1980 Aclu Forcing Parents to Keep Babies Alive

Founded in New York in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) presently reached into every state in the nation. Its start recorded case in Washington came in 1925, when ACLU members interceded on behalf of a Bellingham male child who had been taken from his parents and put up for adoption after he refused to salute the flag at school. An affiliate office in Seattle was established in 1935, just it wasn't until later World War 2 and the subsequent Cold War that the ACLU rose to prominence statewide. In the freewheeling 1960s and 1970s clients ranged from Black Panthers and the anti-war Seattle Seven to Hare Krishnas and "tune in, turn on" apostle Timothy Leary. By 2010, when the ACLU of Washington (ACLU-WA) historic its 75th anniversary, it had grown into a professional functioning with 30 staff and a multi-one thousand thousand-dollar budget. Though reviled past some, the ACLU had become a strength in the country's public affairs. This history of the ACLU-WA's kickoff 75 years was written by Doug Honig, the grouping's communications director from 1990 to 2018.

Early on Years in Washington

The ACLU'south first foray into Washington came in 1925, afterwards a 9-yr-old Bellingham male child named Russell Tremain was taken from his parents because, in accordance with his religious beliefs, the boy had refused to salute the flag at school. When his parents removed Russell from school, the authorities took the boy and put him up for adoption, an action approved by a juvenile courtroom gauge. But after members of the ACLU interceded on his behalf, authorities dropped the flag-saluting event and allowed the male child to render to his parents. This religious-freedom dispute was the first recorded case in Washington for the fledgling ACLU.

In 1931, the national office engaged an chaser for an importer later on a community inspector in Seattle seized his shipment of The Sexual Life in its Biological Significance as obscene. A jury found the merchant was entitled to regain the books.

The ACLU'south Washington affiliate dates its founding to 1935, when an executive committee and executive secretary began performance. Prime movers included trade unionists, academics, and assorted activists. They focused on upholding free voice communication and assembly rights, and did non shy away from controversy. When police raided a Communist-sponsored school in Seattle in 1936 and arrested several students, the ACLU protested and won their release. "Ruby Defenders" proclaimed a headline in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Other victories followed. An ACLU lawsuit won the left-leaning Washington Democracy Federation the correct to run into in Bellevue school buildings. And after lobbying by the ACLU and others, the state legislature in 1937 repealed the Criminal Syndicalism Law, a tool to suppress people with views opposed to the regime.

The group was largely in hibernation during Earth War Two. A Seattle lath member did inform the national office when Academy of Washington educatee Gordon Hirabayashi defied a curfew and the executive order requiring internment of Japanese Americans. Although the national ACLU board had supported the internment order, national manager Roger Baldwin arranged for an attorney and provided money for Hirabayashi's unsuccessful legal challenge.

Common cold War Dilemmas

After the war, the Washington chapter revived nether younger leaders. A leading dilemma in the Cold War era was how to respond to Communism, a thorny issue fifty-fifty for a nonpartisan grouping professing to defend everyone's rights. In 1940 the national ACLU decided to deny membership to individuals who adhered to "Communist doctrine" -- a movement the Seattle chapter backed. Some argued that the Party's secrecy meant that members couldn't exist true ceremonious libertarians. Others felt that associating with Communists weakened the ACLU's brownie.

Yet the Seattle co-operative did accept stands for victims of the anti-Communist crusade. It proposed fair procedures for the state legislature's committee investigating "un-American" activities led by Representative Albert Canwell, though these were ignored. The ACLU rallied to support a Canwell victim, UW professor Mel Rader. Falsely accused of existence of a Communist, he was exonerated by the university's president.

A common characteristic of the Cold War era was loyalty oaths, which required employees to affirm that they had never been involved with "subversive activities." The ACLU twice filed suit against UW loyalty oaths. The second case (Baggett v. Bullitt) won a landmark U.S. Supreme Courtroom ruling in 1964 that overturned ii statutes requiring oaths as unconstitutionally vague denials of due process.

