ACLU Won’t Defend Hate Groups Protesting With Firearms

American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero speaks during a meeting called "The Resistance Training" hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union, Saturday, March 11, 2017, in Coral Gables, Fla. The American Civil Liberties Union is launching a nationwide training event to make people aware of their rights as protesters. Organizers say the event Saturday at a sports arena on the University of Miami campus is being livestreamed to locations in all 50 states.(Luis M. Alvarez)
American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero speaks during a meeting called "The Resistance Training" hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union, Saturday, March 11, 2017, in Coral Gables, Fla. ... American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero speaks during a meeting called "The Resistance Training" hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union, Saturday, March 11, 2017, in Coral Gables, Fla. The American Civil Liberties Union is launching a nationwide training event to make people aware of their rights as protesters. Organizers say the event Saturday at a sports arena on the University of Miami campus is being livestreamed to locations in all 50 states.(Luis M. Alvarez) MORE LESS
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The violent events that transpired at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend has pushed the American Civil Liberties Union to take a tougher stance on the hate groups it defends in court.

The civil rights group will now screen its clients more closely and won’t represent groups who protest while carrying firearms, the executive director told The Wall Street Journal Thursday.

The ACLU’s Virginia branch defended the neo-Nazis’ right to assemble when the group gathered last weekend to protest the removal of the confederate statue of Robert E. Lee. The organization is known for its defense of the free speech rights of hate groups, claiming that creating exceptions to the First Amendment for hate groups make the less stringent for everyone.

“The events of Charlottesville require any judge, any police chief and any legal group to look at the facts of any white-supremacy protests with a much finer comb,” Executive Director Anthony  Romero told the Journal. “If a protest group insists, ‘No, we want to be able to carry loaded firearms,’ well, we don’t have to represent them. They can find someone else.”

The group’s Virginia branch defended the white supremacists against Charlottesville’s efforts to deny them a permit. City officials wanted the protest moved a mile away from the park to better accommodate the crowd. The ACLU argued in federal court that the city’s decision was based on opposition to the group’s views, not safety concerns.

Many lashed out against the civil rights group when violence broke out at the rally. A self-proclaimed white supremacist allegedly drove his car through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Hayer and injuring 19 others. 

Several members of the group that assembled last Saturday were carrying firearms, but no one was hurt by them. Romero said the ACLU thinks just having guns at a protest can suppress freedom of speech through intimidation.

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  1. The US Constitution is an old document and clearly times have changed and it needs some careful and thoughtful amendments to remain a valid and useful document for our nation.

    The ACLU should recognize what other nations have done with regard to Free Speech and prohibiting “hate speech”. The US needs to join the international community and at least ban all things Nazi (Nazi flags, Nazi swatstikas, Nazi salutes, Nazi chants, etc…). The ACLU needs some common sense - this is not 1776 this is 2017 and a very different world.

    While we clearly need to protect free speech, we also need to recognize that hate speech that incites violence or leads to discrimination against other fellow human beings should not be tolerated or protected by the vale of free speech.

  2. Duh.

    That’s the point of the gun rights movement. It’s the reason why they delude themselves into thinking guns represent automatic membership in the conservative movement.

    Liberals, they believe, are namby pamby whiners, obsessed with people’s feelings, too afraid to touch a gun. Well guess what, conservatives. Liberals created the Second Amendment. Liberals also kicked the ass of the British superpower and the Nazi monster.

    You want a piece of us?

  3. I would change fire arms to weapons. Bats and clubs don’t exactly fit with peaceably assemble either.

  4. Avatar for sydney sydney says:

    Banning Nazi symbols would be counter-productive. It would simply drive more support to the neo-Nazis by providing evidence for their narrative of persecution by the PC-brigade. I think it would also be nearly impossible to do. Not a lawyer, but I think that would require a constitutional amendment. And, it would ineffective. Groups would just come up with a new symbol and then tell us all online that new symbol=old symbol. It could even be something as simple as a swastika with a missing arm, or displayed backwards.

    It is far more effective, I think, to take video of every one of these public gatherings and name-and-shame the participants. Sunlight and all of that.

  5. Avatar for fgs fgs says:

    The ACLU should commit to defending journalists who get sued for failing to say a man “allegedly” did something which he was seen doing by hundreds of people, several of whom recorded it on video.

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