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American Civil Liberties Union

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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a major national non-profit organization with headquarters in New York City, whose stated mission is "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." It works through litigation, legislation and community education.

Lawsuits brought by the ACLU have been influential in the development of U.S. constitutional law. The ACLU provides lawyers and legal expertise in cases in which it considers civil liberties to be at risk. In many cases where it does not provide legal representation, the ACLU submits amicus curiae briefs in support of its positions. According to its annual report, the ACLU has over 500,000 members as of the end of 2005.

The ACLU has never officially supported or opposed a political candidate, and is not aligned with any political party. It has sometimes been harshly critical of elected officials and policies from many political parties over the years, including both Democrats and Republicans. Outside of its legal work, the organization has also engaged in lobbying of elected officials and civil liberties activism [link]. The ACLU is one of the most influential non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United States today; often controversial, its stances have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum.

Contents

History

In 1917, Roger Nash Baldwin became head of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB), an independent outgrowth of the American Union Against Militarism, which opposed American intervention in World War I. The NCLB provided legal advice and aid for conscientious objectors and those being prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 or the Sedition Act of 1918. In 1920, the NCLB changed its name to the American Civil Liberties Union, with Baldwin continuing as its director. Crystal Eastman and Albert DeSilver, along with other former members of the NCLB, assisted Baldwin with the founding of the ACLU. [link]

In the year of its birth, the ACLU was formed to protect aliens threatened with deportation, and U.S. nationals threatened with criminal charges by U.S. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer for their communist or socialist activities and agendas (see Palmer Raids). It also opposed attacks on the rights of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and other labor unions to meet and organize.

In 1940, the ACLU formally barred communists from leadership or staff positions, and would take the position that it did not want communists as members either. The board declared that it was "inappropriate for any person to serve on the governing committees of the Union or its staff, who is a member of any political organization which supports totalitarian dictatorship in any country, or who by his public declarations indicates his support of such a principle." [link] The purge, which was led by Baldwin, himself a former supporter of Communism, began with the ouster of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a member of both the Communist Party of the USA and the IWW [link]. As a result of these policies many leftist attorneys saw the National Lawyers Guild as a superior alternative to the ACLU.[[Citing sources citation needed]] The ACLU has been criticized by some of its later members for this policy, and in the 1960s there was an internal push to remove this prohibition. [link] [[Citing sources citation needed]]

In the 1988 presidential election, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush called then-Governor Michael Dukakis a "card-carrying member of the ACLU," which Dukakis proudly acknowledged. [link] The phrase now serves as part of a jocular recruitment slogan for the ACLU.

The September 11, 2001 attacks and the ensuing debate regarding the proper balance of civil liberties and security including the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act led to a 20% increase in membership between August 2001 and December 2002, when total enrollment reached 330,000 [link]. The growth continued, and in August 2004, ACLU membership was at 400,000 [link].

The ACLU has been a vocal opponent of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, the PATRIOT 2 Act, and associated legislation made in response to the threat of domestic terrorism that it believes violates either the letter or the spirit of the U.S. Bill of Rights. In response to a requirement of the USA PATRIOT Act, the ACLU withdrew from a Federal Donation Program that provides matching funds from the federal government for federal employees. The requirement was that ACLU employees must be checked against a federal anti-terrorism watch list. The ACLU estimates that it will lose approximately $500,000 in matching contributions as a result of this policy. See also: ACLU v. Ashcroft (2004)

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaking at an ACLU event. Villaraigosa is a former director of the ACLU Southern California affiliate.
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Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaking at an ACLU event. Villaraigosa is a former director of the ACLU Southern California affiliate.

Leadership

Currently, the leadership of the ACLU includes Executive Director Anthony Romero, President Nadine Strossen, and Legal Director Steven Shapiro. Notably, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a current Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, founded the ACLU's Women's Rights Project in 1972.

Structure

The ACLU has its national headquarters located in New York City. The organization does most of its work through locally based affiliates, organized into fifty state chapters. These affiliates maintain a certain amount of autonomy from the national organization, and are able to work independently from each other. Many of the ACLU's cases originate from the local level and are handled by lawyers from the local affiliates.

