Despite turmoil, Florida needs the ACLU now more than ever | Opinion

I have joined the board of the ACLU of Florida.

When first asked, I declined, wary of recent discord. But I was encouraged to stand for election and help right the ship. Two months in, I feel good about my decision, especially after spending quality time with staff at a Saturday gathering in Miami.

The American Civil Liberties Union is a controversial group, no question. But controversy is something I know something about from having led the opinion pages of two major Florida newspapers. I signed on because the ACLU’s core values — fighting government abuse and defending civil liberties, including freedom of speech, religion, assembly, privacy, due process, voting and equal protection — are at my core, too.

No matter your politics, the ACLU has probably annoyed you. When it comes to defending people’s rights, it’s an equal-opportunity fighter, even if it means, as one former director said, “defending my enemy.”

I’m not a fan of the NRA, for example, but I’m proud that the ACLU represented the National Rifle Association in a case decided last week by the U.S. Supreme Court. The case involved a New York regulator who tried to coerce banks to blacklist the organization. By successfully defending the NRA, the ACLU reinforced everyone’s First Amendment protections against vengeful government leaders.

The ACLU also represented another group I abhor — white nationalists — after officials in Charlottesville, Virginia, revoked their rally permit four years ago. The First Amendment guarantees political speech, including protest, and the right to speak out in public spaces.

Perhaps most famously, 47 years ago the ACLU defended the free-speech rights of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Ill., where hundreds of Holocaust survivors lived. It did so because if government can squelch speech it finds offensive, there’s a slippery slope to preventing any speech it dislikes.

Last Thursday, the ACLU of Florida went to court to fight the state’s book-ban law. Consider: if you want a book banned and the school district refuses, you can appeal to Tallahassee. But if you don’t want a book banned and it’s banned anyway, you have no appeal.

Talk about viewpoint discrimination.

Our lawyers also are fighting Florida’s “Stop Woke” law, which restricts how college professors can discuss systemic racism and sex discrimination for fear that students might be made uncomfortable. History is full of uncomfortable truths. The danger of government censorship is one of them.

We are also fighting a new anti-immigrant law that says only citizens, not legal residents, can register people to vote. The law keeps many Spanish-speaking residents from participating in voter registration drives, hardly equal protection under the law.

And we’re fighting the new law that defines street protests as riots and lets participants be charged with felonies. I’m reminded of the civil rights protesters who walked across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, only to be beaten with billy clubs and sprayed with tear gas. If that were to happen in Florida today, those freedom marchers would become convicted felons.

Before he became president, we even defended Donald Trump’s First Amendment right to fly an oversized flag on an oversized flagpole at Mar-a-Lago.

In the last year, the Florida ACLU has faced internal disruption and reorganization. The national organization dismissed the state board. There’s a lawsuit, so I can’t say more. But from where I sit, the reboot has revitalized the organization. At our Miami gathering, I saw an energized staff engaged in a noble mission.

We’ve also hired a dynamic new executive director familiar to many South Florida residents: Bacardi Jackson, a seasoned litigator who graduated from Stanford University and Yale Law School and spent the past four years at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She is the right leader at the right time.

Jackson takes the torch from the legendary Howard Simon, who served as executive director for more than two decades before retiring in 2018 and returning as interim director last August. Among Simon’s many achievements, he played a large role in ending Florida’s bans on same-sex marriages and gay adoptions.

I am joined on the new 14-member board by doctors, lawyers, professors and administrators with a diversity of viewpoints who stand ready to support our executive director in defending your rights, no matter how you identify.

I tell you all this because it’s a discouraging time in our country. People on both sides of the aisle believe our democracy is threatened, but few lobbyists are working the halls of government for us. However, you should know that ACLU staffers are there, trying to advance your rights and keep bad stuff from happening.

The ACLU is a nonpartisan, public policy, membership organization supported by grants and donations. I hope you will join me in supporting the ACLU of Florida. It’s a righteous cause.

Rosemary O’Hara is the former Opinion Editor of the South Florida Sun Sentinel and before that, The Tampa Tribune. She lives in Dunedin.