40 Fun Facts About ACLU

Which celebrated author and lecturer, a Radcliffe College graduate, was among the founders of the ACLU in 1920?

Helen Keller helped launch the ACLU eleven years after joining the Socialist Party; she also campaigned for women's suffrage, labor rights and world peace.

The ACLU recruited teacher John Scopes in 1925 to defy a state law against teaching which scientific theory?

Evolution was barred from the state's public schools by the Butler Act. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality.

In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the ACLU won a landmark 1969 free-speech ruling while defending a leader of which group?

Ku Klux Klan leader Brandenburg had invited a TV reporter to film a rally in rural Ohio. The Court held that only speech advocating imminent violence could be outlawed.

The ACLU defended a neo-Nazi group's right to march in 1977 in which Illinois suburb, home to many Holocaust survivors?

Skokie answered the permit request with an injunction and new ordinances. Taking the case cost the ACLU's Illinois affiliate about a quarter of its members.

Which gun-rights group did the ACLU represent at the Supreme Court in 2024, winning a unanimous free-speech ruling?

The National Rifle Association was represented by the ACLU's David Cole, who argued that a state regulator had pressed banks and insurers to cut ties with the gun group.

Which future Supreme Court justice co-founded the ACLU's Women's Rights Project and argued six cases for it?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg won five of those six cases between 1973 and 1976, and she kept working on the project until she was appointed to the federal bench in 1980.

Which Democrat did George H. W. Bush attack during the 1988 campaign for calling himself an ACLU member?

Michael Dukakis had described himself as an ACLU member, and Bush cited it as proof that his opponent was out of the mainstream. The ACLU later used his wording in an advertising campaign.

ACLU volunteer lawyers won 1967's Loving v. Virginia at the Supreme Court, ending state bans on what?

Interracial marriage was still outlawed in 16 states. Mildred Loving had written in protest to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who referred her to the ACLU.

The ACLU was the first national group to call for which president's impeachment, citing six civil liberties violations?

Richard Nixon was still in office, with the Watergate scandal unfolding, when the ACLU made its call in 1973. Its leaders had at first been divided over taking the step.

The ACLU represented a gay couple in a 2018 Supreme Court case after a Colorado business refused to make them what?

A wedding cake was what Charlie Craig and David Mullins sought from Masterpiece Cakeshop. The Court ruled 7-2 for the baker, citing a state commission's hostility to his religious views.

Which Chicago defense lawyer, an ACLU National Committee member, led John Scopes's legal team at his 1925 trial?

Clarence Darrow was at first unwanted by the ACLU, which feared his staunch agnosticism would hurt the defense. A year earlier he had defended the killers Leopold and Loeb.

In Tinker v. Des Moines, the ACLU defended students suspended for wearing what to school as a Vietnam War protest?

Black armbands were a silent symbol that caused no disruption, the Court held in 1969, so 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker and her fellow students had engaged in protected speech.

In 1997's Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law against "indecent" material in which medium?

The internet won full First Amendment protection when the Court voided parts of the Communications Decency Act, its first major ruling on regulating material distributed online.

What Latin name is given to the briefs the ACLU files in cases where another law firm already represents the client?

Amicus curiae means friend of the court. Such briefs let the ACLU argue in cases it did not bring, as it did in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education.

Which conservative radio host did the ACLU back in court after Florida investigators seized his private medical records?

Rush Limbaugh was being investigated under Florida's doctor shopping laws. The ACLU filed a brief agreeing that prosecutors had violated his rights by seizing the records.

The ACLU turned down grants from two major foundations in 2004 because the terms borrowed language from which law?

The Patriot Act wording barred any spending on terrorism or other unacceptable activities, a clause the ACLU called so broad and ambiguous that it threatened civil liberties.

The Supreme Court sided with the ACLU in Engel v. Vitale in 1962 by barring which official practice in public schools?

Classroom prayer composed by state officials was the target. That same year the ACLU issued a policy statement condemning in-school prayers and Bible reading.

ACLU attorney Ben Wizner became the lead lawyer in 2013 for which whistleblower, then stranded at a Moscow airport?

Edward Snowden was put in touch with Wizner by the journalist Glenn Greenwald after his passport was revoked, leaving him stuck in the airport's transit zone.

Besides all 50 states and Washington, D.C., the ACLU has an affiliate in which United States territory?

Puerto Rico is the one place outside the 50 states and the capital with its own ACLU office, formally named the ACLU of Puerto Rico National Chapter.

A West Coast director of the ACLU backed which Japanese American welder's challenge to wartime internment orders?

Fred Korematsu was approached after his arrest by Ernest Besig, who took the case even though the national ACLU, wary of opposing President Roosevelt in wartime, urged him not to.

Which ACLU co-founder served as its first executive director, leading the organization from 1920 until 1950?

