war policies. Then called the National Civil Liberties Bureau, it lobbied for conscientious objectors to be protected in the Selective Service Act and advised men worried about the draft. It was reorganized as the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. (Source: Mentalfloss).
its clients aren’t always likeable
The ACLU’s crusade for freedom of speech extends to the full political spectrum—even causes that might be morally abhorrent to some of the organization’s liberal supporters. In 1978, it famously represented a Nazi group that wanted to hold a march in the heavily Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois, which included a large population of Holocaust survivors. Some ACLU members resigned over that choice, but the organization as a whole held that the principle at stake was still free speech. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. It has since also defended Confederate flags on license plates, online writing by NAMBLA members, the Westboro Baptist Church’s right to picket military funerals, and the Ku Klux Klan’s right to adopt a highway. “Historically, the people whose opinions are the most controversial or extreme are the people whose rights are most often threatened,” the organization explains on its website. “Once the government has the power to violate one person’s rights, it can use that power against everyone. We work to stop the erosion of civil liberties before it’s too late.” However, after Unite the Right, on August 17, 2017, the executive director of the ACLU announced that "the ACLU will no longer defend hate groups protesting with firearms. (Source: Mentalfloss).
It’s behind some history-making cases
Some of the most notable victories by the ACLU include Desegregating America's schools through Brown v. Board of Education in 1954; obtaining critical documents detailing the Bush torture program after a five-year legal battle started in 2003; contributing to the eventual repeal of the discriminatory and unconstitutional "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy after reinstating an Air Force major previously discharged because of her sexual orientation in 2010; overturning extreme Voter ID laws in Pennsylvania and Arkansas in 2014, and wining Obergefell v. Hodges, which made the freedom to marry the law of the land in 2015. (Source: ACLU).
MANY OF ITS LAWYERS ARE VOLUNTEERS
While the ACLU does have a full-time legal staff, it relies heavily on the work of volunteer attorneys. These “cooperating attorneys” analyze proposed legislation for civil liberties issues and write commentary and complaints to government administrations and officials. As former ACLU legal director Burt Neuborne points out in a 2006 article, “one of the unparalleled strengths of the organization is the ability to mobilize literally thousands of volunteer lawyers in defense of the Bill of Rights" (Source: Mentalfloss).
ONE OF ITS EARLIEST CASES IS ALSO ONE OF ITS MOST LEGENDARY
The ACLU was the main driver behind the Scopes Monkey Trial, the landmark case that debated whether a teacher could defy state legislation banning the theory of evolution from public school curriculums. The case was actually a bit of a publicity stunt for the town of Dayton, Tennessee. The ACLU had placed an advertisement in the Chattanooga Daily Times offering to finance a case to challenge the law, which had been passed in 1925. Hoping to bring some fame and fortune to their town, Dayton's leaders immediately gathered to find a suitable teacher for the role. They ended up choosing the 24-year-old John Scopes, who hadn’t actually taught biology (he was new to teaching, and taught math, physics, and chemistry his first year). He didn’t recall teaching evolution at all, in fact, but he agreed to participate anyway, and he was arrested a few days later, with ACLU member Clarence Darrow serving as his lawyer. The trial lasted just eight days, and the jury deliberated for less than nine minutes; Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. The ACLU planned to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the verdict was later reversed due to a technicality. According to the ACLU, "the ultimate result of the trial was pronounced and far-reaching: the Butler Act was never again enforced and over the next two years, laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution were defeated in 22 states." (Source: Mentalfloss).