With the election just around the corner, we are chatting with some of our great volunteers about what issues are most important to them, and how they motivate voters to cast their ballots. We hope these conversations inspire you to vote for your values and join us in this once-in-a-generation battle to protect our nation.

Our first conversation is with Julia Lundy, a Maryland-based team leader with the ACLU People Power text team. People Power is the ACLU’s platform for grassroots action. Our volunteer teams help mobilize and organize communities all across the country in defense of our civil liberties by making calls, sending texts, and connecting with prospective voters about the issues that matter most to them.

ACLU: What motivated you to get involved with the ACLU as a volunteer?

JL: I was very disappointed in the direction the country was heading in after the election of Donald J. Trump, the Muslim ban, and the selection of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. Jeff Sessions had said in the past that people with disabilities like me should not be in mainstream classrooms, which I was when I was growing up. There were just so many violations of law and decorum that really scared me.

ACLU: What experiences have informed your activism?

JL: As a person with disabilities, I was not able to vote on my own. For a while I was voting, but somebody had to fill up the ballot for me. And when I finally got the opportunity to go in there and vote on my own, it just felt like another level of freedom, because I was able to say what I wanted to say with no interference. This experience really motivated me to help vulnerable people and populations who can’t speak for themselves.

ACLU: How do you explain to people why voting is important, and persuade them to take part in upcoming elections?

JL: I always try to explain the impact a particular election will have on someone’s life. It’s also important to get across to a potential voter why their vote at this moment is so necessary. It’s not always clear how consequential something is until you think through it a little bit and you have to explain it to someone else. That’s pretty much the strategy I use to try to get people more on board when texting volunteers, and I find that it works pretty well.

ACLU: What has surprised you over the years in your activism?

JL: It’s surprised me how much through texting volunteers I am able to inspire people. And also, the level of what people are willing to do for what they believe in. In the beginning, it was very shocking. Some of the responses I got when texting supporters could be mean. But at the same time, I have found that there has been such an outpouring of support. And I’ve also learned over time not to jump to conclusions on a civil rights issue because there are angles that I haven’t even thought about. So, I’ve learned to ask more questions and try to get to the bottom of something before jumping to any kind of judgment. I found that all of this also has been extremely useful in my day-to-day life.

ACLU: Why is the right to vote so important to you?

JL: I think being able to speak for yourself, and stand with people who have the same values as you, to get together and make the changes that we need to see, is empowering. Every vote counts. It’s amazing how a few votes can sway a whole election or how a bunch of votes can make a point. For example, look at the Kansas ballot initiative on abortion access. People came out and voted for their rights. You can’t make the change unless you give it a shot.

ACLU: Why did you decide to share your story? What else do you want people to know about your experience?

JL: Sometimes things can be difficult, like the moment we are going through as a country right now. But if you work hard at it, you can come to a solution as long as you all work together. I love working with the team of volunteers we have at the ACLU, and I love knowing that there’s so many dedicated people that work around the clock to make the good work the ACLU does happen.

Interested in working with people like Julia to defend our rights? Find out more about how to get involved here.

https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/midterm-elections-how-these-offices-impact-your-rights

“Turn to the states.” That has been the battle cry among many who seek to preserve the right to abortion since the Supreme Court’s shameful decision overturning Roe v. Wade. In the immediate aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ACLU, with our affiliates and allies (especially Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights) won preliminary victories under state constitutions allowing abortion services to continue or resume, at least temporarily, in Kentucky and Utah, and are litigating similar claims in a number of state courts including Georgia, Florida, and Ohio.

At the ACLU, we have long been litigating for civil liberties and civil rights in state courts — on abortion and so much else. In “Our New Federalism,” an ACLU report released today, we review a wide range of state constitutional victories over the past several years, a testament to our commitment to using state courts to protect and expand civil rights and civil liberties.

American Civil Liberties Union

Our New Federalism

As the federal judiciary has become increasingly hostile to rights protections, the ACLU has turned to state courts to advance civil liberties.

State courts hold promise in the face of a hostile federal judiciary for three reasons. First, although state constitutions cannot be less protective than the federal Constitution, state courts can interpret their own constitutions and laws to be more protective. Second, state supreme courts have the final say on state law, so a civil rights victory under state law generally cannot be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And third, because so much of the day-to-day regulation of our lives is carried out by the states, the lion’s share of civil rights and civil liberties issues arise in the context of state enforcement; and that means state constitutional limitations apply as well as federal ones. Roughly 90 percent of all criminal laws are state-based, for example, rather than federal.

