The Promise of Systemic Equality Starts at Home
For more than a century, the ACLU has been on the frontlines advancing civil liberties and civil rights. This has meant not only defending rights for all but taking bold positions in order to help America live up to her own ideals — a reality that is better than where we are, and one that is never finished. For over 100 years, this aspiration of a more perfect union has been our story.
Today, we are focused on a new chapter of that story: one where we’ve turned our attention inward to our own culture and systems to evolve as an organization that is reflecting internally the ambitions we have set externally.
Since 2016, the national headquarters of the ACLU has grown by nearly 80 percent in our staff population alone. In summer 2020, we took a census of our employee population and found that 11.6 percent of staff identify as Black/African American, which puts us above the labor market and census data average—but we can do better.
With our staff growth comes a renewed call to action. As the ACLU continues to expand, we have a responsibility to scale our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to increase pathways to employment, strengthen our culture of belonging, and enhance our professional development commitments to underrepresented staff in particular.
That’s why we’re eager to share a bit of this next chapter in the ACLU’s work. Last month, we launched our Systemic Equality Initiative calling on the Biden administration and the country to reckon with systems of structural racism that Black and Indigenous people in this country have experienced over generations.
Joining with the Robin Hood Foundation and other prominent companies and organizations on the , which ensures needle-moving actions to advance racial equity by growing Black talent and investing in Black businesses, we are committing ourselves to a transformative vision for equity within our organization.
Like many organizations, the ACLU has been engaged in ongoing work to dismantle systems of power and oppression to create lasting, meaningful change. We recognize that systemic racism pervades every aspect of life, from interactions with law enforcement, to access to housing and capital, to health care and education—as well as the workplace.
Nonprofits, NGOs, and mission-driven organizations everywhere are not removed or exempt from the power dynamics in workplaces across the country. But we believe we have a responsibility to build—with humility and vision—an organization that is more perfect than the sum of its parts. Creating meaningful change starts with changing ourselves. While our journey has not been perfect, we know that naming this work courageously and unapologetically is the first step toward bringing others along with us.
We’re committing ourselves to this work through dedicated recruitment, pipeline and partnership building, and restorative inclusion. We are also holding ourselves accountable through robust data and measurement. Here’s how we’re approaching this work:
First, we are committing to sustained recruitment and hiring efforts from more diverse talent pools. This includes launching recruitment partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), talent recruitment programs, and recruitment outreach campaigns focused on sourcing Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) applicants. We are also changing our interviewing process to meaningfully increase the number of underrepresented candidates that receive interviews for open roles through inclusive job descriptions, structured hiring trainings, and quarterly meetings with our department heads to create intentional goals.
Second, we are building new pipelines to engage and develop BIPOC candidates earlier in their careers.This year we expanded our paid national internship program by more than 50 percent to reach more interns across the country. We are undertaking specific and aggressive measures to encourage participation of members of BIPOC and other underrepresented communities to participate in our internship programs, and building an intentional pipeline with our National Advocacy Institute to engage the next generation of leaders as early as possible.In addition, next year we will be launching a new President’s Fellowship Program across ACLU departments specifically for recent college graduates from underrepresented backgrounds.
Third, we are creating initiatives to promote and retain Black leadership, and foster an equitable culture to support them. To help achieve this, we are doubling down on our efforts to provide paths for growth through progression charts and quarterly reporting of promotion data at the ACLU, and are posting senior leadership roles internally as well as externally. In addition, we are creating internal professional development programs and external resources for underrepresented staff to grow and advance in their roles. This includes intentional mentorship and sponsorship programs, which will foster relationships so that underrepresented staff have champions to elevate their work, create community, and influence and advise on organization-wide topics and practices.To support this goal, we have created proactive trainings on the ways anti-Blackness shows up in the workplace and ways we can dismantle it through bystander intervention, restorative circles, and other accountability measures.
Fourth, we are engaging Black-owned and Black-led contractors. This is an opportunity for the ACLU to leverage its significant organizational “purchasing power” to invest in businesses owned and operated by people from BIPOC and other underrepresented communities. The ACLU’s Vendor EDIB program is a key tool the ACLU can leverage to build Black wealth.
Fifth, we are partnering with Black-owned financial institutions and businesses.This initiative will ensure that we’re utilizing the financial resources of the ACLU and distributing them more equitably and sustainably. We’re investigating how we can use our capital and assets and invest them with Black banks—building up that wealth in Black communities beyond the ACLU.
In all of these efforts, we are committed to robust measurement and accountability to assess our efficacy. Our people analytics team within our HR department will track ACLU hiring, promotion, and attrition data quarterly and report out annually to the entire organization.This data will hold us accountable and ensure that we walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to these efforts and initiatives. The future of the ACLU, and every success we have, hinges on our ability to develop, foster, and sustain a workplace of racial equity, economic justice, and transformative inclusion.