State chapters are the basic unit of the ACLU's organization. In a twenty-month period beginning January 2004, the ACLU's New Jersey chapter, to take one example, was involved in fifty-one cases according to their annual report -- thirty-five cases in state courts, and sixteen in federal court. They provided legal representation in thirty-three of those cases, and served as amicus in the remaining eighteen. They listed forty-four volunteer attorneys who assisted them in those cases. The New York Civil Liberties Union, the New York State chapter, has 35,000 members and is among the most prominent state chapters.

Positions

The ACLU's stated mission is to defend the rights of all citizens as enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. While the bulk of the ACLU's cases involve the First Amendment, Equal Protection, Due Process, and the right to privacy (see, e.g., the Louisiana chapter [link]), the organization has taken positions on a wide range of controversial issues. Broadly, the ACLU supports:

The ACLU has opposed some campaign finance laws such as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which it considers an inappropriate restriction upon freedom of expression. It does not have a policy of blanket opposition to all laws on campaign finance.

Regarding gun control laws, the official policy of the national ACLU argues that the second amendment is "intended mainly to protect the right of the states to maintain militias to assure their own freedom and security against the central government" and is not intended to "confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns or other weapons." [link] The ACLU almost always avoids taking gun-related cases, and this has occasioned criticism by those who consider their interpretation of the amendment to be far "softer" than its "hard-line" stances on other parts of the law.

The ACLU has been noted for vigorously defending the right to express unpopular, controversial, and extremist opinions from any part of the political spectrum.

Notable cases

Since its founding, the ACLU has been involved in many cases (see the List of ACLU Cases for a fuller list). A few of the most significant are discussed here.

In 1925, the ACLU persuaded John T. Scopes to defy Tennessee's anti-evolution law in a court test. Clarence Darrow, a member of the ACLU National Committee, headed Scopes' legal team. The ACLU lost the case and Scopes was fined $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court later upheld the law but overturned the conviction on a technicality.

In 1942, a few months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the ACLU affiliates on the West Coast sharply criticized the government's policy on enemy aliens and U.S. citizens descended from enemy ancestry. This included the relocation of Japanese-American citizens, internment of aliens, prejudicial curfews (Hirabayashi v. United States, 1943), and the like. The national board of the ACLU took a mildly pro-government position: it accepted the internment in principle and only demanded that relocatees, once cleared of any suspicion of wrongdoing, be released from the concentration camps in which they were held.[[Citing sources citation needed]]

In 1954, the ACLU filed an amicus brief in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the ban on racial segregation in U.S. public schools.[link]

In 1967, the ACLU successfully argued against state bans on interracial marriage, in the case of Loving vs. Virginia.

In 1973, the ACLU was the first major national organization to call for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon, giving as reasons the violation by the Nixon administration of civil liberties. That same year, the ACLU was involved in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, in which the Supreme Court held that the constitutional right of privacy extended to women seeking abortions.

In 1977, the ACLU filed suit against the Village of Skokie, Illinois, seeking an injunction against the enforcement of three town ordinances outlawing Nazi parades and demonstrations. (Skokie had a large Jewish population.) A federal district court struck down the ordinances in a decision eventually affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The ACLU's action in this case led to the resignation of about 15 percent of the membership from the organization (25 percent in Illinois), especially of Jewish members. However, they were still able to maintain large Jewish membership which was estimated to represent 2/3rds of the ACLU in 1982.The Left The Right and the Jews, W.D. Rubinstein, 1982, P. 141, Universe Books. The event did not have a long term impact on Jewish membership as Jews are still dominant in the organization. A cutback in its activities was avoided by a special mailing which elicited $500,000 in contributions.[[Citing sources citation needed]] 

In his February 23, 1978 decision overturning the town ordinances, US District Court Judge Bernard M. Decker described the principle involved in the case as follows: "It is better to allow those who preach racial hatred to expend their venom in rhetoric rather than to be panicked into embarking on the dangerous course of permitting the government to decide what its citizens may say and hear ... The ability of American society to tolerate the advocacy of even hateful doctrines ... is perhaps the best protection we have against the establishment of any Nazi-type regime in this country."[link]


In the 1980s, the ACLU filed suit to challenge the Arkansas 1981 creationism statute, which required the teaching in public schools of the biblical account of creation as a scientific alternative to evolution. The law was declared unconstitutional by a Federal District Court.


