The ACLU of Maryland and the National ACLU are dedicated to both protecting our freedoms and promoting our rights. Like other state affiliates, the Maryland ACLU has a decisive role to play because threats to liberty arise locally. But, significantly, we do our state-level work within the context of a nationwide 50-state strategy – filing cases in strategic venues around the country and pressing for state legislation that will become a model for the nation.
Thankfully, our work is underwritten by thousands of ACLU members who understand that no battle for civil liberties ever stays won. This year once again we saw fear used to restrict liberty. Fear never actually makes us safer. It only denies people their rights and ideas, limits debate, and scapegoats individuals from minority religions, races and political belief systems.
Take the case of Bel Air, Maryland school officials who decided to censor – in violation of the First Amendment – a scene from a student production of the play, “Almost, Maine,” because it featured two male friends who realize they have fallen in love. Students Julia Streett and Kristine Vogt knew immediately that it wasn’t right. The scene is sweet and funny – their favorite in the play – and contains no sexual activity or innuendo. The students knew that the only reason to cut it was fear of same-sex romance. So, they organized with other members of the Bel Air Drama Company, and they came to the ACLU for help.
The ACLU took quick action, explaining to school officials that deleting the scene infringed on the students’ free speech. The censorship decision was reversed just in time for opening night.
Julia and Kristine – who are active in their school’s Gay-Straight Alliance – believe it is important to speak out against discrimination. Because of their courage and resourcefulness, the staging of the uncensored play gave the school community an opportunity to better appreciate diversity and understand that love is not something to be feared.
At the ACLU our goal is always to make the promises of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights real for everyone in Maryland. And, thanks to the support of our members, supporters, and clients, our ability to realize this dream is stronger than ever.
Date
Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 3:30pm
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This year, the ACLU of Maryland has risen to new challenges to protect our precious rights and liberties. In doing so we found ourselves — for better or worse — on the cutting edge of the world wide web.
Opponents of equality now operate in a new political landscape of online organizing. This year’s passage of the Civil Marriage Protection Act and the Maryland Dream Act spurred opponents to organize referenda drives to overturn both civil rights laws. And they quickly gathered the tens of thousands of signatures necessary, partly through an online petition website.What will this mean for ACLU efforts to pass and secure important civil liberties legislation? The ACLU believes it is wrong to put the rights of minorities up for a popular vote. The new ease of challenging laws at the ballot box — where the will of the majority reigns — is a sea change and will affect our program for years to come.
Meanwhile, the ACLU’s work this year has twice made Maryland a national model of how to protect personal privacy and freedom of expression — especially in the online world. The ACLU of Maryland helped win passage of the nation’s first law banning employers from demanding access to social media accounts of job applicants and employees. It all started when a Department of Corrections employee was forced to provide his Facebook password during a recertification interview after he took a leave of absence following the death of his mother. Then, it seemed a rare practice. But since then, press reports have revealed a growing problem. Now, other states have followed Maryland's lead in developing model legislation to use in protecting privacy and free expression online.
The ACLU also defended the right of citizen journalists to record police actions in public, which is increasingly common as smart phones become ever more ubiquitous. The Baltimore police had illegally detained our client at the 2010 Preakness Stakes horse race for capturing video of an incident of police brutality on his phone. The police then erased that video as well as other priceless personal videos, including of his young son. We were gratified when the Department of Justice decided to weigh in on the ACLU of Maryland’s lawsuit — one of many ACLU suits across the country defending the First Amendment rights of photographers.
The ACLU cannot do this cutting edge work without your enduring and generous support. Together, we can remain vigilant for justice, liberty, and equality for many years to come.
Date
Friday, June 15, 2012 - 3:15pm
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The ACLU of Maryland is your Bill of Rights defender, and we’re in it for the long haul. For more than 80 years, the ACLU of Maryland has championed freedom, equality, and justice. This year is particularly special – our Executive Director, Susan Goering, celebrates 25 years with the organization. Susan joined the staff in 1986 as our first fulltime Legal Director. She had an immediate impact: Susan and then-ACLU Board Member Claudia Wright drove to the Eastern Shore to visit antiquated jails – one in Talbot County had once held prisoner Frederick Douglass in the early 1800’s – and got a federal court to declare the conditions in Dorchester County unconstitutional.
Susan knows such small victories are crucial, but it is also important to think big. Upon coming to Maryland, she was immediately struck by the continuing structural legacy of Maryland’s Jim Crow history. So, starting in the 1980s under her leadership, the ACLU of Maryland mounted long-running cases aimed at transforming institutional and cultural practices that perpetuate segregation and isolation from the mainstream opportunities most Americans expect.
Susan was the mastermind behind some of Maryland's biggest civil rights cases of the last several decades – including Bradford v. Board of Education, whose judicial ruling spurred the Thornton Commission and its state-wide funding formula weighted to help poor children, children needing special education, and children speaking English as a second language. The case laid the foundation for this year’s legislation to leverage bonds for an innovative $1 billion school facilities plan in Baltimore.
It was Susan’s unique ability to see the structural issues behind social problems that spurred her to bring the landmark lawsuit Thompson v. HUD, which has helped thousands of African American families who lived in Baltimore’s segregated public housing move to areas of opportunity around the region. The difference in health and opportunity for children has been tremendous.
After becoming Executive Director in 1996, Susan grew the ACLU of Maryland from just a few staff members to nearly 20. We have a docket of more than 50 cases, many of which are litigated with pro bono counsel. Some of these have been huge cases, such as the "Driving While Black" case against the Maryland State Police; litigation on behalf of same-sex couples seeking marriage equality; and high profile public information litigation against the Maryland State Police for spying on peaceful protestors.
Susan continues to take to heart the warning given long ago by the ACLU’s founder, Roger Baldwin: “No battle for civil liberties ever stays won.” The ACLU was birthed in 1920 amid deportations, warrantless seizures, and other abuses of power by that era’s national security apparatus. Now, we face new abuses in the form of mass spying by the National Security Agency, mass incarceration of communities of color, and rampant attacks on personal privacy and reproductive freedom.
But like Susan, the ACLU of Maryland is visionary, unafraid of challenges, eager to draw connections between the struggle for rights of seemingly disparate groups, and dedicated to working in coalition and partnership with allies of any political stripe to advance civil liberties and civil rights.
On behalf of our 14,000 members in Maryland, thank you for being one of those partners.
With gratitude and pride,
Coleman Bazelon
President
ACLU of Maryland
Date
Sunday, January 6, 2013 - 5:45pm
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