AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION INC

We seek to defend and expand Americans’ freedom to vote and to have their vote count, promote systemic equality and racial justice, ensure that LGBTQ people can live openly without discrimination and enjoy equal rights, protect First Amendment rights including free speech and the right to protest, defend and expand the rights of immigrants, protect women’s right to determine whether and when they have a child, advance systemic reform in institutions that perpetuate discrimination against women, end mass incarceration and racism in the criminal legal system, end discrimination against people with disabilities, and hold the U.S. government accountable to universal human rights principles in addition to rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Working in tandem with our litigators in every state—who are involved in some 2,000 cases annually—we advance our civil liberties agenda through political work, which includes intensive and expert lobbying, organizing, and voter education. Our strategies include:

• Grassroots organizing: People Power, our online platform to mobilize over 630,000 ACLU volunteers, has thus far empowered volunteers to launch successful campaigns, for example those to enact pro-immigrant and pro-voting rights legislation.

• Voter education and Get out the Vote work in election campaigns: We promote candidate accountability on key civil liberties issues, often framing the terms of the debate—as when we’ve made voters aware of candidates’ stances on immigrants’ rights.

• Ballot initiatives: We have a significant record of success; in 2020 alone we helped secure: payday lending reforms in Nevada; marijuana legalization in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota; digital privacy in Michigan; and the defeat of an abortion ban in Colorado.

• Lobbying at the federal, state and local level: Our expert lobbyists, organizers, and communications professionals work to help sway Congress, tackling literally hundreds of bills per year. Our policy strategists also work directly with our 53 affiliates to monitor proposals in the state legislatures, block bad measures, and push for progressive legislation. Recent wins include beating back regressive voting, protest, abortion, and anti-trans bills throughout the country. We helped secure federal criminal law reform (the First Step Act) and are currently leading bipartisan efforts to gain passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

These political strategies work hand-in-hand with our separately-funded, tax-exempt work. For example, after we failed to beat back Georgia’s new and terrible voter suppression law—which would even criminalize giving water and food to voters languishing in line—we filed suit, highlighting the ways the new law targets people of color, the poor, and people with disabilities.

See also “Capabilities” section below.

Founded by a handful of visionary activists, today the ACLU’s strong leadership oversees a high-impact organization that encompasses 1.7 million members, 6 million online activists, approximately 12 million online supporters, 550 national headquarters staff, and 1,200 staff at affiliate offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Our high-impact work across issues provides crucial support to the many progressive movements whose ideals and achievements are now under attack. Our impact is amplified by our affiliate structure; among civil liberties and civil rights groups, only the ACLU has a staffed presence of litigators, organizers, and lobbyists in every state.

Our political arm builds on our legal strength, national reach, credibility, and influence with the public, policymakers, and the media. We have a grassroots network of eight million members, activists, and social media followers who engage in advocacy efforts. We routinely generate news and feature stories on complex issues that would otherwise be ignored or obscured by the media.

The ACLU is uniquely positioned to effect meaningful change through political work. Our millions of members and supporters, expert knowledge of the issues at the national and affiliate level, presence in each and every state, and reputation and partnerships form the foundation for a political strategy that is unmatched.

Few organizations have a membership that is as engaged and passionate as the ACLU. Since 2017, the ACLU has harnessed much of this power by training and activating members and supporters through our People Power program. Unlike many political advocacy programs, People Power is literally powered by a grassroots volunteer base. People Power is complementary and integral to the work of ACLU staff who are in the court rooms and legislatures nationwide.

Because of our work in legislatures and courtrooms, the ACLU is uniquely situated to understand the impact the policies elected officials support and promote have on peoples’ everyday lives. We can draw upon the local expertise of our affiliates, and the subject matter expertise of our legal and policy staff, to respond immediately to crises and also identify political opportunities where we can have most impact.

Voting Rights: We challenged the “poll tax” designed to prevent black Americans from voting decades before a constitutional amendment abolished the practice in 1964, the same year we won the Supreme Court ruling establishing the “one person, one vote” principle. In the 2020 election, we successfully expanded ballot access during the pandemic and challenged partisan manipulations of the vote count. We continue to challenge voter suppression, with current litigation in Georgia and elsewhere.

Immigrants’ Rights: The ACLU’s first exposé in 1920 spotlighted the government’s illegal crackdown on immigrants, and we challenged the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Today we’re fighting policies targeting asylum-seekers and helping to reunite thousands of families previously subjected to the Trump administration’s family-separation policy.

Free Speech & Privacy: Since the 1920s, the ACLU has been involved in virtually every landmark speech case to reach the Supreme Court. Our work includes defense of unpopular speech. We also lead efforts to defend the free speech rights of protesters and journalists, targeted by police in the recent waves of protest against police brutality. In protecting privacy, we challenged massive NSA surveillance, and won a landmark Supreme Court victory for digital privacy, requiring police to get a warrant for cellphone location data.

LGBTQ Rights: We defended the play “The Children’s Hour” against censorship of its “lesbian content” in 1936 and 50 years later won a Supreme Court ruling establishing that gay people have the right to seek government protection from discrimination. In 2015, we won a landmark Supreme Court victory that affirmed same-sex couples’ constitutional right to marry. Now we’re fighting a backlash against transgender youth, targeted by state legislatures.

Reproductive Freedom: We defended birth control pioneers in the 1920s, including winning a reversal of Mary Ware Dennett’s conviction for sending sex education information in the mail. In the 1960s and 1970s, we fought contraceptive bans and laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade, and today our litigation serves as a critical backstop against almost nonstop efforts at the federal and state levels to restrict abortion rights.

Criminal Justice Reform: In the 1960s, the ACLU was key to two landmark Supreme Court decisions that guaranteed criminal defendants’ right to counsel and right to remain silent, respectively. Today we are immersed in a nationwide effort to challenge racism and police brutality in the criminal legal system and to end mass incarceration. Recent wins include system overhauls in high-incarceration states; helping to decriminalize marijuana, most recently in New York and New Jersey; and working to end the death penalty in 23 states so far, most recently in Virginia. We are currently seeking to replicate pioneering reforms that remove police from dealing with mental health crises and traffic infractions.