American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (2024)

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), organization founded by Roger Baldwin and others in New York City in 1920 to champion constitutional liberties in the United States. The ACLU works to protect Americans’ constitutional rights and freedoms as set forth in the U.S. Constitution and its amendments. The ACLU works in three basic areas: freedom of expression, conscience, and association; due process of law; and equality under the law.

The ACLU seeks to further particular aspects of civil liberties by affecting the outcome of specific legal cases in the courts. Since its founding the ACLU has initiated test cases as well as intervened in cases already in the courts. Thus, it may directly provide legal counsel in a case, or it may comment on the civil-liberties issues in a case by filing a “friend of the court” (amicus curiae) brief.

One of the ACLU’s most famous test cases was the Scopes trial (1925), in which it supported the decision of a Tennessee science teacher, John T. Scopes, to defy a Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. It has been active in overturning censorship laws, often through test cases resulting from the deliberate purchase of banned material and consequent arrest and trial. The ACLU has not always succeeded in these trials, but the public airing of the issues has often led to success on appeal or in legislative reconsideration later. As a result of its efforts against censorship, such books as James Joyce’s Ulysses, among others, could be imported into the United States. The ACLU provided defense counsel in the Sacco-Vanzetti case in 1921 and the Scottsboro case of 1931–35. One of the ACLU’s most significant freedom-of-religion cases involved the defense in the late 1930s of Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused, on the grounds of conscience, to allow their children to salute the flag in their public classrooms.

In the 1950s and ’60s the ACLU handled cases questioning the constitutionality of loyalty oaths and the blacklisting of supposed left-wing “subversives.” It also played a role in Supreme Court decisions banning prayer in public schools as a violation of the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state. In the 1960s the ACLU participated in cases that established the right of indigent defendants to legal counsel in criminal prosecutions, and in the same period, it was involved in decisions barring the use in court of evidence that was obtained through illegal searches or seizures by the police.

The work of the ACLU is performed by thousands of volunteers and about 100 staff attorneys. The ACLU is headed by a national board of directors and is headquartered in New York City. In the early 21st century the ACLU claimed a membership of more than 500,000.