Aclu

A state ethics committee has decided it is inappropriate for the American Civil Liberties Union -- a registered lobbyist -- to represent a Maryland legislator who is being sued for allegedly ruining the reputation of an Annapolis restaurant manager she accused of racism.Del. Melony Ghee Griffith, a Prince George's County Democrat, retained the ACLU in May after Jeb Bello, a Maryland Inn manager, filed a lawsuit in April charging that the legislator publicly portrayed him as a "bigot and a racist," rendering him "unemployable in the city of Annapolis."

Give the ACLU credit for backing rights, when popular and notThe ACLU does much more than represent unpopular causes. Yet a reader of The Sun's editorial page could well get the impression that's all we do.For example, while we were featured in your editorial "A road best not traveled" (March 10), nary a mention was made of the American Civil Liberties Union in your piece lauding our landmark pro-family case vindicating the right of a state trooper under the Family and Medical Leave Act to stay home with his newborn infant ("Wrongful retaliation," Feb. 27)

CHINO HILLS, Calif. -- Where Route 71 crosses over Payton Drive, at the bottom of the steeply sloping embankment, two boys, who were playing nearby, found the boxes. The boys bicycled home and said they had found boxes of "babies."Do not be impatient with the imprecision of their language. They have not read the apposite Supreme Court opinions. So when they stumbled on the boxes stuffed with 54 fetuses, which looked a lot like babies, they jumped to conclusions. Besides, young boys are apt to believe their eyes rather than the Supreme Court.

A lawsuit charging Maryland State Police with race-based discrimination in traffic stops leading to drug searches along Interstate 95 is to be announced today by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 11 minority motorists and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People of Maryland.The motorists include a Baltimore Police Department employee, the director of a nonprofit organization and an Army employee, the ACLU said in a statement.ACLU attorneys are to announce the lawsuit at a 10: 30 a.m. news conference at the Episcopal Diocesan Center, 4 E. University Parkway.

The American Civil Liberties Union accused Maryland State Police yesterday of continuing to stop, detain and search motorists on the basis of race, in violation of a 1995 federal court agreement.An ACLU motion filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore says members of a drug-interdiction team patrolling Interstate 95 in Baltimore, Harford and Cecil counties stop and search blacks disproportionately along that section of the highway.It asks that state police pay a $250,000 penalty, turn over the names and addresses of all motorists stopped and detained since January 1995, continue giving the court information on searches and detentions until 1998, and provide additional information about motorist stops.

WHEN YOU side with the Ku Klux Klan, Louis Farrakhan and death-row inmates, you won't win much applause. But making friends wasn't what motivated Stuart Comstock-Gay, who is stepping down July 1 as head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.During the past decade, Mr. Comstock-Gay expanded the state chapter of the group from a staff of two operating on a $100,000 budget to a staff of 10 with a $500,000 budget. He didn't just grow the payroll; he expanded the group's sights. Most notable were the ACLU's sweeping lawsuit against Baltimore government on behalf of ill-served public school children and one on behalf of tenants of the city's public housing.

An unrepentant, card-carrying defender of personal freedom leaves his post this month, but his impact on Maryland is unlikely to be forgotten soon.Lawsuits he initiated made it possible for blacks to win elected office on the Eastern Shore. He is largely responsible for the federal government's efforts to house Baltimore's poor in the suburbs. Almost single-handedly, he revived a flagging civil rights organization, boosting its budget sixfold.As executive director of the Maryland American Civil Liberties Union for the past decade, Stuart Comstock-Gay made some people very angry.

/TC SAN FRANCISCO -- A type of tear gas made from cayenne peppers is not a benign police tool but a potential killer, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said yesterday in a report on pepper spray.The report said that as of the end of May, 26 people who had been sprayed with the liquid had died in police custody in California. These deaths had occurred since October 1992 when the state's attorney general, Dan Lungren, certified pepper spray for use by law-enforcement officers.

Who are these people in the A-C-To-Hell-With-You, and why are they angry at me, just a poor colored guy from West Baltimore?Stuart Comstock-Gay, head honcho of Maryland's chapter of the A-C-To-Hell-With-You, sent me a letter after reading my Nov. 1 column, the contents of which clearly displeased him."Given the tone of your column today," he wrote, "I imagine you don't much care about what the ACLU is really doing, but as an eternal optimist, I thought you should at least see the range of issues upon which the ACLU is working these days."

