The American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) is a nonpartisan non-profit organization 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.

Legal support from the ACLU can take the form of direct legal representation, or preparation of amicus curiae briefs expressing legal arguments ( when another law firm is already providing representation ).

The ACLU is led by an executive officer and a president ( Anthony Romero and Susan Herman, respectively, in 2011 ).

The ACLU Foundation is a 501 ( c )( 3 ) non-profit corporation, which does not engage in lobbying, and donations to it are tax deductible .< ref name =" nonprofit ">

Eastman is credited as a founding member of the ACLU, but her role as founder of the NCLB may have been largely ignored by posterity due to her personal differences with Baldwin.

Notably, civil liberties organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) have stated that racial profiling is a form of discrimination, stating, " Discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality or on any other particular identity undermines the basic human rights and freedoms to which every person is entitled.

It is also the birthplace and childhood home of Norman Mattoon Thomas, four-time candidate for President of the United States under the Socialist Party of America ticket and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ).

This law is presently under appeal by the ACLU.

On August 17, 2006, U. S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit issued a 43-page ruling stating the program is unconstitutional, but did not immediately suspend the program and grants a temporary stay, in which the American Civil Liberties Union continued fighting the program's legality in the case ACLU v. NSA.

Meiklejohn is known as an advocate of First Amendment freedoms and was a member of the National Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ).

For example, the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) has directly stated that " we are fast approaching a genuine surveillance society in the United States-a dark future where our every move, our every transaction, our every communication is recorded, compiled, and stored away, ready to be examined and used against us by the authorities whenever they want.

T. Jeremy Gunn, a director for the ACLU, argues that a more accurate translation is " our undertakings have been favored ," leaving the reader to infer who or what was responsible for favoring such undertakings.

He has advocated strongly for civil liberties ; his voting record is supported by both the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) and American Library Association.

Ross is a former ACLU attorney, managing the ACLU of North Carolina for over seven years.

Later, the crew is joined and greatly assisted by rabid ACLU feminist and law student Ellen Roark, who has prior experience with death penalty cases and offers Jake her services for free as a temporary clerk for the duration of the case.

He repeatedly refuses to play the " race card " even when baited to do so by several reporters, is clearly much more politically conservative than an attorney arguing such a case at the time might have been expected to be, and is shown to be in sharp contrast with Lucien on such matters, as well as with Ellen, to whom he expresses his strong support for the death penalty ( just not for Carl Lee ) and his contempt for the ACLU and, to a lesser extent, the NAACP.

In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court extended the full protection of the First Amendment to the Internet in Reno v. ACLU, a decision which struck down portions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, a law that prohibited " indecent " online communication ( that is, non-obscene material protected by the First Amendment ).

Concerned about civil liberties, the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) warned that there " is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations — some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers — into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI ".

" Responding to the ACLU criticism, Chairwoman Kathleen Kiernan of the InfraGard National Members Alliance ( INMA ) denies that InfraGard is anything but beneficial to all Americans stating “ It's not an elitist group in any way, shape or form ,” she says.

In 2008 the ACLU gave him an 18 % rating, the Human Rights Campaign gave him a score of 0 %, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights gave him a score of 4 %.

The similar case of McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky was handed down the same day with the opposite verdict ( also with a 5 to 4 decision ).

The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases in which it considers civil liberties to be at risk.

The ACLU was involved in the Miranda case, which addressed misconduct by police during interrogations ; and in the New York Times case which established new protections for newspapers reporting on government activities.

* The government's unsuccessful defense of the Communications Decency Act, which culminated in the Supreme Court decision Reno v. ACLU.

On May 28, 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) published a Report of the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice which carefully documented the Justice Department's unlawful activities in arresting suspected radicals, illegal entrapment by agents provocateurs, and unlawful incommunicado detention.

In December 1969, with a grant from the NIMH Center for Studies of Crime and Delinquency, cytogeneticist Digamber Borgaonkar at Johns Hopkins Hospital began a chromosome survey of ( predominantly African-American ) boys ages 8 to 18 in all Maryland institutions for delinquent, neglected, or mentally ill juveniles, which was suspended from February – May 1970 due to an American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) lawsuit about the lack of informed consent.

The American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ), led by Morris Ernst, appealed her conviction and won a reversal, in which judge Learned Hand ruled that the pamphlet's main purpose was to " promote understanding ".

Finally in 2007, the Taylor ruling was reversed for lack of evidence by the Supreme Court, which said that the ACLU had no evidence that its own communications had been intercepted without a warrant, and therefore the ACLU did not have a basis to challenge the legality of the wiretaps.

In Reno v. ACLU, however, the Court ruled that the " time, place, and manner regulation " that Renton had enacted was not similar to the CDA, which was " a content-based blanket restriction on speech ".

In April 1996, Donaldson testified on JDI ’ s behalf in the case ACLU v. Reno, which challenged the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act ( CDA ).

Following the arrest of suspected communist radicals in 1919 and 1920 during the Palmer raids, Frankfurter, together with other prominent lawyers including Zechariah Chafee, signed an ACLU report which condemned the " utterly illegal acts committed by those charged with the highest duty of enforcing the laws " including entrapment, police brutality, prolonged incommunicado detention, and violations of due process in court.

Jane Harman was criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) for submitting HR 1955, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which passed in the House 404-6.

Matrix came under scrutiny by the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) which made Freedom of Information Act requests in Florida, where the program originated, and to the federal government on 30 October 2003.

Because of the secrecy rules involved, the government would not let the ACLU disclose they had even filed a case for nearly a month, after which they were permitted to release a heavily redacted version of the complaint ( shown right ).

According to government secrecy rules ( the National Security Letter provision, 2709 of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, ) the ACLU still could not disclose which ISP was served with the request to produce documents.

This was 3 years after Merill won a ' liberty award ' from the ACLU, which had to present the award to an empty chair at the time.

On 15 June 2009, in response to a lawsuit by the ACLU, the government was forced to disclose a previously classified portion of a CIA memo written in 2006 which recounted how Mohammed told the CIA that he " made up stories " to stop from being tortured.

During the 1920s, the ACLU expanded its scope to also include protecting the free speech rights of artists and striking workers, and working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) to combat racism.

In the 1960s, the ACLU continued its decades-long effort to enforce separation of church and state, and it also defended several anti-war activists during the Vietnam War who burnt draft cards or wore armbands.

) Defense attorneys Martin Merritt of Dallas and ACLU lawyer Michael Linz, also of Dallas, with others successfully won dismissal for the six defendants in federal district court.

The Center also worked with Amnesty International developing a curriculum on conscience and human rights, and with the ACLU developing a Bill of Rights curriculum.

Future Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, representing the ACLU as amicus curiae, was also permitted by the Court to argue in favor of Frontiero.

Later reports indicated that some resorts also made no accommodations for the handicapped, prompting the ACLU to opine that companies offering Sandals stays as prizes, or otherwise doing business with Sandals resorts, might be the targets of lawsuits.

She served as the vice president of the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) and also worked on U. S. entry into the League of Nations.

The Vermont Chapter of the ACLU also criticized the raid, calling it " frightening " and " the greatest deprivation of civil liberties to have occurred in recent Vermont history.