American Civil Liberties Union

In the late 1970s thousands of ACLU members resigned in protest when the organization defended the right of the American Nazi Party to march through Skokie, Illinois, a predominately Jewish suburb of Chicago. Skokie had enacted laws to prevent the group from gathering in a public area. The ACLU fought for the group’s First Amendment rights—freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. The organization has always argued that all groups, no matter how unpopular, have a right to express their ideas in a peaceful manner. In Smith v. Collin (1978), a federal court ruling prohibited any official attempts to restrict the Nazis’ right to free speech.

Criticism of the ACLU also came from the highest levels of government in the 1980s. In 1981 U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese, who served under President Ronald Reagan, called the ACLU “a criminals’ lobby.” Meese claimed the organization was too liberal. However, the ACLU often criticized Meese for not supporting various civil liberties. In 1988 Reagan’s eventual successor, George Bush, made a high-profile campaign issue out of the fact that his election opponent, Democratic Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, was a “card-carrying member of the ACLU.” However, Bush’s campaign did not hurt the ACLU. More than 50,000 people joined the organization in 1988 and 1989.

By the 1990s, the ACLU had argued more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any other entity except the U.S. Department of Justice. During the 1990s the organization became increasingly involved in labor-management issues that violated an individual’s right to privacy. The ACLU fought to prohibit company policies requiring workers to take drug tests and campaigned for legislation to regulate electronic surveillance in the workplace. The ACLU also worked to protect the rights of people with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS); litigated against censorship in literature, music, and art exhibits; and lobbied to abolish the death penalty. Other issues that the ACLU focused its efforts on in the 1990s included children’s rights, education reform, lesbian and gay rights, immigrants’ rights, national security, privacy and technology, prisoners’ rights, reproductive freedom, voting rights, and women’s rights.

Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the ACLU became especially active in ensuring that the U.S. government’s “war on terrorism” did not infringe on civil liberties. Soon after the attacks, Congress passed the Patriot Act to help law enforcement agencies investigate terrorist networks within the United States. However, the ACLU criticized a number of its provisions, including one that allowed the government to inspect a person’s library, bank, and medical records without a judicial determination that the person was likely committing a crime.

The ACLU also played a prominent role in challenging the government’s detention of American citizens and others without charging them with a crime or providing them access to a lawyer. Hundreds of these detainees were held at the U.S. naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. An ACLU suit forced the government to release thousands of internal records documenting the abusive treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.