In the 1960s a new far-correct movement centered around the John Birch Society demonized the ACLU. In Okanogan County, country legislator John Goldmark lost re-election after a smear campaign by Birchers, Canwell, and others. Citing his ties to the ACLU, one public speaker assailed him as "non just red, just dirty red." Goldmark sued his ruby-red-baiting critics. Later a dramatic 10-calendar week trial, a jury in 1964 found the defendants guilty of libel (although that verdict was subsequently reversed), and the gauge declared the ACLU was not a communist front organization.

A decade before, the co-operative had grown from a couple dozen to 250 members statewide, and changed its name to the ACLU of Washington (ACLU-WA). In the 1960s it became the fastest-growing chapter in the country. Membership reached well-nigh ii,500, the upkeep leapt tenfold, and local chapters were established. The group hired its first full-time executive managing director, David Guren, and staff attorney, Michael Rosen, and rented an office in the historic Smith Tower in downtown Seattle. Undertaking more piece of work exterior the court, information technology presently hired its showtime lobbyist, Michelle Pailthorp.

A Free-wheeling Time

The tardily 1960s and early on 1970s was a free-wheeling time marked past marches and sit-ins, exist-ins and smoke-outs. Deluged by requests for help, the ACLU saw its legal docket explode to more than one hundred cases past 1971. Clients ranged from Black Panthers and the anti-war Seattle Seven to Hare Krishnas and "tune in, turn on" campaigner Timothy Leary.

When the Seattle School Lath refused to rent Garfield High's auditorium for a speech by fiery Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael, the ACLU won a 1967 ruling that he could speak in a hall open to public use. Vietnam War protests gave rise to many civil liberties disputes. In 1970, Harold Spence was criminally convicted for displaying a flag with a peace symbol taped to it in the window of his Seattle apartment. His example (Spence v. Washington) made it to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom, which in 1974 overturned his conviction on free-voice communication grounds. In another ACLU-WA case (Oyen v. Washington), the high court in 1972 threw out the confidence of higher students arrested for loitering when they handed out leaflets about the draft outside a Bellingham high school.

The ceremonious liberties group's activities were wide-ranging. It assisted boys suspended from school simply for having long hair. The ACLU-WA helped establish a legal aid plan for farmworkers in the Yakima Valley. In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court (in Mempa v. Rhay) agreed with the ACLU-WA that an indigent defendant has the right to counsel at a probation revocation hearing. And afterwards a lesbian couple in 1973 was awarded child custody so long as they maintained divide residences, the ACLU-WA won a court ruling (in Schuster five. Schuster) that ended the cohabitation ban.

Landmark Cases

For years, a deluge of messages from prisoners alleged inhumane treatment in county jails. An ACLU-WA report found a design of beatings and censored mail, spurring creation of a state commission to monitor conditions. Overcrowding in the state penitentiary in Walla Walla was egregious, with ane,600 prisoners crammed into a facility built for 850. "Can you help usa? We are not animals," implored one inmate. A lawsuit (Hoptowit five. Ray) filed in 1979 by the ACLU-WA, Legal Services, and others led to a ruling that the country must remedy overcrowding, inadequate medical care, and guard misbehavior.

In an effort lasting many years, the ACLU joined with the NAACP and the Church Council to tackle segregation in Seattle public schools. With the groups preparing to sue, the school board in 1977 adopted a comprehensive racial residue plan -- making Seattle the largest school district to desegregate without a courtroom order.

Another landmark case came when land athletic officials opposed 2 sisters' effort to play on Wishkah Valley High's football team. In 1975 the Washington Supreme Court ruled (in Darrin v. Gould) that varsity athletic programs must exist open to female students. The ACLU-WA also represented Captain Susan Struck, a nurse at McChord Air Force Base in Pierce County, who faced dismissal when she sought to give birth. Under challenge, the Air Strength changed its rules and allowed her to go the first adult female to remain in the armed forces after giving nativity in the armed services.

