American Civil Liberties Union facts for kids

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a group of two non-profit organizations that fight for what they believe are important civil liberties issues. It was started in 1920 by Crystal Eastman, Roger Nash Baldwin, and Walter Nelles.

Some issues that are important to the ACLU are the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (which says that people have free speech and freedom of religion, as well as other rights), privacy, the right of people to be treated fairly if they are accused of a crime and arrested, and the right for everybody to be treated the same under the law.

One way the ACLU tries to reach its goals is by helping people in court whom it believes are not being treated fairly by the law. The ACLU has lawyers that file lawsuits for people it represents. The ACLU also tries to change laws by teaching people about issues and by lobbying the government about what it believes.

Images for kids

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  Amounts reported to IRS as "Contributions, Gifts, Grants and Other Similar Amounts" by ACLU and ACLU Foundation. Graph reflects an increase in donations following U.S. President Trump's January 2017 executive order barring millions of refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries.

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  Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, joins in a protest of the Guantanamo Bay detentions with Amnesty International

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  Crystal Eastman was one of the co-founders of the CLB, the predecessor to the ACLU

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  Norman Thomas was one of the early leaders of the ACLU

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  The ACLU defended H. L. Mencken when he was arrested for distributing banned literature

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  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was voted off the ACLU board in 1940 because of her Communist Party membership, but reinstated posthumously in 1970

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  The ACLU was internally divided when it came to defending the rights of Japanese Americans who had been forcibly relocated to internment camps

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  The ACLU chose not to support Eugene Dennis or other leaders of the US Communist Party, and they were all imprisoned, along with their attorneys

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  In the 1950s the ACLU chose to not support Paul Robeson and other leftist defendants, a decision that would be heavily criticized in the future.

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  Supreme Court justice Hugo Black often endorsed the ACLU's position on the separation of church and state

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  The ACLU contends that the Bill of Rights protects individuals who burn the U.S. flag as a form of expression

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  The ACLU was the first national organization to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon

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  Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the ACLU's Women's Rights Project in 1971. She was later appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by President Bill Clinton.

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  A California affiliate of the ACLU sued to remove the Mount Soledad Cross from public lands in San Diego

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  The ACLU represented Internet service provider Nicholas Merrill in a 2004 lawsuit which challenged the government's right to secretly gather information about Internet access

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  Abdi Soltani, executive director of Northern California ACLU, speaks at a San Francisco protest of the U.S. immigration ban

See also

In Spanish: Unión Estadounidense por las Libertades Civiles para niños