In 2022 alone, the ACLU has won several important state court civil rights victories. The ACLU and its Ohio affiliate won state supreme court rulings that Ohio’s redistricting maps violate a state constitution provision that bans partisan gerrymandering. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the reach of the federal courts, so this result would not have been possible under federal law.

In January, the New Jersey Supreme Court limited lengthy prison sentences for juvenile offenders in State v. Comer, an ACLU of New Jersey case. This ruling likewised relied on a provision in the New Jersey Constitution that does not appear in the U.S. Constitution.

February, the ACLU of Montana, together with the Center for Reproductive Rights, blocked a state law that prevented qualified clinicians, including nurse practitioners and nurse midwives, from providing early abortion services. In anticipation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs, we went to state court in Michigan, and together with Planned Parenthood, won a preliminary injunction in May barring the enforcement of Michigan’s 1931 felony abortion law under the Michigan Constitution. Because both of these rulings rest on state law grounds, they are undisturbed by Dobbs

In March and July, the ACLU and its Texas affiliate, together with allies Lambda Legal and PFLAG, turned to state court to challenge Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive that providing gender-affirming care should be investigated as child abuse. In Doe v. Abbott and PFLAG v. Abbott, the state court blocked investigations of our clients under the directive until all issues in the lawsuits are fully resolved.

At the ACLU, this is nothing new. We have defended civil liberties in state courts since our founding over 100 years ago.

In 1925, the ACLU argued in the trial of John T. Scopes (known as the Scopes “Monkey Trial”) that a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution violated the Tennessee Constitution. Although Scopes was convicted, the media coverage of the case reached millions, and in just the next two years, bills prohibiting the teaching of evolution were defeated in 22 states.

In 1969, we filed an amicus brief supporting the very first challenge to the constitutionality of an anti-abortion statute in the Supreme Court of California. In People v. Belous, the court invalidated California’s abortion restriction on state constitutional grounds. And since then, we sued in various state courts to establish independent state law protections for abortion, to extend Medicaid coverage to abortion, and to protect teens seeking abortions (including in New Jersey and Alaska).

In the first two decades of this century, the ACLU partnered with our allies to argue in state court that the right to marry should extend to same-sex couples. That claim had been summarily rejected in federal court, but marriage equality wins in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Iowa, New Mexico, and New Jersey laid the groundwork for the U.S. Supreme Court’s recognition of the federal right to marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges.

State laws have also made it possible to challenge racial discrimination in the administration of the death penalty, in circumstances that federal law does not reach. The ACLU and its North Carolina affiliate successfully advocated for passage of a state Racial Justice Act, which allowed individuals facing capital punishment to have their sentence commuted to life imprisonment without parole if they could show that racial bias had affected their trial — a pivotal state law protection, given a prior U.S. Supreme Court ruling that such racial disparities did not violate the federal constitution. We then brought the first case under this law, and showed that racial discrimination tainted the trial of Marcus Robinson, a Black man, the youngest person ever sentenced to death in North Carolina, for a crime committed when he was 18. In 2015, the state court commuted Mr. Robinson’s sentence to life imprisonment.

These are just some of the many victories we have obtained in state courts. In “Our New Federalism,” we detail more more than 125 civil liberties and civil rights cases that we have filed in the last five years or so that advance arguments, most often in state courts, based on state constitutional and statutory civil rights provisions, seeking protections above and beyond what federal law provides. They span 24 states, and the whole range of issues that matter most to our members, including reproductive freedom, voting rights, workers’ rights, educational equity, free speech, privacy, freedom from discrimination, criminal defense, and the rights of incarcerated persons.

There are limits to what can be accomplished on the state level. Some actions, including those of federal officials, often can be challenged only in federal court. The states that are most likely to infringe on our rights often — though not always — have less hospitable state courts as well. And even when we secure a favorable decision, state court decisions directly affect only that state.

Politics can also complicate matters. Some state court judges must run for re-election, and to that extent may be less likely to protect civil rights and civil liberties where those claims are not likely to be popular. Some state legislatures exercise control over state courts. And many states make it fairly easy to amend their state constitutions through ballot measures, which have at times been used to overturn constitutional decisions. (For example, California voters approved Proposition 8 in 2008, which reversed a prior marriage equality victory in the California Supreme Court.)