New Leadership

The rise of the women's move forced the ACLU-WA to face up inequality in its own operations. In 1971 women staffers picketed the part; "Civil Liberties Begins at Home" declared one sign. In response, the board raised pay for clerical work and prioritized having more women in leadership roles; in 1973 Ann Widditsch became the board's beginning woman president. And in 1980 Kathleen Taylor was hired as executive manager; she would atomic number 82 the grouping for nearly four decades.

Taylor had directed the Coalition on Government Spying, a projection of the ACLU and allies formed after revelations that Seattle police had kept clandestine files on hundreds of activists and organizations -- all without evidence of criminal activity. Prodded by the coalition, the Seattle City Council in 1979 adopted an ordinance prohibiting police from collecting political information unless information technology related direct to a suspected criminal offense -- the first such police force in the nation.

Among Taylor'south acme priorities was financial stability. Fundraising had non kept stride with the expansion of programs, and the group found itself $65,000 in debt. Paid staff had been laid off in the mid-1970s, and the P-I warned of the ACLU-WA'due south imminent demise. The group survived through intensive fundraising, getting out of debt by the decade'south end. To forestall future crises, Taylor established a major-gifts campaign and hired the group'south first full-time fundraiser. The budget soared to more than than $280,000 and staff grew to nine by the mid-1980s.

Intrusive personal searches emerged as a major civil liberties event. Representing rock music fans, the ACLU-WA won a 1983 ruling (in Jacobsen v. Seattle) barring pat-down searches at concerts. The Washington Supreme Court in 1985 (in Kuehn v. Renton School Commune) agreed with the ACLU-WA that educators can search student baggage on a field trip merely with individualized suspicion of illegal activity. Afterwards ACLU-WA suits, King and Clallam counties accepted consent decrees catastrophe indiscriminate utilise of humiliating strip searches. The civil liberties group also fought against employee prevarication-detector tests and mandatory testing for AIDS.

The saga of Sergeant Perry Watkins spanned the decade. Watkins had freely acknowledged his homosexuality when joining the military in the 1960s and even entertained troops in elevate. Merely while he was stationed in Tacoma, the army moved to dismiss him in 1981. Watkins fought back with an ACLU-WA lawyer, and his conform yo-yoed through the courts. Ultimately a federal appeals court issued a groundbreaking ruling in 1989, finding that the ground forces couldn't change its mind after having allowed him to re-enlist. Watkins retired with an honorable belch.

Fighting Censorship

Efforts to censor schoolbooks and curricula were another major concern. Some fundamentalists and social conservatives asserted that public schools promoted "secular humanism" and undermined traditional values. Aided past a grouping known as the Moral Majority, a parent in Mead sued to remove The Learning Tree from a high school reading list; she objected that Gordon Parks's novel included swear words, premarital sex, and blasphemies against Christ. At the school district'southward request, the ACLU-WA submitted a cursory defending the book's apply, and a federal guess in 1982 ruled against censoring it.

To defend complimentary inquiry, the ACLU-WA, booksellers, and librarians founded a statewide coalition against censorship that staged public readings from banned books. With the slogan "Empty Shelves, Empty Minds," it trained parents and teachers to gainsay censorship.

A decade later the target was sexually explicit music lyrics. Upset when her immature son heard a raunchy rap vocal, an Everett mother convinced her state legislator to sponsor a bill restricting the sale to minors of music accounted "erotic." Despite vocal protests by musicians and music fans, the Erotic Music Police passed overwhelmingly in 1992. The ACLU-WA and allies filed adapt with celebrity plaintiffs -- amongst them Sir Mix-A-Lot, Krist Novoselic of Nirvana, and members of Pearl Jam and Center. The Washington Supreme Court (in Soundgarden 5. Eikenberry) struck downward the law.

