ACLU Opposes DISCLOSE Act

Gouvernail · Jun 8, 2020

I have paid occasional attention on and for over fifty years and never have I thought the ACLU was wrong.

basic: Rights are for those whose position or activity is unpopular.
For the popular, rights are virtually automatic.

Pertinacious Tom · Jun 9, 2020

Gouvernail said:
I have paid occasional attention on and for over fifty years and never have I thought the ACLU was wrong.

basic: Rights are for those whose position or activity is unpopular.
For the popular, rights are virtually automatic.

Even when I have disagreed with them, they seem to make an honest and well-considered point.

You're right that popular speech or actions need no protection. I'm glad the ACLU is still into protecting even unpopular elk.

Pertinacious Tom · Jun 9, 2020

jack_sparrow said:
So you now kidnap people's posts and bring them to your special thread leaving behind your refuse.

You seemed to want to discuss the issue. Why hijack some other thread when there's one on this topic?

frenchie · Jun 9, 2020

Astro? Who used to be Random? Attacking the ACLU only demonstrates that you don't know what they are. They're nobody's shill; they're one of the very few truly non partisan organizations in the country. They have a downright venerable track record - originally started fighting against the deportation of anarchists and socialists, in the early 20th century.

Yes, they've defended the KKK's right to hold a parade. They also played a huge role in ending segregation, bringing science instead of the bible into classroom (and keeping it that way), defending immigrants, anti-war protesters, gay people... they're the good guys.

They are, however, absolute pests about asking for money; especially if you've ever donated to them in the past.

frenchie · Jun 9, 2020

random said:
ACLU Supports the NRA ... looks like it's all falling into place for our mate Tom.

Who Does the ACLU Fight For?

An internal clash over the civil-liberty group’s decision to defend the NRA shows how te organization is transforming.

Shortly before the American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief in support of the National Rifle Association on Friday, David Cole, the ACLU’s national legal director, sent out a short email to staff. Cole explained that he felt that New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo had “explicitly target[ed] the NRA” based on its “constitutionally protected political advocacy” by advising banks and insurers not to do business with the pro-gun group.

random said:
So you are a shill for the ACLU? Fucking looks like it to me ... see all the keywords that Tom has been using below.

These guys? Seriously?

Besides individual memberships, the ACLU has also taken or solicited funds from various organizations. Some anti-tobacco activists have criticized the organization for quietly taking funds from the tobacco industry. It was a major supporter of the tobacco industry's right to advertise cigarette, and it's chief lobbyist Barry W Lynn supported the industry under the guise of protecting their "Freedom of Speech". Another ACLU stalwart, Burton Neuborne, was the legal director who went over to run the tobacco Industry's Freedom to Advertise Coalition (FAC)

According to Lynn and Neuborne, a corporation had the same rights of speech as an American citizen -- except that the citizen was prohibited by law from advising people to engage in conduct that was likely to kill or seriously harm them. The famous Saturday Review editor, Norman Cousins resigned from the ACLU on the grounds that it was being funded to do the work of the tobacco industry.

In tobacco industry parlance the Freedom of Speech theme became the Freedom to Advertise Coalition (FAC) followed by a whole raft of other similar organisations (many from the newspaper and broadcasting world) willing to support them.

random said:
You see there is the problem Tommy-boi, you are posting for $'s, not necessarily what you really think. You have no credibility at all mate.

ACLU defends NRA -- yes, you read that right

The American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief in federal court in defense of the National Rifle Association’s legal right to do business in New York — and in opposition to Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pressure on insurance and financial organizations to cut ties with those who do business with the firearms group.

The ACLU defending the NRA? Yes, you read that right.

Even a clock’s right twice a day.

As the Daily Caller noted: “The NRA filed a lawsuit against Cuomo and the state’s financial regulatory bureau in July, contending that the agency instituted a ‘blacklisting campaign’ by threatening insurers and financial institutions that associate with the organization. The bureau warned that by continuing to work with the NRA, banks and insurance companies could face regulatory action.”

random said:
I like the part where an organisation that gets money from Big Tobacco (ACLU) doesn't like Disclosure of any kind!!!!!

Funni as fuck.

