On May 17, Chelsea Manning will be released from military prison after her sentence was commuted by former President Obama in his last week in office. She has been incarcerated for seven years — far less than the 35 years to which she was sentenced, but longer than any whistleblower in U.S. history.
Chelsea’s story raises numerous issues of interest to the ACLU, including the government’s treatment of whistleblowers, the struggle of transgender people to survive and be treated with dignity, and prisoners’ rights. Below is a timeline covering some of the basics of her case.
May 2010 — Chelsea Manning is arrested in Iraq for disclosing information to Wikileaks that was ultimately published by The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel. The information, largely comprised of military and diplomatic documents, included evidence of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. attempts to cover up the CIA torture program, and other matters of public interest. Shortly after her arrest, she is transferred to a U.S. military base in Kuwait, and then to the Quantico Marine base in Virginia.
April 2011 — After being held for almost a year in solitary confinement in Kuwait and Quantico, Chelsea is transferred to a medium-security military prison in Kansas. Shortly before her transfer, the ACLU sends then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates a letter objecting to her treatment as cruel and unusual. She had been regularly stripped naked, subjected to prolonged isolated confinement and sleep deprivation, deprived of any meaningful opportunity to exercise, and stripped of her reading glasses so she could not read. Almost 300 academics, most of them legal scholars, sign a objecting to her treatment.
March 2012 — The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez formally that the U.S. government’s treatment of Chelsea was cruel, inhuman, and degrading. The Pentagon refuses to allow Mendez to meet with Chelsea.
June 2013 — Chelsea’s court martial trial begins. She is initially charged with “aiding the enemy,” despite the fact that the government never claimed she directly provided military adversaries with information. The charge is akin to treason and punishable by death.
July 2013 — Chelsea is convicted of 17 of the 22 charges against her but acquitted of “aiding the enemy.” The following month, she is sentenced to 35 years in prison. “When a soldier who shared information with the press and public is punished far more harshly than others who tortured prisoners and killed civilians, something is seriously wrong with our justice system,” the ACLU says. This is the heaviest sentence handed down to a whistleblower or leaker in U.S. history, almost 20 times the pre-Obama record.
August 2013 — Chelsea publicly announces she is transgender and will be seeking hormone therapy as part of her transition during incarceration. The military, despite its own diagnosis of Chelsea’s gender dysphoria, responds by stating that it does “not provide hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery for gender identity disorder.”
September 2014 — The ACLU sues the Department of Defense over its refusal to provide Chelsea medical treatment for gender dysphoria.
February 2015 — Prompted by over a year of litigation, the army begins to treat Chelsea with hormone therapy. She becomes the first person to receive health care related to gender transition while in military prison. The military continues to refuse to permit her to follow female grooming standards despite recommendations from its own medical providers that such treatment is a necessary part of her health care.
May 2016 — Chelsea appeals her conviction. The ACLU files an amicus brief in support of the appeal. We argue that her prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917, which does not allow defendants to argue that their disclosures were in the public interest, violated the Constitution and should be overturned.
September 2016 — Chelsea ends a hunger strike she launched in protest of the army’s refusal to provide her with medical treatment related to her gender dysphoria, after receiving assurances from the military that it would grant her request for gender transition surgery — a first for a transgender inmate.
January 2017 — Following a sustained, high-profile advocacy campaign — including a WhiteHouse.gov petition, videos from former whistleblowers and celebrities, and letters of support from every major LGBTQ organization — President Barack Obama announces he is commuting all but four months of Chelsea’s sentence. She will be released on May 17, 2017.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.” “The Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,”said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.” The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law’s profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court’s decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users’ First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government’s ban on TikTok as a vindication of users’ First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign “propaganda.” But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its “motivating ideology” or “perspective,” and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. “The government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. “The Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit’s erroneous ruling.” Finally, the brief underscores that the government can’t impose this type of sweeping ban unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government’s invocation of “national security” as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.” You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf -
MississippiJul 2024
Free Speech
Privacy & Technology
NetChoice v. FitchNetChoice v. Fitch
Whether a law that mandates age verification for all users of social media services violates the First Amendment. -
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Free Speech
Can you define pornography? Neither can the government.Can you define pornography? Neither can the government.
We break down the absurd-but-true history of trying to censor sexual speech under the guise of "keeping kids safe." -
Minnesota Supreme CourtNov 2024
Free Speech
Energy Transfer LP v. Greenpeace International, Unicorn RiotEnergy Transfer LP v. Greenpeace International, Unicorn Riot
This case in the Minnesota Supreme Court asks whether the MFFIA's protections apply to newsgatherers even if they are alleged to have engaged in trespassing while newsgathering. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the ACLU of Minnesota and law firm Biersdorf & Associations, filed a brief representing Unicorn Riot, a media organization that covered protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The brief argues that MFFIA and constitutional reporter’s privileges, under both the U.S. and Minnesota constitutions, protect Unicorn Riot from having to comply with Energy Transfer’s subpoenas.