Beyond the Courts

The hiring of a communications specialist and a field coordinator in the 1990s reflected an evolution in ACLU strategy. The grouping felt information technology could not rely just on the courts with so many judges installed by the Reagan administration. Influencing public opinion and mobilizing grass-roots action grew increasingly of import.

Civil libertarians likewise turned to the ballot. In 1991 a coalition of the ACLU, women'south groups, and others gained passage of Initiative 120, which put the right to choose ballgame into state law. In 1998 the ACLU-WA backed the successful Initiative 692 legalizing medicinal use of marijuana. A significant setback also came that twelvemonth with the passage of Initiative 200 severely restricting government apply of affirmative activity.

A high-contour women'southward rights example came in 1993 when Bellingham teenager Dallas Malloy sought a boxing friction match with another girl. An ACLU-WA lawsuit on her behalf gained an injunction confronting USA Boxing's century-one-time dominion limiting the ring to males. Malloy defeated Heather Poynter in a precedent-setting tour in Edmonds.

Defending the rights of people whose views information technology opposed was long a point of pride for the organization. When the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct sought to discipline land Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders for speaking at a 1996 anti-abortion rally, the pro-option ACLU-WA stepped in to defend him. The state'southward high courtroom overturned his reprimand, agreeing that the jurist's brief remarks on the sanctity of man life were a matter of free speech.

Student Rights

Years earlier the U.Southward. Supreme Court had given a big boost to advocacy for student rights with its landmark 1969 ruling (in Tinker v. Des Moines) that "Students don't shed their constitutional rights ... at the school gate." Building on Tinker, the ACLU-WA prepare an of import precedent when it represented students at Renton'due south Lindbergh High disciplined for publishing their ain newspaper without prior review. A federal appeals court in 1988 (in Burch five. Barker) constitute the discipline unwarranted because the publication did not substantially disrupt schooling.

Presently the Internet became the medium of choice for teens satirizing schools. The first controversy over online speech that gained national attention arose at Bellevue's Newport High in 1995 when the principal took umbrage at a parody Paul Kim posted from his home computer. She contacted National Merit officials and 7 colleges withdrawing the school'southward endorsement. Later the ACLU-WA threatened to sue over her violation of Kim's free voice communication rights, the school board apologized and paid him compensation.

The ACLU-WA fought curfews for juveniles because they criminalized only being exterior based on a person's age. Many jurisdictions backed off after the civil liberties group notified them of a ruling that found Bellingham's curfew unconstitutional. And an ACLU-WA example resulted in the Washington Supreme Court (in Sumner v. Walsh) throwing out Sumner's curfew, with a warning to other cities confronting adopting such measures.

Criminal Justice and Law Accountability

Get-tough approaches to crime were the order of the day. Symbolic was Washington's first-in-the-nation "Three Strikes," law mandating life sentences for sure repeat offenders, adopted in 1993 over objections from ceremonious libertarians. ACLU-WA criticism and a court challenge also failed to derail a law allowing incarceration of sex offenders beyond their sentence. Similarly unsuccessful was an ACLU-WA lawsuit confronting Seattle'southward "civility" law that targeted panhandlers by criminalizing sitting on the sidewalk.

Every bit the population backside confined swelled, criminal-justice issues felt urgent. The ACLU-WA in the 1990s won lawsuits alleging inhumane atmospheric condition in two county jails, a juvenile detention center, and the women'south prison house at Purdy. Subsequently years of pressure by the ACLU-WA and civil rights allies to amend police accountability, Seattle established an office to investigate misconduct allegations, to be led by a civilian rather than a police officer. The ACLU-WA besides took out large newspaper ads spotlighting "Driving While Black" -- racial imbalances in law enforcement on the road; the legislature directed the state patrol to collect and analyze information on vehicle stops and searches.