In 2006 in ACLU v. NSA, the ACLU challenged government spying in the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.



Funding

The ACLU receives funding from a large number of sources. The distribution and amount of funding for each chapter varies from state to state. To take one particular example, the ACLU of New Jersey reported $1.2 million in income to both the ACLU-NJ and its affiliated tax-exempt foundation in the 2005 fiscal year. Of that income, 46% came from contributions, 19% came from membership dues, 18% came from court awarded attorney fees, 12% came from grants, 4% came from investment income and the remainder from other sources. Its expenses in the same period were $800,000, of which 12% went to administration and management. Smaller chapters with fewer resources, such as that in Nebraska, receive subsidies from the national ACLU [link].


The ACLU and its affiliated tax-exempt foundation receive annual support from the Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Field, Tides, Gill, Arcus, Horizons, and other foundations.


In October of 2004, the ACLU rejected $1.5 million from both the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. The Foundations had adopted language from the USA PATRIOT Act into their donation agreements, including a clause stipulating that none of the money would go to "underwriting terrorism or other unacceptable activities." The ACLU views this clause, both in Federal law and in the donors' agreements, as a threat to civil liberties.[link]  The ACLU also withdrew from a federal charity drive, losing an estimated $500,000, taking a stand against the attached condition that it would "not knowingly hire anyone on terrorism watch lists."[[Citing sources citation needed]]



Court awarded attorney's fees


The ACLU sometimes collects legal fees in the event that they are involved on the winning side of a legal judgment. For example, it shared with other plantiffs in a $156,960 judgement against the State of Nebraska in a gay marriage case now on appeal [link].


The awarding of legal fees to groups like the ACLU in civil rights cases is controversial. The Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005, for example, introduced by Representative John N. Hostettler, seeks to alter prior civil rights legislation to prevent monetary judgements in the particular case of violations of church-state separation [link]. Also, groups such as the American Legion have taken stances opposing the ACLU's right to collect fees under such legislation [link]. 


On the other hand, the recovery of legal fees by non-profit legal advocacy organizations is common practice across the political spectrum. The pro-life Thomas More Law Center, for example, generally seeks, and is successful in, recovery of legal fees in the same manner as the ACLU [link], [link].


Due to the nature of its legal work, the ACLU is often involved in litigation against governmental bodies, which are generally protected from adverse monetary judgements: a town, state or Federal agency may be required to change its laws or behave differently, but not to pay monetary damages except by an explicit statutory waiver [link]; [link].


In some cases, the law permits plantiffs who successfully sue government agencies to collect damages. In particular, a 1976 federal law, the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act, among other similar laws, leaves the government liable in some civil rights cases. Under laws such as this, the ACLU and its state chapters sometimes share in monetary judgements against government agencies. 


Another factor in this controversy is that in many cases where the ACLU represents plantiffs, the case is handled not by ACLU attorneys, but by independent law firms providing their services pro bono. In these cases, the law firm may sue for legal fees; in such circumstances the money would be awarded to the firm, not to the ACLU. [link]


A separate example involves a string of church-state cases. The Georgia chapter was awarded $150,000 in fees after suing a county for the removal of a Ten Commandments display [link] from its courthouse; a second Ten Commandments case in the State, in a different county, led to a $74,462 judgment [link]. Meanwhile, the State of Tennessee was required to pay $50,000, the State of Alabama $175,000, and the State of Kentucky $121,500, in similar Ten Commandments cases [link], [link].


The State of Kentucky was required by courts to pay the ACLU nearly $700,000 in legal fees in the years 1994–2003, mainly in conjunction with challenges of abortion and state religion-related laws later struck down by courts [link]. Ref. [link] is a partial list of various judgments awarded to the ACLU and its state chapters over the years, which cover a wide variety of cases including judgments involving challenges to laws creationism, internet pornography, church-state and free speech cases, and total approximately $2.9 million. Usually, judgements are made against states, although Operation Rescue was required to pay the Union $111,000 in fees in a San Diego case.