"When I first came to work for the American Civil Liberties Union," Lea Gilmore is saying, "my friends would give me this really strange look and say things such as, 'Why would you want to work for them?'"The perception," continues Ms. Gilmore, "was that the ACLU is a white organization focused on white concerns and that if I wanted to work for social justice I should work for black social justice.""So how did you answer?" I say."Well, the real answer is that civil rights and civil liberties have no color," says Ms. Gilmore, speaking passionately now. "Social justice has no color.

A national civil liberties group is renewing a push to end mealtime prayer at the U.S. Naval Academy, where a group of midshipmen recently complained to officials that they felt pressured to participate in the longtime practice. The tradition, believed to date back to the college's founding in 1845, now involves a chaplain's leading grace before a noon meal that all 4,200 midshipmen must attend at King Hall. Midshipmen are not required to pray, though they must stand during the recital, and most bow their heads.

WASHINGTON -- Autopsy reports on 44 prisoners who died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that 21 were the victims of homicide, including eight who appear to have been fatally abused by their captors, the American Civil Liberties Union reported yesterday. Detainees were smothered, beaten or exposed to the elements, sometimes during interrogations. Many of these cases had been brought to light previously but now have been confirmed through autopsies; some of the deaths followed abusive interrogations by elite Navy SEALs, military intelligence and the CIA, the ACLU said.

IN HIS FINAL days at Park School, Zachary Gidwitz got himself an education. He thought he had gotten a great one over his previous 12 years at that fine Baltimore County private school. But then Zachary went to Somerset County's Princess Anne. There, he was educated about that part of America called Maryland, which persists in calling itself the Free State even in our confused little era. Zachary, 18, went to Princess Anne to see Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. stage his veto of a health care bill at a Wal-Mart store.

IN A CERTAIN sense, the fact that the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland is speaking up on behalf of 14 Dulaney student-athletes who have been barred from playing their sports for a month is completely consistent with the organization's mission. For 85 years now, the ACLU has taken up the cause of freedom for millions of Americans, many of whom had no clue about what the organization stands for. It's a decent bet that some of the people who have been helped by the ACLU didn't even want its help.

Wars on terror, drugs damage civil liberties Gregory Kane's assertion that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has given short shrift to the civil liberties threats of the war on drugs, relative to the excesses of the war on terrorism, is puzzling and untrue ("Drug war, not the Patriot Act, infringes on our freedoms," Oct. 22). In addition to lobbying for more rehabilitation and less punitive federal drug sentencing in Washington and the states, the ACLU maintains an in-house Drug Policy Litigation Project in New Haven, Conn.

Conservatives are in power again. They control the White House, both houses of Congress and many state houses across the country. And one of their most popular targets, the American Civil Liberties Union, has never been more popular. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the 82-year-old nonprofit organization has seen its ranks of members and supporters increase by 15 percent, to an all-time high of almost 380,000. Many newcomers signed up because they're concerned about the Bush administration's anti-terrorism measures, which allow closed military trials, expanded profiling of immigrants and government monitoring of everyday electronic transactions.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. told the Legislative Black Caucus yesterday that he has problems - "big time" - with a key provision of the racial profiling settlement negotiated under the Glendening administration. Ehrlich, who has delayed action on the deal, criticized the composition of an oversight panel that state lawyers agreed to as part of the settlement of a class action lawsuit against the Maryland State Police for alleged discrimination against African-Americans in traffic stops and searches.

Richard Arthur Darrah, a retired fund-raiser and longtime volunteer with the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Maryland who acquired an extensive collection of first-class memorial stamps, died Wednesday of a rare form of skin cancer at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 69. Mr. Darrah had lived in Hamilton for the past 26 years. He was named volunteer of the year by the ACLU Foundation of Maryland in 1997, at which time he was praised for his work as an adviser to the executive director and director of planned giving.

Jack L. Levin, a founder and later president of the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union who devoted his life to civil libertarianism and fighting prejudice, died Thursday of renal failure at Sinai Hospital. He was 88. Until his death, Mr. Levin remained managing partner of Shecter & Levin, a Baltimore advertising agency that he had joined in the mid-1930s and that had been founded by his brother-in-law years earlier. For the past 11 years, the former longtime resident of the Cheswolde section of Baltimore operated the agency, formerly on North Charles Street, from his home in the North Oaks retirement community in Pikesville.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland said yesterday they are willing to consider changes to a court-ordered plan to relocate public-housing families in neighborhoods now angrily opposed to the moves. Mayor Martin O'Malley told a crowd of about 1,000 residents Tuesday night that he'd go back to federal court to amend a plan agreed to in 1996 by the city and the civil liberties group. Although ACLU approval is important, both sides would also have to persuade the court.