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News & CommentaryDec 2024
Civil Liberties
We Need to Know More About State Supreme Court CasesWe Need to Know More About State Supreme Court Cases
State Supreme Courts interpret laws that impact some of the most intimate parts of our lives. Communities have a right to know what’s on the docket. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
Civil Liberties
New ACLU Report Reveals Most State Supreme Courts Fail to Meet Key Transparency MeasuresNew ACLU Report Reveals Most State Supreme Courts Fail to Meet Key Transparency Measures
NEW YORK — Nearly half of all state supreme courts across the country fail to regularly post new cases they are considering, with only six meeting four key transparency measures already implemented by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a new report published today by the American Civil Liberties Union. The report identifies significant steps that state supreme courts should take to inform the public about their cases, which have only grown in importance as the federal judiciary has become more hostile to protecting core rights and advocates have turned to state protections and state court litigation in response. Based on an analysis of the practices and policies of the highest courts in each state, including D.C., the report “Scorecard for State Supreme Court Transparency: How Does Your State Stack Up?” ranks each state supreme court in five tiers based on compliance with four key transparency measures. These measures include posting new cases online in a timely manner, providing timely information about legal issues presented by cases, making dockets accessible and free for the public, and making merits briefing accessible and free for the public. “State courts regularly hear — and are the final word on — cases affecting abortion rights, voting rights, criminal justice reform, and more. Yet, in many instances, the highest state courts do not provide meaningful public access to information about cases affecting the rights and liberties of millions of people. We urge state supreme courts to bring more transparency to the critical work they do,” said Julie Murray, co-director of the ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative. “In the face of a federal judiciary increasingly unwilling to protect core rights and an incoming administration that threatens to exacerbate that problem, state courts are an important defense for our liberty. They should be leaders in transparency, too,” said Bridget Lavender, Skadden Fellow with the Initiative. The report emphasizes that state courts “play an outsized role” in many parts of the law, but their ability to “guard our liberties depends in significant part on whether those courts adopt transparent processes.” It further highlights that state supreme courts have led the way on enormously consequential decisions in recent years. In particular, some state supreme courts have recognized the right of same sex couples to marry, and did so long before federal courts. They have also declared the death penalty unconstitutional under state law despite contrary federal law, protected access to reproductive health care as a right even as that right was being stripped away at the federal level, and provided more robust protection to people subject to unreasonable searches and seizures. The report urges state supreme courts to take action to improve their transparency practices, taking notes from the courts that have already implemented these measures. It notes that regularly posting new cases and the issues they represent, and providing timely access to dockets and merits briefing allows the public, the press, and the legal community to track cases as they unfold, identify cases with statewide consequences, and understand what’s at stake. -
Press ReleaseNov 2024
National Security
+2 Issues
ACLU Urges House to Kill Bill that Could Give Trump Admin Power to Crush Dissent and Go After Political EnemiesACLU Urges House to Kill Bill that Could Give Trump Admin Power to Crush Dissent and Go After Political Enemies
WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union strongly urges the House of Representatives to vote NO on H.R. 9495, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would grant Donald Trump and his handpicked secretary of the Treasury power to investigate and effectively shut down any tax-exempt organization — including news outlets, universities, and civil society groups — by stripping them of tax-exempt status based on an unilateral accusation of wrongdoing. “Passing this bill would hand the incoming Trump administration a dangerous new tool it could use to stifle free speech, target political opponents, and punish disfavored groups,” said Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU. “The freedom to dissent without fear of government retribution is a vital part of any well-functioning democracy, which is why Congress must block H.R. 9495 before it’s too late.” While there is a 90-day “cure” period in which a designated nonprofit can mount a defense, it is a mere illusion of due process. The government may deny organizations its reasons and evidence against them, leaving the nonprofit unable to rebut allegations. This means that a nonprofit could be left entirely in the dark about what conduct the government believes qualifies as "support," making it virtually impossible to clear its name. Last month, the ACLU and a diverse array of over 130 other tax-exempt organizations — including human rights, reproductive health, and immigrants’ rights groups — wrote to Congress urging them to vote no. The letter also explains that the groups do not oppose the provisions in H.R. 9495 that relate to preventing the IRS from imposing fines and penalties on hostages while they are held abroad. Indeed, these provisions have already passed the Senate on their own, and if the House of Representatives were to pass a version of this bill that did not include the text of H.R. 6408, it could be sent immediately to President Biden for his signature. -
News & CommentaryNov 2024
Civil Liberties
Donald Trump Will Return to the White House in January. The ACLU is Ready.Donald Trump Will Return to the White House in January. The ACLU is Ready.
Starting in 2016, the ACLU filed more than 400 legal actions against Trump and his administration. As Trump returns to the White House, we’re ready to return to the courts and Congress to fight for our civil liberties.