ACLU's Moss Defiant, Committed to Fight After Election Delivers Trump

Kary Moss, Executive Director

Edith Windsor was the lead plaintiff in the 2013 Supreme Court case, United States v. Windsor, which successfully overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and was considered a significant legal victory for the same-sex marriage movement in the United States. She is pictured here holding a portrait of her deceased wife, Thea Spyer.

Good evening and thank you for coming to our annual dinner.
I suspect none of us got much sleep these last few nights.
Luckily for me, I had something to keep me busy – rewriting tonight's speech.
Tonight we're dispensing with our usual program format.
For those who have been coming to this dinner for years, you know we always set this night aside to tell you about our accomplishments. I will tell you about some, but this year feels different because it is.
Let's get some things out of the way:
This was a presidential campaign unlike any other – it was a campaign that sowed fear (and) put a bullseye on the back of our friends, our neighbors, our families, our communities.
I'll be honest with you. Thinking about all the issues and causes I've cared about and worked on for my entire professional life — there are some dark days ahead. It feels like a repudiation of the progress we've made.
But every one of us in this room tonight knows we cannot dwell in the darkness. We have too much work to do. Fortunately, there are lanterns lighting the way if we leverage the brilliance and passion in this room and around the state, and if we work creatively and collectively.
So I want to tell you a story:
Last week, ACLU of Michigan Legal Director Mike Steinberg and I went to Washington because the U.S. Supreme Court had taken one of our cases involving a girl named Ehlena Fry who has cerebral palsy. While she uses a walker, her doctor had prescribed a service dog who could help her achieve independence.
Unfortunately, when Ehlena started school at the age of 5, the school refused to allow the dog, saying that adults could help her. We filed a case under a federal disability law on her behalf and lost in the trial court and then we lost in again the Court of Appeals.
To our surprise, the Supreme Court took the case. So last week we took Ehlena – who is now 13 – and her family to the Supreme Court.
As is the usual practice, we waited in line for several hours to enter the courtroom with no accommodation for Ehlena who had to stand, leaning on her walker, that entire time.
The argument went well – it was a lively bench – and after it was over we went to meet the press outside on the massive Supreme Court steps.
After navigating the wheelchair accessible route, which takes you around the building – about a quarter of a mile – we were deposited in the middle of the front steps near a fountain where the press usually waits. But that day, they had been told to congregate at the bottom of the steps – another 50 steps down.
Ehlena had a choice – to go back and walk another quarter mile or so to circle back – or we could carry her down those steps. Mike looked at her mother – who said, "Let's do it" – and Mike and her dad carried her, with a huge smile on her face, to the waiting press corps below.
We lost in the schools; we lost in court – twice – but we kept going. We came up against difficult physical obstacles – but we kept going. We did everything we had to do to make sure that Ehlena's voice was heard and she had her chance to shine.
On behalf of Elehna and so many others, I'm here to tell you: We in the American Civil Liberties Union did not spend the past 10 decades defending our Constitution, standing up for the disadvantaged and protecting the dispossessed, only to turn back now.
Like many of you, I've spent the past several days thinking and talking about what comes next. The road ahead will be hard; its murky and full of hazards.

Third grader Linda Brown, the named plaintiff in the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

'We Are Going to Fight Like Hell'

The first thing I want to say is that we have to tell our children, and all children, that we will make this right. There's a little girl who is 5 years old here tonight, Hala Khogali, who her mom told me is feeling nervous and so, Hala, I want to say to you that everything is going to be OK and that everyone in this room loves you and your family.
In the weeks and months again there will be soul searching but we are not going to do that tonight. Here's what I do know and can tell you: We are going to fight like hell. Turning back is not an option.
As I watched Ehlena speak to the press on the steps of that imposing courthouse, I thought of ghosts that had walked these same steps – Justice Thurgood Marshall, Justice Earl Warren – the giants of civil rights law.
I thought of all the people who had climbed up or down steep paths to get to that Court with the ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund over the last almost 100 years:
– Mildred and Richard Loving who stood up for the right to marry.
– Linda Brown who took on legal segregation in public schools.
– High school teacher John Scopes who stood up for the right to teach evolution in public science classrooms.
– Fred Korematsu who challenged the internment of Japanese Americans.
– Ernesto Miranda who stood up for the right to remain silent.
– Planned Parenthood Executive Director Estelle Griswold who stood up for the right to contraception.
– Clarence Gideon who stood up for the right to a court appointed attorney if you can't afford one.
– Norma L. McCorvey – of Roe v. Wade – who stood up for the right to decide whether and when to have a child.
– Edie Windsor, whose advocacy brought down the Defense of Marriage Act — or the many LGBT couples who stood up for the right to marry.
All these people overcame great obstacles – racism, legal segregation, community hostility, violence, uncontrolled police power – to tell their story, make their case, stand up for their rights.
But they did not do it alone. They were part of a larger movement – Seneca Falls, Montgomery, Selma, Stonewall. They were supported by lawyers, activists, family members, friends, neighborhood associations, churches, synagogues, and mosques.