Got any more payola for us?

random said:
The ACLU's surprising new political strategy, modeled in part after the NRA

random said:
Want to Defend Civil Liberties? Don’t Look to the ACLU.

Last summer, the ACLU took up the case of white supremacists who wished to hold a rally at a public park in Charlottesville, Va., after city officials tried to shut down the event. The ACLU prevailed legally, as they should have under the First Amendment, but the rally took a tragic turn. Angry counterprotesters descended on the town, police mismanaged the event, and a white supremacist drove a car through the crowd, killing a woman and injuring 19 others.

Pertinacious Tom · Jun 10, 2020

frenchie said:
Yes, they've defended the KKK's right to hold a parade. They also played a huge role in ending segregation, bringing science instead of the bible into classroom (and keeping it that way), defending immigrants, anti-war protesters, gay people... they're the good guys.

Defending the KKK's rights is part of being the good guys for the reasons Gouv explained. Assholes defining the extent of our rights is a feature, not a bug.

Pertinacious Tom · Oct 14, 2020

HR 1 has a rough road ahead.

Democrats used to rail against 'dark money.' Now they're better at it than the GOP.

...

Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which runs the campaign finance data warehouse OpenSecrets.org, said her group has tracked liberal groups "taking dark money in politics to a new level of opacity" and caught them trying new tricks, such as creating faux news sites to make their attack ads seem more credible.

While overall dark money spending is roughly even between the parties right now, Democrats have a clear edge in congressional races, Krumholz said. Around 65 percent of dark money TV ads in 2020 Senate races and 85 percent of dark money TV ads in House races are sponsored by liberal groups, according to Krumholz.

"Unfortunately, there has been comfort with this that has grown over time on both sides of the aisle," Krumholz said. "Nobody wants to be the sucker that is playing by the rules when someone is getting away with murder."

One large dark money group, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, has funneled millions of dollars to more than 100 liberal groups, accepting individual donations as large as $51.7 million and $26.7 million, all without having to reveal any information about who is behind those donations.

Amy Kurtz, the Sixteen Thirty Fund's executive director, said they're just playing by the rules.

"We support and have lobbied in favor of reform to the current campaign finance system (through H.R. 1), but we are equally committed to following the current laws to level the playing field for progressives in this election," Kurtz said in a statement.

...

Pertinacious Tom · Nov 26, 2020

Quotidian Tom said:
Plenipotentiary Tom said:

ACLU Wins Again

Much like displaying an I EAT ASS bumper sticker on your Vespa, having this sign on your property is free expression protected by the first amendment.

Click to expand...

If having an offensive (or possibly sexy) message like I EAT ASS on your Vespa's bumper sticker is OK, how about on the license plate?

...

California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) rejects tens of thousands of applications for individualized plate slogans each year for being offensive to "good taste and decency."

Yesterday, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a nutjob law firm, filed a lawsuit against state DMV director Steve Gordon alleging his department's license plate policy violates the First Amendment's free speech protections. The DMV, they are arguing, is using a dangerously expansive definition of "government speech" to unconstitutionally censor motorists' expression.

"Our lawsuit is about vague laws that give government bureaucrats unbridled discretion to regulate speech, and that inevitably leads to arbitrary results," says Wen Fa, an attorney with PLF. "It's basically at the DMV's whims what might be offensive and what isn't."

...

Click to expand...

Victory for offensive license plates

...The case against the California Department of Motor Vehicles—heard by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California— was brought by five people who were told their choices of vanity plate messages were off-limits. The five plaintiffs were represented by the nutjob law firm Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF).

...

One of the people who filed the suit is a gay man who owns a record company called Queer Folks Records. He was originally told that he couldn't get a license plate saying QUEER because it was an insult.

Another plaintiff—who loves the band Slayer—was denied a SLAAYRR license plate because the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) said the message was "threatening, aggressive or hostile."

The DMV told plaintiff Paul Ogilvie that he couldn't get a plate combining the first letters of his last name and his favorite animal— OGWOOLF—because OG can be slang for original gangster.

Another plaintiff was denied DUK N A plate because the DMV said it sounded too much like an obscene phrase, even if it wasn't itself obscene. And BO11LUX (which looks to me like a play on the exclamation "Bollocks!") was declared by the DMV to be too sexual.

