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by problems 3432 days ago
I feel like you could have a good argument about most of those, but the affirmative action one is pretty damning. That's blatantly political and in no way related to constitutional protections.

There are plenty of good civil liberties related ways to look at race, but affirmative action is not one of them.

2 comments

I agree that "a good argument" can be made about some of them but it appears to me that ACLU always goes "left" with such nuanced issues. If I knew of examples of them going "right" to balance things out, I'd see them differently.

For example, I tried to find out if they took a position in Kelo v City of New London to defend property rights but my searches came up empty.

>but the affirmative action one is pretty damning

The supreme court agrees that affirmative action is constitutional (within certain bounds), see the recent Fisher v. UT case, or Bakke for the original example.

I'm not saying it's not constitutional, just that it is unrelated to civil liberties and should probably be outside their purview if they're to be a politically neutral organization.
"constitutional" is different from "constitutionally protected civil liberty".

Almost all laws are constitutional, but very few pertain to civil liberties.

It isn't a matter of civil liberty.