One estimate of the ACLU's total collection of court awarded damages, made by the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, is approximately $9.5 million. [link].


As a counterbalance to any incentive for collecting judgments to cover legal fees in cases where they prevail, any organization leaves itself liable to potentially damaging judgements if it is found to be filing a "frivolous" suit.[link]



Controversial stances

The organization's policy is that free speech rights must be available to all citizens and residents of the United States. This policy sometimes leads to cases where the Union defends unpopular people and organizations. The Union has taken on cases to defend the free speech rights of clients as diverse as Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazi groups, NAMBLA (a group which supports legalization of pederasty) and the Westboro Baptist Church, a group which uses signs reading "God hates fags" in its protest actions. In these and other cases, the ACLU has defended the free speech rights of people and organizations even when the content of that speech is in conflict with the ACLU's own positions and goals.


The ACLU defended Frank Snepp, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency, from an attempt by the government agency to enforce a gag order against him. It also defended Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, whose conviction was tainted by coerced testimony—a violation of his fifth amendment rights.


The ACLU's stance on spam is considered controversial by a broad cross-section of political points of view. In 2000 Marvin Johnson, a legislative counsel for the ACLU, stated that proposed anti-spam legislation infringed on free speech by denying anonymity and by forcing spam to be labeled as such: "Standardized labeling is compelled speech." He also stated, "It's relatively simple to click and delete." [link] This analysis is rejected by many spam fighters as failing to address the effects of spam on network infrastructure and costs. [link] This debate found the ACLU joining with the Direct Marketing Association and the Center for Democracy and Technology in criticizing a bipartisan bill in the House of Representatives in 2000; already by 1997 the ACLU had taken a strong position that nearly all spam legislation was improper [link], although it has supported "opt-out" requirements in some cases. The ACLU opposed the 2003 CAN-SPAM act [link] suggesting that it could have a chilling effect.


In 2006, the ACLU of Florida and the Miami-Dade Student Government Association filed suit against the Miami-Dade County School Board for its removal of the book Vamos a Cuba and the book series "A Visit to..." from local libraries and classrooms. [link] However, some Cuban Americans feel that the government's removal of the books is not an act of censorship. [link]



Critics of the ACLU

The ACLU's involvement in hundreds of legal cases over the years has led to a great deal of criticism from numerous points of view. In many situations, the criticism may be focused on the ACLU's stance in a particular case or group of cases; in others, the criticism focuses on the general principles that guide the ACLU's choices of what cases to take a position on.


A wide variety of groups oppose some or all of the ACLU's positions listed above; several general themes of criticism are discussed here.



Conservative critics

The ACLU's most vocal critics are generally those who consider themselves, or are commonly regarded as, conservatives.  Many conservative critics allege that the ACLU does not truly dedicate itself to the defense of constitutional rights, but that it seeks to advance a liberal agenda. Some critics point to its opposition to capital punishment, which has been declared constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States since 1976, although it had been declared unconstitutional in practice from 1972 to 1976. The ACLU continues to argue that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment restriction against "cruel and unusual punishment," the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection, and that it is contrary to international human rights norms.


The 1980 Polovchak v. Meese case is also sometimes considered evidence of liberal sympathies on the part of the ACLU. Walter Polovchak was a 12-year-old from Ukraine (at that time part of the Soviet Union) visiting the United States with his parents. When his parents were returning to Ukraine, he tried to stay in the U.S. and claim political asylum against the wishes of his parents. The ACLU attempted to block him from doing so. In 1999 the Florida chapter of the ACLU referred to the ACLU's role in the Polovchak case in their brief for the Elián González case.


Critics also argue that the ACLU has not been consistent in defending all civil liberties, pointing out that it is not active in protecting gun rights. Critics claim gun rights enjoy similar constitutional protection to other civil rights and should be treated equally by the ACLU if it is not motivated by a partisan agenda. The organization declares itself officially "neutral" on the issue of gun control, pointing to previous Supreme Court decisions such as United States v. Miller to argue that the Second Amendment applies to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, and that "except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected." [link] 


Some critics argue that this position is inconsistent with their stated philosophy, and have suggested that the ACLU may only adopt this stance to appease liberal-leaning supporters of the group who also support gun control. Critics also point out that the ACLU does not take up cases that involve possible abuses by the ATF that go beyond the debate over the private ownership of firearms. [link] The ACLU has been involved in a few gun rights cases; most recently the ACLU of Texas joined with the NRA in favor of a proposed Texas law, HB 823, in 2006, and claiming that current legislation allowed for the harassment of gun owners [link].


