ACLU History

In the years following World War I, America was gripped by the fear that the Communist Revolution that had taken place in Russia would spread to the United States. As is often the case when fear outweighs rational debate, civil liberties paid the price. In November 1919 and January 1920, in what notoriously became known as the “Palmer Raids,” Attorney General Mitchell Palmer began rounding up and deporting so-called radicals. Thousands of people were arrested without warrants and without regard to constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure. Those arrested were brutally treated and held in horrible conditions.

In the face of these egregious civil liberties abuses, a small group of people decided to take a stand, and thus was born the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU has evolved in the years since from this small group of idealists into the nation’s premier defender of the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. With more than 1.7 million members, 500 staff attorneys, thousands of volunteer attorneys, and offices throughout the nation, the ACLU of today continues to fight government abuse and to vigorously defend individual freedoms including speech and religion, a woman’s right to choose, the right to due process, citizens’ rights to privacy and much more. The ACLU stands up for these rights even when the cause is unpopular, and sometimes when nobody else will. While not always in agreement with us on every issue, Americans have come to count on the ACLU for its unyielding dedication to principle. The ACLU has become so ingrained in American society that it is hard to imagine an America without it.

One of the ACLU’s earliest battles was the Scopes Trial of 1925. When the state of Tennessee passed a law banning the teaching of evolution, the ACLU recruited biology teacher John T. Scopes to challenge the law by teaching the banned subject in his class. When Scopes was eventually prosecuted, the ACLU partnered with celebrated attorney Clarence Darrow to defend him. Although Scopes was found guilty (the verdict was later overturned because of a sentencing error), the trial made national headlines and helped persuade the public on the importance of academic freedom.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered all people of Japanese descent, most of whom were American citizens, be sent to “war relocation camps.” Eventually more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were sent to these internment camps. The ACLU, led by its California affiliates, stood alone in speaking out about this atrocity.

In 1954, the ACLU joined forces with the NAACP to challenge racial segregation in public schools. The resulting Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that ended the era of “separate but equal” was a major victory for racial justice.

The ACLU was also involved in the 1973 the Supreme Court victories in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which held that the right to privacy encompasses a woman's right to decide whether she will terminate or continue a pregnancy. In 2003, the ACLU helped persuade the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas to expand upon the privacy rights established in Roe when it struck down a Texas law making sexual intimacy between same-sex couples a crime.

One of the most noted moments in the ACLU’s history occurred in 1978 when the ACLU defended a Nazi group that wanted to rally through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, where many Holocaust survivors lived. The ACLU persuaded a federal court to strike down three ordinances that placed significant restrictions on the Nazis’ First Amendment right to march and express their views. The decision to take the case was a demonstration of the ACLU’s commitment to the principle that constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they’re going to be preserved for everyone. Many now consider this one of the ACLU’s finest hours.

That commitment to principle in difficult situations continues today. Since the tragic terrorist attacks of 9/11, the ACLU has been working vigorously to oppose policies that sacrifice our fundamental freedoms in the name of national security. From opposing the Patriot Act to challenging warrantless spying to challenging the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without charge or trial, the ACLU is committed to restoring fundamental freedoms lost as a result of policies that expand the government's power to invade privacy, imprison people without due process and punish dissent.

The ACLU also remains a champion of segments of the population who have traditionally been denied their rights, with much of our work today focused on equality for people of color, women, gay and transgender people, prisoners, immigrants, and people with disabilities.

Back in 1920, the individual freedoms enumerated in the Constitution had never been fully tested in the courts, making them largely meaningless for ordinary people. Since then, principles of individual freedom, protection against arbitrary government action, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and press, due process of law, equal protection, and privacy have become codified in our laws and their protections widely enforced. The advancement of civil rights and social justice over the past century represents one of the most significant developments in American history, and the ACLU has been integral to this process.

But the work of defending freedom never ends, and in our vibrant and passionate society, difficult struggles over individual rights and liberties aren’t likely to disappear anytime soon. The ACLU is committed to fight for freedom and the protection of constitutional rights for generations to come.

In its first year, the ACLU championed the targets of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer including politically radical immigrants. We also supported the right of trade unionists to hold meetings and organize, and we secured the release of hundreds of activists imprisoned for their antiwar activities.

When biology teacher John T. Scopes was charged with violating a Tennessee ban on the teaching of evolution, the ACLU was there and secured celebrated attorney Clarence Darrow for his defense.

The ACLU stood almost alone in denouncing the federal government's internment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps.

The ACLU, having joined the NAACP in the legal battle for equal education, celebrated a major victory when the Supreme Court declared that racially segregated schools were in violation of the 14th Amendment.

In Tinker v. Des Moines, the ACLU won a major Supreme Court victory on behalf of public school students suspended for wearing black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War, a major First Amendment victory.

After decades of struggle, the Supreme Court held — in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton — that the constitutional right to privacy encompasses a woman's right to decide whether she will terminate or continue a pregnancy. But the fight still continues, as the ACLU fends off new attacks to erode women's right to reproductive choice.

The ACLU took a controversial stand for free speech by defending a Nazi group that wanted to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie — where many Holocaust survivors lived. The notoriety of the case cost the ACLU dearly as members left in droves, but to many it was our finest hour, and it has come to represent our unwavering commitment to principle.