We still need to pursue litigation in federal courts. But in the face of a U.S. Supreme Court that is increasingly hostile to rights protections, state court litigation has never been more important. As these examples and the many others in our report illustrate, state courts can provide meaningful protection for civil rights and civil liberties when federal courts fail us. We’ve been doing this work for a century. We won’t stop now.

Special thanks to Duncan Hosie, Eva Stevenson, Cal Barnett-Mayotte, and Farzana Ali for their assistance on this blog and accompanying report.

Help us win pivotal court battles across the country by donating now.

Every few years, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination convenes to review the United States’ adherence to the similarly named racial justice treaty ratified by the U.S. in 1994.

Given that the last U.S. review took place under the Obama administration in 2014, this year’s review was a first for the Biden administration. As expected, the Biden administration claimed significant progress on racial justice in its report and presentation to the committee. However, more than a year into his term, few of President Biden’s commitments on racial justice and human rights have been realized.

When President Biden took office, he promised to reverse years of Trump-era disengagement on the international stage and center racial justice and equality at home and abroad. One of his first acts as president was to sign an executive order aimed at achieving racial equity in the U.S. In announcing the order, Biden called systemic racism “corrosive,” “destructive,” and “costly.”

We agree — but these remarks do not excuse the meager progress that the U.S. has made toward realizing the promise of the treaty: to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.

In a joint submission ahead of the review, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch characterized U.S. progress toward compliance to the convention as “elusive — indeed, grossly inadequate” in various areas, including reparative justice, discrimination in the criminal legal system, use of force by law enforcement, discrimination in immigration enforcement, and racial discrimination in public services and social protection. Additionally, the report offers the Biden administration a roadmap to implementing measures to correct stark racial disparities without having to confront the U.S. Congress.

Posturing itself as a moral leader in defending human rights, the U.S. has intentionally exempted itself from human rights demands that it has pressed on other countries while permitting structural racism and xenophobia to operate as pervasive, unbridled forces in American society.

U.S. civil society groups, including the ACLU, our state affiliates, and partners like Human Rights Watch and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights have been on the ground in Geneva to show the committee the substandard progress on human rights and racial justice, and what steps our government can take now to turn the tide.

As international pressure has frequently contributed to domestic victories on racial justice issues throughout history, U.S. civil organizations are maximizing international mechanisms to enrich their advocacy efforts.

Jamil Dakwar, director of ACLU’s Human Rights Program, and Stephanie Amiotte, legal director of the ACLU North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, testified before the committee to underscore systemic police violence and the lack of U.S. education on Native American history in schools, respectively.

After six hours of failing to provide adequate answers and leaving many questions unanswered to the frustration of the committee, it became abundantly clear that the U.S. has much more to do at the local, tribal, state, and federal levels to claim global leadership on racial justice.

The committee pressed the U.S. delegation on various significant issues previously raised by U.S. civil society: racial disparities in sentencing, health, and reproductive rights; impunity for police violence; anti-Black racism in immigration enforcement; housing segregation; education inequities; discriminatory child welfare system; environmental racism; and the lack of progress on respecting treaty and sovereignty rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Echoing the demands of U.S. civil society, the committee also urged the Biden administration to issue an executive order to establish a federal commission to study reparations for slavery.

The U.S. delegation has 48 hours to submit additional information and responses to the committee, which will issue its final report and recommendations on August 30.

This process offers the Biden administration another opportunity to transcend the limits of the U.S. civil rights framework and dismantle structural racism in the U.S. through a robust, universal international human rights lens. It is also an opportunity to uplift the voices of directly impacted communities and address the way in which the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism inform our contemporary world, a shortcoming of the U.S. identified by the committee.

The committee held the United States to account with its strong questioning. We urge our leaders to embrace the committee’s recommendations and comprehensively tackle systemic racism in the U.S.

President Biden can act today – including by establishing a federal commission to explore the creation of a National Human Rights Institution and the creation of a federal coordination body with a mandate to implement a national plan of action to fulfill international human rights obligations.

In her closing remarks, committee member Faith Pansy Tlakula quoted Nelson Mandela, “The very fact that racism degrades both the perpetrator and the victim commands that, if we are true to our commitment to protect human dignity, we fight on until victory is achieved. We should lay the scourge of racism to rest.”

It is time for the U.S. to reckon with its racist history.