In 1982, the ACLU became involved in a case involving the distribution of child pornography (New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 [link].) In an amicus brief, the ACLU argued that the New York state law in question "has criminalized the dissemination, sale or display of constitutionally protected non-obscene materials which portray juveniles in sexually related roles," while arguing that child pornography deemed obscene under the Miller test deserved no constitutional protection and could be banned [link]. The ACLU's stance on this case has drawn great criticism from conservatives [link]. In a 2002 letter, the ACLU stated that it "opposes child pornography that uses real children in its depictions," but that material "which is produced without using real children, and is not otherwise obscene, is protected under the First Amendment." [link].


The group has also come under fire, again mostly from conservative critics, for fighting against Megan’s Law, a law whose supporters say protects children from sex offenders. Though the ACLU has fought Megan’s Law(s) in many states, it has been unable to attain significant victories in these cases.


Bill O'Reilly has frequently and variously referred to the ACLU as "the most dangerous organization in America," a "terrorist group," and as an "anti-American" and "fascist organization" on his various broadcasts, during which he frequently criticizes the group.[link][link].


Michael Medved has referred to the ACLU sarcastically as the "American Criminal Lawyer Union," due to its frequent stances defending the rights of the accused and convicted. The construction of alternative backronyms is something of a sport; others invented by critics include "American Communist Lawyers Union" [link]. The group "Stop the ACLU" ran a backronym contest [link]. The thirty entries variously implied that the ACLU was atheist, Communist, lesbian, aligned with Lucifer, or overly litigious. The most frequent assertion, made in a plurality of eleven entries, was that the union was anti-Christian.



Religious critics

The ACLU also has religious critics. At the grassroots level, the ACLU often involves itself in cases involving the separation of church and state.  Some Christians, including many who may be considered conservative Christian, take issue with its positions. Many in this community contend that the ACLU is part of an effort to remove all references to religion from American government.


In 2004, for example, the ACLU of Southern California (ACLU/SC) threatened to sue the city of Redlands, California if it did not remove a picture of a cross from the city's seal.  The ACLU/SC argued that having a cross on the seal amounted to a government-sponsored endorsement of Christianity and violated separation of church and state.  The city complied with the ACLU/SC and removed the cross from all city vehicles, business cards, and police badges.  However, the issue was put on the November 2005 ballot [link]. The ACLU/SC also threatened  Los Angeles County, California if it did not remove an image of a cross from its seal, yet the centerpiece of the Pagan goddess Pomona was not mentioned.  As in the Redlands case, the county board complied with the demands and voted to remove the cross and Pomona from its seal as well. There was a petition against the changing of the seal, which ended on August 15, 2005 [link].


In 1990, Pat Robertson founded the American Center for Law and Justice, as a counterweight to the ACLU, which Robertson characterizes as "liberal" and "hostile to traditional American values." Another non-profit legal center, the Thomas More Law Center, also describes itself as "Christianity's answer to the ACLU." [link]


After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Rev. Jerry Falwell remarked that the ACLU, by trying to "secularize America," had provoked the wrath of God, and therefore caused those terrorist attacks.  Falwell later apologized for the remark.  Other critics of the ACLU do not make such strong accusations, but claim that the organization pushes the concept of separation of church and state beyond its original meaning. 


On the other hand, the ACLU and Jerry Falwell sometimes find themselves on the same side.  Notably, the ACLU filed an amicus brief supporting a suit by Falwell against the state of Virginia.  The suit, which was successful, overturned the Virginia constitution's ban on the incorporation of Churches.  In addition, the ACLU has defended the right of a Christian church to run anti-Santa ads on Boston subways, the right to religious expression by jurors, and the right of Christian students to distribute religious literature in school. [link]


While the ACLU does oppose the use of crosses in public monuments [link], [link], there have been false allegations that the ACLU has urged the removal of cross-shaped headstones from federal cemeteries and has opposed prayer by soldiers; such charges have been deemed to be urban legends. [link]


Many minority religious groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims have at times been defended by the ACLU. In the Mormon community, the ACLU is viewed positively by some, who cite Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe, a case litigated by the ACLU on behalf of a Mormon student concerning school prayer [link]. However, a good number of Mormons, including some local leaders, are strongly against the activities of the ACLU [link].