'Presidents Come and Go, but the Constitution Stays'

It's in our collective power and the brilliance of our Constitution that we will not turn back, that we will move forward. We will come out stronger.
We have a genius Constitution that gives us mechanisms to correct ourselves over and over again. It gives us the values that guide us on the long road to fairness, equality and freedom. It is a great system, though not perfect. And it has held America together for over 200 years.
Presidents come and go, but this document stays – there are reasons that people like Khizr Khan hold it up.
The United States is the only country in which the officers of government and officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines swear their allegiance to the Constitution. They do not swear to a King or to the State or the nation. The Constitution is our only law made BY THE PEOPLE of the United States. For that reason it is sacred.
I know that tonight you are worried about how resilient the Supreme Court is. So am I. But I have faith and trust in this document.
James Baldwin once said, "Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have." Well it's our job to challenge that ignorance and check uncontrolled power.
This document is our shield and our sword. It is the American experience, the struggle for democracy, the centrifugal force that defines the concepts of equality, liberty, freedom and justice.
We have been through difficult times before and this has always been our engine.
The ACLU was founded a hundred years ago during the Palmer Raids of the Red Scare: a time in which people were truly scared about the future of this country and the world.
We lived through – and took on – Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, and the anti-terrorism policies of the Bush Administration that crammed the USA Patriot Act through Congress, led to FBI round-ups of Middle Eastern men, and tried to close deportation hearings to the press and public.
At all those times the outlook was bleak. But we marshalled our resources, we built coalitions, we filed cases, we organized, and we held the line.
Our collective power is at its greatest when we come together around a shared vision, combine forces, and use whatever tool will get the job done.
Again and again, in my years doing this work, I have seen lawyers, social workers, librarians, teachers, doctors, journalists, students, elected officials, and scientists stand up – cross party lines – to do the right thing, and not only in the courts. I have watched wonderful coalitions come together – our allies like Planned Parenthood, Equality Michigan, American Constitution Society, ACCESS, NAACP, Anti-Defamation League, Freedom House, and so many others including many traditionally conservative organizations. We have sat down and sat in; we have marched; we have dissented; we have organized; and we got creative.
Just one year ago exactly we were here – in this very room – honoring Flint community activists, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Miguel del Toral, pastors, and the ACLU's investigative reporter Curt Guyette for their work bringing to light the water crisis in Flint. It was because of their collective action that the city was forced to return to the Detroit water system and the world was given the language to describe the horror of Flint citizens' existence.
Dr. Mona has said, "We thought our research, that science, would be enough. It wasn't … but with all these voices beside me, the state backed down."
What a year. Who could have guessed how it would unfold: that some good old investigative reporting, science, diligence, and community organizing would call into account government inaction, delay, intransigence, arrogance, and incompetence?
With the Immigrant Rights Center and 60 other organizations, we stopped the state from requiring residents to produce identification in order to get water.
Who would have guessed that we could force the state to translate public health information into different languages?
Who could have guessed that we could persuade the Department of Human Services to implement "deportation-free" zones so people can get bottled water?
We were nimble. We opened a temporary office in Flint to investigate conditions for immigrants, the public schools, and people living in public housing.
We filed a lawsuit with the Natural Resources Defense Council to replace the lead pipes and just yesterday a federal judge ordered that bottled water be delivered to every home in Flint.
And just last month we filed a federal class action to try to ensure that the public schools are safe for children – lead free – and (are) delivering a quality education to all children in this city.

'We Know this Fight'