But U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar sided with the plaintiffs, saying the state's ban on plate messages with "connotations offensive to good taste and decency" is unconstitutional.

Tigar pointed to a recent Supreme Court ruling in favor of the band The Slants, who won a fight with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office over their name.

"Tigar did say the DMV could probably be permitted to deny plates that are, for instance, obscene, profane or contain hate speech because they fall outside of First Amendment protections," notes the Associated Press.

Hmm... I guess "I EAT ASS" isn't obscene or profane.

Pertinacious Tom · Nov 26, 2020

Got sidetracked by that last sentence above and wound up reading Alito's dissent in the case where the Westboro Baptist Church jerks were protesting a soldier's funeral. Snyder v Phelps

It was 8 to 1, so Alito persuaded no one on the court.

I suspect cases like that one are why foreign people shake their heads in wonder at our first amendment. Yes, we mean assholes too, and it just isn't that way in other parts of the world.

Pertinacious Tom · Dec 20, 2020

Former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser discusses the past, present, and increasingly shaky future of free speech

Pertinacious Tom · Mar 4, 2021

Threat of Nonprofit Donor Harassment Spotlighted in U.S. Supreme Court Case

Imagine being a supporter of Planned Parenthood living in the Bible Belt, or a supporter of the NRA living in San Francisco. Would you want your identity disclosed to government officials who might misuse that information or allow it to be leaked to the public?

That question is at the heart of two consolidated U.S. Supreme Court cases—Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra and Thomas More Law Center v. Becerra—to be heard later this term, in which the Court will consider the constitutionality of one of the most sweeping intrusions into private speech and association in decades. Unless the Court overturns the decision of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding that intrusion, donors’ safety and the financial footing of nonprofits could be placed at risk.

...

“Imagine if the Trump administration had suddenly announced that it was requiring all tax-exempt groups to provide a list of their supporters to the Attorney General,” Sherman said. “Would liberal-leaning groups have felt confident that information would be used only for legitimate law-enforcement purposes?”

In the 1950s, the Court rejected an attempt by the state of Alabama to force the NAACP to turn over the names of its donors, recognizing that the risk of donors being harassed or threatened would undermine the civil rights organization’s base of financial support.

...

Pertinacious Tom · Mar 4, 2021

I haven't read it yet, but the summary of the ACLU's amicus brief, joined by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund among others, is encouraging.

[SIZE=23.7838px]I.[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px] COMPELLED DISCLOSURES THAT [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]INFRINGE ASSOCIATIONAL PRIVACY[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px] ARE SUBJECT TO EXACTING[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px] SCRUTINY[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]................................[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px].......................[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]8[/SIZE]

[SIZE=23.7838px]II.[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px] PUBLIC[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]-[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]ARE CONSTITUTIONALLY SUSPECT, [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]EXCEPT IN CIRCUMSTANCES WHERE [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]THEY ARE CLOSELY TIED TO AN [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]ESPECIALLY IMPORTA[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]NT [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]GOVERNMENTAL INT[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]EREST, SUCH AS [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]THE INTEREST IN PUBLIC OVERSIGHT [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]...........................[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]14[/SIZE]

[SIZE=23.7838px]III. [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]CALIFORNIA’S [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]DE FACTO [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]PUBLIC[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]-[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENT IS [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]NOT [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]SUBSTANTIALLY RELATED TO ANY [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]SUFFICIENTLY IMPORTANT [/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]GOVERNMENTAL INTEREST[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]....................[/SIZE][SIZE=23.7838px]22[/SIZE]

Pertinacious Tom · Mar 4, 2021

ACLU press release on Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra

The American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Human Rights Campaign, and PEN America urging the Supreme Court to protect the privacy rights of non-profit donors across progressive and conservative organizations.

The case, Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra, challenges California’s blanket requirement for nonprofits to disclose their IRS Form 990 Schedule B documents, which identify their top donors. The groups argue that the rule violates the First Amendment right to associational privacy. Nonprofits’ Schedule B forms contain the names and addresses of major donors, highly sensitive information. Although California purports to keep this information confidential, California has repeatedly failed to keep the information confidential. Recently, for example, California inadvertently published more than 1,700 Schedule B forms on a public website over a period of many years.

