The Constitution is important. Full stop. It does many things, chief among them being defining and protecting the rights of people in the United States. So, what happens when America elects an executive that doesn\u2019t fairly apply the constitution because he either doesn\u2019t understand it or doesn\u2019t respect it (the jury\u2019s still out on which is worse)? The American Civil Liberties Union starts getting busy.<\/p>\n

The inauguration of Donald Trump in 2016 was a watershed moment for civil liberties in the United States. Since the Warren Court, our constitution has been interpreted in a way that has made speech more free and rights more universal. Tinker v. Des Moines<\/em> paved the way for student speech, Brandenburg v. Ohio<\/em> protected inflammatory speech that doesn\u2019t incite violence, Roe v. Wade<\/em> extended a woman\u2019s right to privacy to reproductive healthcare. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have encountered rulings they\u2019ve disagreed with, but for the most part with some notable exceptions (Bush activities after the Patriot Act) they\u2019ve accepted the norms that make our democracy work. Whenever a President did try to skirt the constitution and curb our civil liberties they at least made noises about \u201cnational security\u201d. But there has perhaps never been a President so willing to abandon dog-whistle rhetoric and explicitly state his intentions to undermine our constitution.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would bring back waterboarding, and I\u2019d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants to say this, and nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything, but you know, you understand it. A lot of people understand it. We\u2019re going to have no choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re going to open up those libel laws, so when The New York Times<\/em> writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace \u2026 we can sue them and win money\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no judges or court cases, bring them back from where they came.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re rounding them up in a very human way, a very nice way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s public statements rival those of Richard Nixon who famously declared “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” But the institutions of 2018 seem to lack the intestinal fortitude of the institutions of 1974. Even with the intervention of a few state attorneys general and the 9th circuit court of appeals, we appear to be witnessing a rapid erosion of constitutional norms that has been exacerbated by recently emboldened state governments. That\u2019s why there\u2019s a necessity for non-profits that exist independent from government, enter the ACLU.<\/p>\n

We asked the Executive Directive of the ACLU of Missouri, Jeffrey Mittman, how he views the role of his organization and he said, \u201cOur job is to be a check on the government, we are the only organization whose absolute responsibility is to protect every American, every Missourian against government overreach, against violation of constitutional civil rights.\u201d When Mittman says every American, he really does mean every<\/em> American and it has not been without controversy.<\/p>\n

Last year, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the city of Cape Girardeau on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan because the city considered it a crime for that group to leave handbills on windshields. For many people, it\u2019s head scratching that the same group that has been integral in the expansion of minority rights should also defend a hate group that is diametrically opposed to those rights. Mittman told us \u201cWe will defend any right as strongly as any other, so we have to defend free speech rights, but we also have to defend the right to racial equality to ends of restrictions on racial … restrictions on voting, to school the prison work, the unfair treatment of African American students…When hate crimes laws came up that said…if you say something bad, or think something bad, or write something bad, we will punish that. The ACLU said, “Wait, nope.” We can’t punish speech, we can’t punish thought. Our friends in the LGBT community, and the African American, and minority racial communities were not happy, but understood. What we said is if you commit a crime, and in the commission of that crime you say you are doing it because of that person’s race, or religion, or sexual orientation, we can as a community say, because of that history of discrimination there will be an extra penalty because of that. But to simply punish thought, or speech, or writings is not permissible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ACLU is perhaps the most consistent advocacy organization in America, and it\u2019s operated under its mission statement \u201cto defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.\u201d essentially without fail for nearly 100 years. It\u2019s put them at odds with a number of Presidential administrations, but maybe none more than the Trump administration whose policy directives continue to challenge the limits of the constitution. Mittman detailed to us the work that\u2019s been done on behalf of DACA students, Muslims that have been targeted due to the travel ban, and transgender soldiers whose ability to serve is in jeopardy to name a few. But listening to Mittman, who has been in Missouri since 2014, it\u2019s clear that maybe the nature of his work hasn\u2019t changed but rather the public has become more aware of problems that have existed longer than we\u2019d like to admit.<\/p>\n

Mittman went on at some length about racial disparities in this state, especially as they relate to education and law enforcement. There\u2019s a \u201cschool to prison pipeline\u201d which is essentially the disproportionate way minority students eventually become incarcerated adults that is likely related to school disciplinary policies. Mittman talked about a specific case that\u2019s emblematic of similar experiences around the country. \u201cIn 2015 that Missouri had the highest differential between rates of discipline of white students and black students in elementary school. We represented a young, seven-year-old boy who was handcuffed. Less than four feet tall, weighed less than 50 pounds, was crying his classroom, was handcuffed, was taken to the principal’s office and left in handcuffs in the principal’s office. So, we’re working on the issue of police and schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ACLU is in the middle of a multi-year program to address this, and Mittman says the struggle is \u201cHow do we say that under third grade you should never have an out of school suspension?\u201d he continued, \u201cIt’s just not necessary, these are young people, these are students, these are children. These are not criminals. These are not people who need to be dealt with by police officers.\u201d Currently the ACLU is starting with five school districts in a partnership to help them look at their policies and \u201chelp them educate themselves, help them look at implicit bias training for schools, for teachers. Whatever it takes to lower those differentials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now back to the President, who not only dominates media conversation but a significant portion of the National ACLU\u2019s casework. We asked Mittman, who knows quite a bit about constitutional law, if the President can pardon himself. It seems more relevant now as the Mueller probe has progressed and many of his associates have been indicted including his former campaign manager and national security advisor. Mittman had an interesting answer \u201cMy own fundamental belief, and I think it’s fairly what ACLU would say, is going back to our earlier question, we are a system of laws not men. So, the fundamental principal will be the Constitution applies to all of us. The president is not above the law. So, if we agree on that starting point, I would hope and trust that any opinion, whether a trial court, whether the Supreme Court, would strongly ascribe to that idea that the president is not above the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ACLU is doing something that every citizen should be doing, and that\u2019s ensuring the continued existence of liberal democracy. Whatever freedoms we have and rights we acknowledge only exist because they were fought for. The ACLU has done much of the heavy lifting in shaping how we view free speech, and it\u2019s been a net positive for our country. Mittman said of his organization, \u201cWhat people don’t know is before the 1920s, nobody would’ve said first amendment. There was a first amendment to the constitution, but it hadn’t been enforced. ACLU started around the time of World War I. Wilson was having people jailed for opposing the war. ACLU said wait a second, we have free speech right. We went to court, and now we’ve built a body of law. We’re that follow-through on what the federalists said. We’re the follow-through on the constitution…the challenges in Missouri are going to be different than the challenges of New Hampshire \u2026 [but] we know what goes on here, we are part of what goes on here, and we have the expertise in national to make it happen. They listen to us, we listen to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The constitution is not a partisan issue, it\u2019s literally above politics. It\u2019s patriotic to support the constitution, it\u2019s sycophantic to make excuses for its degradation. As Americans, now is the time to come together and make it known that we believe that government has to work for the people and do that work within the bounds of the people\u2019s document.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Constitution is important. Full stop. It does many things, chief among them being defining and protecting the rights of people in the United<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":38804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2953,767,1988,255,994,1683,6,2211,2347,1651,2054,2451],"tags":[3252,3251,3253],"yoast_head":"\n