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Each year, I renew a contract to provide legal services to incarcerated people in an Arizona county jail.
I have been doing this for 12 years without complications. Lately, though, there has been some extra paperwork that has nothing to do with my work as an attorney. Now, in order to renew my contract, I am being asked to promise that I will not participate in a boycott of Israel.
Arizona adopted a in 2016 that prohibits the state, along with any of its towns, cities or counties, from contracting with entities that support even the limited boycott of products produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Local governmental contracts throughout Arizona now contain this political litmus test.
By design, this pledge inhibits my constitutionally protected right to protest injustices as I see them and spend my money where and how I please if I want to keep doing a job that I care about.
For many years, almost every country in the world has deemed Israeli settlements in the occupied territories to be in violation of international law. Yet our government will be giving $40 billion in taxpayer assistance to Israel over the next 10 years and won’t withhold even a portion of that funding, in spite of continuing settlement expansion and its devastating effect on a two-state solution.
My interest in the Israeli-Palestinian issue isn’t new. I have visited the region previously. I raised a Jewish son. Last spring, he and I traveled together to Israel and Palestine. We met journalists, human rights advocates, Israelis, and Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. No one we talked to believed that Israel would ever dismantle the more than 100 Israeli settlements peppered through the West Bank. It was painfully clear to us that Israel will not stop, and in fact has accelerated, its de facto policy of permanent Israeli occupation. On the other hand, it will never allow equal rights for the 2.8 million West Bank Palestinians in a single state.
In the face of U.S. financial support for Israel, the boycott movement has become one of the most effective forms of protest against Israel’s violations of international law. The boycott of settlement products and companies that support them has been formally endorsed, in one form or another, by Lutheran, Episcopalian, Mennonite, Methodist, Unitarian, Quaker, and Presbyterian denominations, as well as organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the World Council of Churches, and Amnesty International.
Rational minds can disagree on whether the movement to boycott the occupation is effective or even appropriate. But do our Arizona legislators need to chip away at our First Amendment rights to express our opinions on this issue? By this logic, what would limit Arizona’s legislature from deciding they won’t do business with people and companies that support a boycott of Trump family businesses, or tobacco companies, or even the Democratic Party?
From the Montgomery bus boycott to boycotts of apartheid-era South Africa, this peaceful form of protest has long been protected by the Constitution. No matter where you stand on the issue of Israel and Palestine, it should be clear that we as individuals have a right to engage in peaceful individual boycotts and a right to not spend our private monies in the way we choose.
Mik Jordahl is the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit recently filed by the ACLU challenging Arizona’s anti-boycott law. He is a practicing lawyer. The views expressed in this post are those of the author; the ACLU does not take a position on boycotts of Israel.
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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 -
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Free Speech
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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.