In the amicus brief, the groups argue blanket public disclosure of nonprofit donors violates the First Amendment, and if the state is collecting this information, it has a duty to keep it confidential.

The following is comment from:

Brian Hauss, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project:

“The First Amendment protects associational privacy for a reason. People who fear that they will be subject to threats, harassment, and reprisals if their associations are publicly revealed by the government, whether intentionally or by mistake, will be chilled from exercising their First Amendment rights. If California is allowed to continue sweeping up nonprofits’ sensitive donor information, despite its demonstrated inability to keep that information confidential, civil society will end up paying the price for the government’s failures.”

...

Sorry about the ACLU-$pon$ored Koch cheerleading, of course.

Pertinacious Tom · Mar 9, 2021

Pedagogical Tom said:
Mar 01 2021 Amicus brief of United States submitted.

From that one:

In deciding whether to make a donation, potential contributors will naturally consider not just the likelihood of inadvertent public disclosure, but also the probability and magnitude of the harms they could suffer if public disclosure occurred. The greater the probability and magnitude of those harms, the greater the chilling effect of the disclosure requirement, even if the threshold risk of inadvertent disclosure remains relatively small. On these unique facts, where respondent’s “history” of not “maintain[ing] Schedule B information as securely as it should have *** raises a serious concern,”

Looks like "oops, we accidentally published 1,700 donors that we we promised to keep confidential" is kind of a problem.

Pertinacious Tom · Mar 31, 2021

ACLU Lawyers On Problems With HR1

...

we strongly support many of the critical reforms contained in H.R. 1, also known as the For the People Act, which addresses a range of issues such as voting rights, election security, campaign finance law, public campaign financing, and an overhaul of lobbying and ethics rules.

Nonetheless, the bill, which House members are expected to vote on this week, contains significant flaws that are detrimental to the health of our democracy and will likely have unintended consequences on the political rights of noncitizen immigrants as well as many nonprofits, including civil rights organizations and other civil liberties movement builders. The House can and must fix these concerns before final passage.

...

For example, many people last year called for an investigation into who was “funding” Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Louisville, after videos showed a man distributing protest signs and other provisions to protesters. Presumably, the purpose of such an investigation would be to accuse donors supporting the protest of wrongdoing. Indeed, following the wave of racial justice protests over the summer, the Justice Department launched an inquiry into who “funded” protests, as though opposing police violence was a crime. Those organizations seeking to aggressively advance civil rights and civil liberties through paid communications about issues of public importance should not be deterred from doing so because the government may force public disclosure of their supporters’ identities.
That is why the Supreme Court, in NAACP v. Alabama, held that “inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.” In other words, when a group is advocating policy changes outside the mainstream, they need privacy protections to be able to speak freely and without fear of reprisal. H.R. 1 purports to provide an exception for donors that would experience harassment, but it is a flimsy and unworkable protection. If the idea is that organizations are required to prove their members will be harassed, the exception will be ineffectual, under-inclusive and costly to claim.
Exposure to threats of harassment or violence for nonprofit donors is not the only First Amendment problem with the bill. H.R. 1 would also expand a prohibition on paid advocacy at the federal, state and local level by “foreign nationals,” which includes, DACA recipients, asylum seekers, temporary protected status holders and many other noncitizens. What is the purpose of inhibiting such people from participating in political speech to advance policies that directly affect their lives? Everyone in this country — including immigrant communities — has a stake in our country’s immigration policies, how we distribute pandemic relief, education policy and many other issues.

H.R. 1 can easily be fixed to protect against these infringements on political speech.

...

I'm not so sure it can be "easily" fixed but am glad to see they recognize the problems.

Pertinacious Tom · Apr 26, 2021

Justices doubtful on California donor-disclosure requirement

The Supreme Court on Monday seemed poised to side with two conservative groups challenging the constitutionality of California’s requirement that charities and nonprofits operating in the state provide the state attorney general’s office with the names and addresses of their largest donors. The requirement, the state insists, helps it to police charitable fraud. But two nonprofits argue that the rule violates the First Amendment by discouraging their donors from making contributions. After nearly one hour and 45 minutes of oral argument in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta (consolidated with Thomas More Law Center v. Bonta), there seemed to be a majority on the court that was skeptical of the requirement and willing to strike it down, either in its entirety or, at a minimum, as it applies to the two nonprofits.

