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ACLU vs. ACLU Florida settlement stokes concerns about state group’s direction

aclu florida

By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org

A nasty split between the national American Civil Liberties Union and directors of its Florida affiliate has ended with the national office cementing its control over the state board.

A settlement last month resolved the lawsuit that seven former Florida board members filed in August 2023.

When the parties announced a truce in July, they had been barreling toward a non-jury trial set for August in Sarasota circuit court.

Judge Hunter Carroll would have decided whether the New York-based ACLU had the right to swoop into Florida and remove the elected boardof the state affiliate’s corporations. The Florida affiliate opened in 1955 as the Greater Miami Chapter of the ACLU.

On March 29, 2023, the ACLU’s national leadership passed a resolution that removed almost the entire 35-member state board.They kept member Eric Smaw, a philosophy professor at Rollins College in Winter Park who was also the National Board Affiliate Representative. Smaw was named president of ACLU Florida and directed to pick two to four other state board members.

The national office imposed “emergency involuntary supervision” on its Florida affiliate because it threatened “irreparable harm” to the organization. A report attached to the resolution says an evaluation team had looked into claims of a hostile work environment for staffers of color and “concerns about potential financial self-dealing … by at least one Affiliate Board Member.”

Eric Smaw

But during the ex-directors’ lawsuit, those accusations were not substantiated. Matthew Zimmerman, a West Palm Beach lawyer who represented the national ACLU office, released a statement to Florida Bulldog that says, “the prior board was not removed for racist actions or financial improprieties.”

A CLASH OF MISSIONS

Now that the case is closed, this question lingers: What caused the turmoil inside the ACLU that produced a courtroom display of dirty laundry?

Close observers say the split between the Florida ACLU and the national office is part of a wider debate about the nonprofit’s identity and direction. One side is loyal to the 100-year-old group’s original mission of promoting and defending free speech for all Americans regardless of party affiliation.

In 1977 ACLU lawyers defied many supporters by defending the First Amendment right of the National Socialist Party of America (Nazis) to march in Skokie, Illinois. Forty years later, when the ACLU supported a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that turned deadly, a strong internal backlash sent the group reeling and regrouping.

“Liberals are leaving the First Amendment behind,” David Goldberger told The New York Times in 2021. The retired ACLU lawyer represented the Nazis in 1977.

Today’s ACLU is part of a progressive coalition that advocates for social and economic reforms while rejecting MAGA hate speech. Around the time of President Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, national ACLU leaders joined the resistance to his anti-democratic policies by launching a program called People Power.

National ACLU Director Anthony Romero discussed his commitment to People Power at a nationwide staff conference May 28-29, 2017. Howard Simon, who was ACLU Florida executive director at the time, took notes marked “confidential” that are part of the court file in the ex-board members’ lawsuit.

“PP [People Power] is something we are moving forward with, as we have been transformed by 1.2 million new members…We are now not just a legal organization; we are a grassroots organization,” Simon wrote, summarizing Romero’s remarks.

ACLU FLORIDA FIGHTS BACK

Traditionalists looked askance at the People Power initiative. To them it meant the national office was picking a political side; they’d be determining what sort of “free speech” to defend.

That was unacceptable to the Florida affiliate’s board. “We must not be seen as just another progressive group,” said Jeanne Baker, a Miami lawyer whose ACLU activism dates back 50 years.

Baker, one of the canceled Florida board members, was the lead plaintiff in the Sarasota lawsuit.

She noted that MAGA extremists attack all progressives as “socialists” and political enemies. “The Florida board wants us to remain as independent of those partisan forces as we’ve always been in the past,” Baker said when the lawsuit was filed.

The plaintiffs weren’t after money. They wanted a judge to declare that the national office overstepped its authority by reigning in the Florida board. That would have freed state directors to determine their own policies and priorities.

Although the settlement that ended the case on Nov. 22 is confidential, national ACLU seems to have prevailed. Baker and the other plaintiffs didn’t reach their goal of winning back their board seats.

“The Parties have amicably resolved their dispute. Each recognizes the service by the former directors to ACLU-FL and ACLU-FL’s work at the center of some of the most important civil liberties battles in the United States,” reads a joint statement from Morgan Bentley, the ex-directors’ Sarasota lawyer.

Bacardi Jackson

Whether the cause of protecting civil liberties in Florida won or lost ground remains to be seen. But clearly, national ACLU, having unilaterally dumped and replaced the state board, is firmly in charge of its Florida affiliate.

INTRODUCING BACARDI JACKSON

Bacardi Jackson took over as ACLU Florida’s Miami-based executive director in May, succeeding interim director Howard Simon. Before that, the Yale-educated lawyer worked in Miami for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In an email interview with Florida Bulldog last week, Jackson commended the ACLU’s efforts to protect Floridians’ civil liberties. She singled out “recent battles against classroom censorship, attacks on reproductive freedom, and anti-LGBTQ+ policies” as “clear examples of our independent, Florida-driven agenda.”

Jackson denied the ex-directors’ lawsuit had something to do with a philosophical rift between the national and state offices.

“Only seven of the 35 former board members were parties to the lawsuit, and I have heard or seen nothing to suggest the views of the plaintiffs were representative of most or even half of the prior board members,” she wrote.

“I have also seen or heard nothing that supports the narrative that the decisions challenged in the lawsuit had anything to do with differences in civil liberties philosophies,” Jackson wrote.

“The notion that the ACLU of Florida is no longer focused on civil liberties or has relinquished control over its agenda is simply inaccurate,” she wrote.

“Our litigation, advocacy and community engagement efforts reflect the urgent priorities of Floridians. Our work is rooted in Florida’s communities, guided by local voices, and driven by a longstanding commitment to protect and expand the rights of all people.”

“The reality is that the [Gov. Ron] DeSantis administration’s policies have often served as a testing ground for broader national attacks on civil liberties,” Jackson wrote. “This makes Florida a frontline state in the fight for justice – and the ACLU is prepared to meet that challenge head-on.”

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