> If you're looking to provide legal support to people, consider donating to ACLU.
The ACLU is doing some important work, particularly in the areas of drones and areas outside the EFF's focus.
I am not that enthusiastic about the ACLU because I think their defence of first amendment issues is rather tepid and has been for decades. In the 1950s they kicked my mother's uncle out for defending the rights of the Communist Party USA to peaceably assemble, and today I am really not happy with the way they look at religious liberty.
The problem with religious liberty and the ACLU is that they seem to look at it entirely as if it is just a piece of anti-discrimination law and nothing more. For this reason they came down 100% on the wrong side of Hosana Tabor v. EEOC, and have generally opposed religious liberty when it conflicts with other anti-discrimination agendas they push. But the First Amendment is not just another piece of anti-discrimination law, and it must have more force than the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Civil Rights Act. The unwillingness to really defend religious freedom outside of the antidiscrimination context is one reason I can't back the ACLU over the EFF.
The ACLU is doing some important work, particularly in the areas of drones and areas outside the EFF's focus.
I am not that enthusiastic about the ACLU because I think their defence of first amendment issues is rather tepid and has been for decades. In the 1950s they kicked my mother's uncle out for defending the rights of the Communist Party USA to peaceably assemble, and today I am really not happy with the way they look at religious liberty.
The problem with religious liberty and the ACLU is that they seem to look at it entirely as if it is just a piece of anti-discrimination law and nothing more. For this reason they came down 100% on the wrong side of Hosana Tabor v. EEOC, and have generally opposed religious liberty when it conflicts with other anti-discrimination agendas they push. But the First Amendment is not just another piece of anti-discrimination law, and it must have more force than the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Civil Rights Act. The unwillingness to really defend religious freedom outside of the antidiscrimination context is one reason I can't back the ACLU over the EFF.