Fifty-six years after the Scopes trial, the ACLU challenged an Arkansas statute requiring that the biblical story of creation be taught as a "scientific alternative" to the theory of evolution. A federal court found the statute, which fundamentalists saw as a model for other states, unconstitutional. That fight continues today as we take on the "intelligent design" movement with cases like our 2005 victory in Dover, Pennsylvania.

In ACLU v. Reno, the Supreme Court struck down the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which censored the Internet by broadly banning "indecent" speech. Since then, Congress has passed numerous versions of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a federal law that would criminalize constitutionally protected speech on the Internet. Each time the law has been challenged by the ACLU and declared unconstitutional.

Since 9/11 terrorist attacks, the ACLU has been working vigorously to oppose policies that sacrifice our fundamental freedoms in the name of national security. From working to fix the Patriot Act to challenging NSA warrantless spying, our advocates are working to restore fundamental freedoms lost as a result of the Bush administration policies that expanded the government's power to invade privacy, imprison people without due process, and punish dissent.

In Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the ACLU's argument that the court had been wrong when it ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick that the right to privacy did not cover lesbian and gay relationships. It struck down a Texas law that made same-sex intimacy a crime, expanding the privacy rights of all Americans and promoting the right of lesbians and gay men to equality.

After a five-year legal battle, the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit compelled the release of critical documents detailing the extent of the Bush torture program, including long-secret legal memos justifying waterboarding and other abuses and an Inspector General's report highlighting CIA abuses. The ACLU is leading the demand for full accountability for those who authorized or condoned torture.

In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the ACLU represented a group of parents who challenged a public school district requirement for teachers to present so-called "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in high school biology classes. In a decision that garnered nationwide attention, a district judge ruled that "intelligent design" is not science and teaching it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

In Safford Unified School District v. Redding, the Supreme Court ruled that school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old Arizona girl when they strip searched her based on a classmate's uncorroborated accusation.

In US v. Windsor, we represented Edie Windsor’s challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Under that statute, the federal government did not recognize Edie’s marriage to her partner, Thea, and taxed the inheritance she received when Thea passed away (treating them as strangers). The Supreme Court ruled for Windsor and found that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional. The federal government could not discriminate against married gay and lesbian couples for the purposes of determining federal benefits and protections. This decision represented a tipping point in the fight for marriage equality.

In Department of Commerce v. NYIC, we challenged the Trump administration’s plan to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. Such a question would have deleterious effects on counting accuracy in immigrant communities and put federal funding for these communities at risk. The Supreme Court ruled in our favor, finding the Trump administration's stated reasoning for the question “contrived.” The administration subsequently abandoned efforts to reinstate the question through other means.

This consequential privacy ruling found that the government must seek a warrant before they can seize the sensitive location information stored on a cellphone. The Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot obtain this crucially sensitive data without judicial oversight. This decision expands privacy protections in the digital era and lays the groundwork for similar protections on other data generated and stored by new technologies.

In a narrow ruling, the Supreme Court found for a bakery that had refused to sell a cake to a same-sex couple and reversed the decision made by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which had found that they had discriminated when denying service to a same-sex couple. However, this case did affirm basic nondiscrimination principles and did not outright create an explicit right to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals.

In this landmark case, the Supreme Court found that firing someone because they were LGBTQ was discriminatory, and in doing so, secured another important right in the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ equality. We represented two plaintiffs, Aimee Stephens and Don Zarda, in the trio of cases that composed this decision. The ACLU continues to call on Congress to pass the Equality Act and close any gaps in civil rights protections for LGBTQ Americans.

We litigated a First Amendment challenge to a Pennsylvania’s school district’s rules governing speech made by students outside of school. This case arose when a school district kicked a student-athlete who had made a disparaging post on Snapchat off her cheerleading team. The Supreme Court found the plaintiff’s social media posts to be protected speech, especially since it was posted off school-grounds and not during a school-related activity, and it also found that the district had violated her First Amendment rights.

To commemorate our centennial year and document the history of the ACLU, we commissioned a series of essays exploring critical moments throughout the organization’s history. We take a look at those moments of extraordinary success, and those moments when we fell short, or failed. These essays come from those who know these moments best, either through their direct participation as former ACLU leaders, their personal connection to the issues, or their historical expertise in civil liberties (and in some cases, all three). The series traces the story of the ACLU from its founding, by the people who helped shape those events. In doing so, it also tells the story of America.

Fighting in Courtrooms Across America to Defend Your Rights

• For over 100 years, the ACLU has participated in more Supreme Court cases than any other private organization.
• Whether we're standing on principle before the highest court in the land or in state and federal courthouses across America, the ACLU wins far more often than we lose.
• For nine decades the ACLU has been at the center of one critical, history-making court case after another.
• Our communications and public education staff employ a wide range of strategies to educate the general public on the critical civil liberties facing our nation.

The ACLU is frequently asked to explain its defense of certain people or groups—particularly controversial and unpopular entities such as the American Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Nation of Islam. We do not defend them because we agree with them; rather, we defend their right to free expression and free assembly. Historically, the people whose opinions are the most controversial or extreme are the people whose rights are most often threatened. 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.

Since we can't take on every worthy case, we usually select lawsuits that will have the greatest impact, cases that have the potential for breaking new ground and establishing new precedents that will strengthen American freedoms.