The decade concluded with an event that captured international attention: a meeting of the Earth Trade Organization in Seattle that drew massive protests. Faced with blocked streets and broken windows, police tear-gassed numerous peaceful protestors and bystanders. Seattle officials declared a 24-block "no-protest zone" in the heart of downtown. The ACLU-WA sharply criticized the urban center'south response and tried unsuccessfully to cake the zone in court; three plaintiffs did receive $5,000 payments in a later ACLU suit. Cartoon from 500-plus eyewitness accounts submitted to its website, the group issued a written report detailing widespread police abuses. Of its recommendations, one was adopted: that all Seattle police officers wear legible ID on their uniforms.

The nine/xi terrorist attacks bandage a long shadow over the new century's early years. Issues of balancing ceremonious liberties and national security became front and center. Launching a "Condom and Gratuitous" entrada, the ACLU-WA mobilized a squadron of speakers to warn against unnecessary sacrifices of civil liberties. Thousands of "Know Your Rights" pamphlets were distributed, with special attention to Muslim and Arab communities fearful of beingness targets for harassment. Fueled by worries that the PATRIOT Act and other measures gave the authorities excessive surveillance powers, ACLU-WA membership shortly doubled -- to more than 20,000 statewide.

The group challenged policies and assisted victims of overreaction. The state patrol concluded random car searches at ferry docks after ACLU-WA protest and public outcry. With ACLU-WA help, two constabulary-abiding Somali businessmen gained authorities bounty subsequently federal agents raided their Seattle offices and seized their inventories. Abdulameer Habeeb, an Iraqi political refugee living in Kent, was arrested, detained for eight days, and threatened with deportation when he took a railroad train trip. An ACLU-WA lawsuit gained a court ruling that he had been mistreated and $100,000 in bounty.

Public photography could be deemed suspicious. Several law enforcement agents harassed Ian Spiers, a biracial photography student, when he simply prepare upwards his tripod at the Ballard Locks; with ACLU-WA support, his protest against profiling drew widespread publicity. Shirley Scheier, a UW art professor the ACLU-WA represented, gained a favorable court ruling and bounty later being detained for taking photos of a power substation.

Irresolute Attitudes, Organizational Development

The State of war on Drugs, begun by Richard Nixon back in 1971, was a long-time bete noir for eroding privacy and filling jails with nonviolent offenders. The ACLU-WA scored a precedent-setting victory in 2000 when a state appeals courtroom (in Robinson v. Seattle) found the City of Seattle couldn't require prospective employees to undergo urine testing. In an ACLU-WA case with a deputy sheriff as lead plaintiff, the Washington Supreme Court (in York v. Wahkiakum School District) ruled against forcing students to be drug-tested without suspicion in order to play varsity sports. Looking toward its ultimate goal -- legalization -- the ACLU-WA produced a video hosted by travel guru Rick Steves on the history and impacts of marijuana prohibition.

Rapidly irresolute attitudes about homosexuality led to gay-rights advances that once seemed incommunicable. In 2006 the legislature banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. In a 2009 plebiscite, the ACLU-WA and allies fended off a challenge to an "everything but marriage" domestic partnership police force -- the first time a state approved a gay-equality measure past a direct vote of its people. Simply legal marriage for lesbians and gays remained elusive for a while longer, as the country supreme court in 2006, by a one-vote margin, rejected same-sexual practice marriage suits past the ACLU-WA and Northwest Women's Law Middle.

In 2010 the ACLU-WA celebrated its 75th anniversary. The grouping had evolved from an informal outfit operating on a shoestring to a professional operation with 30 staff and a multi-1000000-dollar upkeep. A 2004 Seattle P-I headline had referred to it as a "Cadillac affiliate." Information technology now influenced laws and policies statewide, with projects addressing cutting-border surveillance technology and information privacy. Though still reviled by some, the ACLU had go a forcefulness in Washington'south public affairs.

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