Jehovah's Witnesses were involved in twenty-three Supreme Court rulings between 1938 and 1946 over religious objections to serving in the armed forces and over saluting the flag and reciting the pledge of allegiance [link], over local and state ordinances prohibiting the Witnesses from publishing criticisms of the Roman Catholic church [link], as well as over government reluctance to prosecute anti-Witness vigilantes. The ACLU was directly involved in these cases [link]. The ACLU's involvement with Jehovah's Witnesses continues, and they joined the Witnesses in a 2002 case over doorbell-ringing [link].



Feminist critics

Some anti-pornography activists, including Nikki Craft and Catharine MacKinnon, who oppose pornography on feminist grounds, are also strong critics of the ACLU; in her lifetime, Andrea Dworkin's positions on pornography also led her to similar stances. Craft started a group in the early 1990s called "Always Causing Legal Unrest (ACLU)"; the resultant acronym confusion led the then-director of the Union Dorothy M. Ehrlich to send a letter of protest [link], but the Union did not pursue legal action against Craft's group.



Leftist and liberal critics


The ACLU has been subject to criticism from the political left. Some critics object to the organization's advocacy for corporations' protection by the Bill of Rights known as corporate personhood. [link] [link] In contrast to the ACLU's position, the National Lawyers Guild passed a resolution in October, 1996 opposing corporate personhood. [link]


In addition many leftists, including the Spartacist League (modern) and Liberation News (Internationalist), criticize what they see as a stronger willingness on the part of the ACLU to defend the civil liberties of right-wing terror groups such as the KKK and the American Nazi Party that are often already given police protection while leftist protesters are often the focus of police violence.[link]  This perception of the police can be seen in a League for the Revolutionary Party statement that preceded an anti-Klan demonstration in New York City: 



"As they have done in the past, the cops will aim to keep us under their control and far from the fascists whom they aim to protect. In city after city, every time the fascists rear their ugly heads, the cops are there with their guns and batons turned against us...."[link]



In October 1999 the Spartacist League organized a demonstration against a KKK rally in New York and listed amongst the obstacles placed in their way "the American Civil Liberties Union, which continued its revolting decades-long defense of 'constitutional rights' for the fascist terrorists." This was in reference to the lawyer for the KKK, Norman Siegel of the New York ACLU, that brokered a deal allowing the KKK to march with police protection and a sound permit, but denied even a sound permit for the labor/black mobilization against the Klan.[link] Under political pressure that deal was later struck down and the sound permit was allowed.[link] 


In contrast to the ACLU, Partisan Defense Committee attorney Rachel Wolkenstein declared,  
"The response to our call for 'All Out to Stop the KKK on October 23!' has resonated among thousands of outraged New Yorkers who intend. . . to let these killers know that there is no way they are going to rally in this city."[link]



Libertarian critics

While some refer to the ACLU as a libertarian organization and while the ACLU has defended the US Libertarian Party in some cases [link], a number of libertarians and Objectivists oppose the ACLU for its support of laws that they view as distinctly anti-liberty, such as affirmative action and anti-discrimination laws that apply to private property.  One objection held by some libertarians is the belief that private business owners, rather than the government, should have the authority to decide which customers they serve and which employees to hire, even if these private business owners choose to base criteria on such things as race or gender.


Former ACLU member Nat Hentoff has criticized the organization in a libertarian vein for promoting affirmative action and for supporting what he sees as government protected liberal speech codes enacted on college campuses and the workplace [link].


Law professor David Bernstein's book "You Can't Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws" takes the ACLU to task for frequently seeking to undermine expressive rights when they conflict with antidiscrimination laws, as in the 2000 Supreme Court case of Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. Some libertarians have formed an organization they describe as the "libertarian ACLU" [link], the Institute for Justice.






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