Influencing Public Policy with a Powerful Voice
Our legislative and state advocates are a constant presence in federal government agency offices, on Capitol Hill, and in every state in the U.S., working with law and policy makers to ensure the necessary statutes exist to protect our civil rights.
Current Issues LInk.
Internet Speech
The digital revolution has produced the most diverse, participatory, and amplified communications medium humans have ever had: the Internet. The ACLU believes in an uncensored Internet, a vast free-speech zone deserving at least as much First Amendment protection as that afforded to traditional media such as books, newspapers, and magazines.
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Student Speech and Privacy
In America, students do not lose their constitutional rights “at the schoolhouse gate.” The protection of students’ rights to free speech and privacy—in and out of school—is essential for ensuring that schools provide both quality education and training in our democratic system and values. Unfortunately, schools continue to demonstrate a disturbing willingness to abridge students’ rights.
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Employee Speech and Whistleblowers
While the First Amendment applies only to state action, the values that animate our right to free speech and free association apply to all of us, regardless of where we work. The marketplace of ideas works only if we are all free to speak vigorously and without fear about the issues of the day. This often happens in the workplace, so employee speech and privacy must be protected.
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Intellectual Property
Laws protecting intellectual property—patents, copyrights, and trademarks—can both advance free speech and pose significant threats to civil liberties. The ability to keep books you write or pictures you take from being copied and sold without your permission, for instance, creates a financial incentive to write those books or take those pictures, fostering creativity and encouraging speech. By the same token, overly aggressive enforcement of copyright laws—the right to copy material—literally blocks people from speaking freely.
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Rights of Protesters
“Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.”
—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut
Freedom of speech, the press, association, assembly, and petition: This set of guarantees, protected by the First Amendment, comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression. It is the foundation of a vibrant democracy, and without it, other fundamental rights, like the right to vote, would wither away.
The fight for freedom of speech has been a bedrock of the ACLU’s mission since the organization was founded in 1920, driven by the need to protect the constitutional rights of conscientious objectors and anti-war protesters. The organization’s work quickly spread to combating censorship, securing the right to assembly, and promoting free speech in schools.
Almost a century later, these battles have taken on new forms, but they persist. The ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project continues to champion freedom of expression in its myriad forms—whether through protest, media, online speech, or the arts—in the face of new threats to free speech. For example, new avenues for censorship have arisen alongside the wealth of opportunities for speech afforded by the Internet. The threat of mass government surveillance chills the free expression of ordinary citizens, legislators routinely attempt to place new restrictions on online activity, and journalism is criminalized in the name of national security.
The ACLU is always on guard to ensure that the First Amendment’s protections remain robust—in times of war or peace, for bloggers or the institutional press, online or off.
Over the years, the ACLU has frequently represented or defended individuals engaged in some truly offensive speech. We have defended the speech rights of communists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, accused terrorists, pornographers, anti-LGBT activists, and flag burners. That’s because the defense of freedom of speech is most necessary when the message is one most people find repulsive. Constitutional rights must apply to even the most unpopular groups if they’re going to be preserved for everyone.