It’s a common talking point among some fellow Conservative talk radio hosts that the ACLU has always been a despicable organization devoid of any reverence for the US Constitution. But, this is not true.
As a person who is disabled, I have always admired the ACLU for fighting to ensure equality under the law for all, especially the less fortunate. Whether it is protecting the right of a minority group to freely exercise its religious beliefs, protecting racial groups from discrimination, protecting the freedom of speech especially for groups whose views are abhorrent to society, upholding the separation of church and state, protecting the rights of the accused to due process, or ensuring accessibility for the disabled, the ACLU has a long history of fighting to further the cause of equality and justice.
So it saddens me greatly to say that this distinguished history of pursuing justice on behalf of the less fortunate, has now been replaced by a concerted effort to impose a particular political viewpoint upon society by twisting the law to fit a specific ideology.
Once cases brought by the ACLU were founded upon legitimate constitutional arguments. For example we can disagree about how much separation should occur between church and the state. We can disagree about what public accommodation means in regards to access for the disabled. Those are valid debates. But they are debates centered on actual constitutional language we can all see, read, and interpret.
Now things are different. Now the ACLU argues that the President does not have the authority to regulate immigration by any means, in direct contradiction to both the founding fathers and existing statutory law. Now the ACLU argues that foreign individuals, without visas or green cards, nevertheless have a due process right to enter our country. Now the ACLU claims an executive order void of any language regarding Islam, constitutes a prohibition on Muslim immigration.
ACLU’s arguments are no longer based on legal principles or statutory language. Instead they are arguments supported solely by a radical ideology and the ability to find Federal judges having a similar lack of reverence for statutory text and constitutional principles.