Sotomayor seemed to grasp the fact that the pattern of "oops" disclosures of donor information were a problem.

Pertinacious Tom · Jul 2, 2021

Victory for the ACLU in Americans for Prosperity v Bonta

The Supreme Court today ruled that California violated the First Amendment by demanding that all charitable organizations operating in the state disclose information about their major donors. Given the potential chilling effect on freedom of association and the state's weak justification for demanding donor information, Chief Justice John Roberts says in the majority opinion, California's regulation fails to satisfy "exacting scrutiny," the standard that the Court has applied in other compelled disclosure cases.

The decision vindicates a principle that the Court recognized 63 years ago in NAACP v. Alabama, which involved that state's demand for the civil rights organization's membership lists. In that case, the Court noted that such requirements can pose a grave threat to freedom of association, exposing supporters of controversial organizations to the risk of harassment, threats, and violence. "Compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association as [other] forms of governmental action," the justices observed in 1958.

...

Fears about the consequences of such compelled disclosure are hardly fanciful. The petitioners "introduced evidence that they and their supporters have been subjected to bomb threats, protests, stalking, and physical violence," Roberts notes. In that context, it is rational to worry that major donors could face similar reprisals, a prospect that might deter them from supporting groups that promote causes they favor.

Compounding that concern, California has been amazingly lax in protecting the donor information it collects, which is supposed to be confidential but in practice is not. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation "identified nearly 2,000 confidential Schedule Bs that had been inadvertently posted to the Attorney General's website, including dozens that were found the day before trial," Roberts notes. "One of the Foundation's expert witnesses also discovered that he was able to access hundreds of thousands of confidential documents on the website simply by changing a digit in the URL. The court found after trial that 'the amount of careless mistakes made by the Attorney General's Registry is shocking.' And although California subsequently codified a policy prohibiting disclosure…the court determined that '[d]onors and potential donors would be reasonably justified in a fear of disclosure given such a context' of past breaches."

...

Pertinacious Tom · Jul 6, 2021

OMGSTFU Shenna Bellows! IEATA55 vanity plates are harmless fun. Honk if you love the MILF Mobile!

Pertinacious Tom · Jul 7, 2021

In other Puritans vs Plates news,

Tennessee Woman Sues State Officials for Revoking Her '69' Vanity Plate

And she says it wasn't even dirty!

Ten years ago, Leah Gilliam of Nashville purchased a vanity license plate which reads 69PWNDU. She claims it's quite innocent—merely a mashup of her passions for space travel and gaming: "69" for the 1969 moon landing, plus "pwnd" (meaning to be "completely annihilated or dominated"), with reference to a devastating video game defeat.

It was all fun and games until Gilliam received a threatening letter from Tennessee state officials in May, requiring that she return her plates lest she be rendered unable to renew her vehicle registration. After a decade of driving with them affixed to her car, the state had deemed her novelty plates offensive.

But Gilliam will not give up 69PWNDU without a fight. Last Monday, she sued the commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Revenue and the state's attorney general for allegedly violating her First Amendment rights.

Pertinacious Tom · Jul 20, 2021

Fuck Biden and the First Amendment

Judge to First Amendment: Fuck you. A Garden State municipal court judge says "fuck Biden" signs in a woman's front yard are illegal. But U.S. Supreme Court precedent says otherwise.

Last Thursday, Roselle Park Municipal Court Judge Gary Bundy ordered a local homeowner to take down profane flags critical of President Joe Biden that are displayed in her front yard. Three of the flags say "Fuck Biden." Bundy says if they're not removed, the homeowner will face fines of $250 per day.

...

This all runs contrary to what the U.S. Supreme Court has previously said on the matter. In Cohen v. California, the Court held that a jacket emblazoned with "Fuck the Draft" was OK, even when worn inside a courthouse, and its wearer could not be convicted of disturbing the peace.

"Cohen v. California was actually a closer call, because it involved wearing a 'Fuck the Draft' jacket into a public courthouse, where the government has some extra latitude to set rules of decorum. The sign in this case was on the woman's own property," points out the Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez

...

ACLU Opposes DISCLOSE Act

Lottsa people don’t know I’m famous

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