Roger Baldwin's charisma drew many supporters to the young ACLU. He was succeeded by Patrick Murphy Malin, under whom membership tripled to 30,000 within five years.

Which Socialist Party candidate for president in six straight elections helped found the ACLU's forerunner in 1917?

Norman Thomas ran in every election from 1928 to 1948. During World War II he accused the ACLU of dereliction of duty for accepting the internment of Japanese Americans.

Which labor organizer, an ACLU founder, was expelled from its board in 1940 because she was a Communist Party member?

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was voted off after a contentious six-hour debate. Many saw the purge as a betrayal of ACLU principles, and she was reinstated after her death.

Which Harvard law professor, appointed to the Supreme Court in 1939, was among those who helped found the ACLU?

Felix Frankfurter thought legislation, not court rulings, was the best long-term way to protect civil liberties, a view that set him against other early ACLU leaders.

The ACLU was founded in 1920 in response to which mass arrests and deportations of suspected radicals?

The Palmer Raids took their name from Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Thousands were arrested in dozens of cities, but Labor Department officials blocked most of the deportations he wanted.

The ACLU grew out of a 1917 bureau formed to defend anti-war speech and to support which group during World War I?

Conscientious objectors who refused to serve were the bureau's first cause. One of its founders, the attorney Crystal Eastman, resigned in 1918 because of ill health.

In 1937 the ACLU's leaders split over defending which carmaker's right to hand out anti-union literature?

Henry Ford's case was awkward because the early ACLU had spent most of its effort defending the labor movement, and had been attacked by conservative groups for doing so.

Which Marine lieutenant colonel in the Iran-Contra affair had convictions overturned on an appeal the ACLU supported?

Oliver North's three convictions were vacated in 1990 because witnesses at his trial might have been affected by the testimony he had given Congress under immunity.

The ACLU split its board by backing the winners of which 2010 Supreme Court case on corporate election spending?

Citizens United v. FEC drew an ACLU brief arguing that a 2002 campaign finance law curtailed political speech. The stance caused considerable disagreement inside the organization.

The ACLU sued Missouri in 2006 on behalf of which Kansas congregation, notorious for picketing at soldiers' burials?

Westboro Baptist Church member Shirley Phelps-Roper had been threatened with arrest under a state ban on such pickets. The ACLU won, arguing that the law infringed free speech.

The ACLU's national headquarters occupies part of a 40-story tower at 125 Broad Street in which city?

New York, not the capital, is the ACLU's base. A few dozen New Yorkers controlled the organization until 1951, when a bylaw change gave local affiliates a direct vote on policy.

ACLU general counsel Morris Ernst won a 1933 ruling that let which banned James Joyce novel into the United States?

Ulysses was seized by Customs at Ernst's own demand so that he had a test case. The judge's ruling opened the door to serious literature that used coarse language.

The ACLU backed bookseller Lawrence Ferlinghetti at a 1957 San Francisco obscenity trial over which Allen Ginsberg poem?

Howl had redeeming social importance, the judge decided, clearing Ferlinghetti. His City Lights bookstore manager had also been arrested for selling the book.

The ACLU represented eleven Pennsylvania parents in a 2005 trial that barred schools from teaching what as science?

Intelligent design could not uncouple itself from its creationist and religious roots, the judge found, in the first federal case to test a school policy requiring it.

A 2017 ACLU lawsuit kept the Unite the Right rally in a Charlottesville park by a statue of which general?

Robert E. Lee's statue was due to be removed, which the rally was called to oppose. After the violence there, the ACLU said it would no longer defend hate groups protesting with firearms.

In 1943 the ACLU filed a Supreme Court brief backing children of which faith who refused to salute the American flag?

Jehovah's Witnesses were taught that saluting a flag was idolatry, and their children had been expelled for refusing. The Court reversed a ruling it had made only three years earlier.

The ACLU helped which widow sue over a $363,053 estate tax bill, toppling part of the 1996 law known as DOMA?

Edith Windsor would have owed nothing had federal law treated Thea Spyer as her spouse; the two met in 1963 and were together until Spyer died in 2009.

The ACLU's first lawsuit against the 2017 Trump travel ban was filed for two Iraqi men detained at which airport?

JFK International was where both men were being held. A judge granted a temporary injunction the next day, and donors gave the ACLU more than $24 million online in two days.

Which ACLU executive director, the first Latino and first openly gay man in the post, took office just before 9/11?

Anthony Romero grew up in a public housing project in the Bronx. After the attacks he launched a national campaign called Keep America Safe and Free.

Which legal scholar became the first woman to serve as president of the ACLU, holding the post from 1991 to 2008?

Nadine Strossen, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, led the ACLU's board for 17 years, through both the online free-speech fights and the aftermath of 9/11.