What we will need to do is what all of us have always done – maybe bigger, bolder and better – but we know how to challenge systems in the courts, legislatures and communities. We know how to demand and get accountability and to defend and protect the most vulnerable. Folks, we know how to do this.
I know that during this campaign I was particularly disheartened, demoralized and enraged by Trump's challenge to the legitimacy of our country's first African-American president. I will never get over it.
But let's be real. The underbelly of racism we have seen this year is not new in America; it's not new in Flint; it's not new in Detroit. We've seen this before.
Right now Detroit is facing the largest tax foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression – a crisis that is leading to thousands of evictions because of unpaid taxes that should not have been assessed to begin with.
For two decades, our client Julia Aikens worked to make sure others were cared for. A medical assistant in a nursing home, Ms. Aikens spent the better part of her career looking after the elderly. Now, at age 67, she is at risk of losing her home.
Our client Walter Hicks was denied a poverty exemption because another person with the same name owned a separate piece of property, which the city counted as his asset. Even though it was the city's error, he's at risk of losing his home.
Our client Spirlin Moore, 77, who relies on Social Security, has been asked to pay mounting tax bills on a home that has been grossly overvalued. He is at risk of losing his home.
And our client Edward Knapp, a Navy Veteran who served in Vietnam and has since struggled with homelessness, bought a home five years ago which he now may lose.
We are representing them in one of the most important cases ever filed under the Fair Housing Act. Each of them stepped up, not just for themselves, but for their neighbors, their neighborhoods, their Detroit. They formed neighborhood associations; they raised money to help each other out; they found allies. And they turned to the law.
I want to express our deep appreciation to all of them, who are here with us tonight. Being a party in a lawsuit is not easy work, especially if you have health challenges, transportation challenges, and are spending every ounce of energy and every dime on trying to hold onto your home – when you feel hopeless and when the system is stacked against you.
I want to ask our courageous clients to be recognized for your heroic efforts to save thousands of Detroit families from losing their homes. And I want to thank attorneys at Covington and Burling who have worked so hard to file this case, donating thousands of hours of time, dedicating partners to the litigation, and assigning stellar associates willing to work around the clock. They have been true partners and generous team players on this case and other cutting edge high impact civil rights cases here in Michigan – getting driver's licenses for Dreamers and challenging ethnic profiling.
What these two stories – Flint and Detroit – tell us is that we are the most powerful when we work together, when we use new and different tools, when we organize across identity and focus on issues.
When we do that we know we will succeed. We saw that on Tuesday (Nov. 8).

Some Victories Last Tuesday

The attacks on immigrants mobilized people in Arizona to vote out of office the infamous racial profiler Sherriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County.
In Oklahoma, despite voting overwhelmingly for Trump, citizens passed two progressive criminal justice reform initiatives that will change felony and property drug offenses to misdemeanors.
In five states, voters decided to increase the minimum wage.
In Alaska, voters approved an initiative that automatically registers the many U.S. citizens who apply for benefits.
In California, voters passed major parole and juvenile justice reform which could mean freedom for thousands of people currently incarcerated.
In New Mexico, voters passed bail reform to stop detention of defendants solely because of financial inability to pay bail.
District attorneys who argued for less incarceration and for addressing racial disparities won races in Houston, Tampa, Cook County, and Orlando.
We are most powerful when we are unapologetically committed to our values – the values embedded in the Constitution and in our hard won civil rights laws.
We have the Constitution. We have the power of collective action. And we have the ACLU.
You came to the right annual dinner. The ACLU is unique and well positioned for this moment.
We have a 100 year track record of social justice advocacy. We aren't going anywhere.
We have held every president accountable throughout our nearly 100 years of existence. We won't stop now.
We have a national office with over 380 staff and the smartest subject experts in the country – lawyers, activists, communications experts and political strategists – working on voting rights, reproductive justice, women's rights, immigration reform, privacy, national security, police abuse, disability rights, criminal justice reform, free speech, religious freedom, and more.
We have an office in every state across this country.
Here in Michigan we have offices in Detroit, Flint, Lansing and Grand Rapids. We are on the ground everywhere.
We have passionate, creative brilliant minds on our staffs, on our boards, among our partner organizations, among our cooperating attorneys, our donors, and our many volunteers.
And we have you.
We will need your help. We need your brainpower; we need your voices; we need your dollars; we need your energy and passion and commitment. We will dissent; we will need you to dissent; we will protect your right to dissent. Each of you can make a difference in the struggles that lie ahead.

'So This is My Promise'

So this is what I and the ACLU – from coast to coast – promise you tonight.
President-elect Trump will have to contend with the full firepower of the ACLU at his every step.
We will work on the front lines and resist policies that threaten immigrants, the poor, people of color, women and dissidents.
We will strategize and devise plans to protect our constitutional and civil rights.
We will protect Supreme Court precedent.
We will redouble our efforts in Congress and state legislatures.
We will ensure equal treatment for women, and people of color, and LGBT individuals, Latinos, and Muslims and other religious minorities, immigrants and all marginalized people.
We will stand with children like Ehlena, who deserve a full and free education, just like every other child.
We will stand with women who fight for control of our own bodies.
We stand with the LGBTQ community.
We will protect the right to vote. We will fight to protect all of the hard won gains we have achieved. We are not turning back.
If we get justices who don't support the Bill of Rights, we will go to the legislatures, we will go to the street, we will go the ballot box.
We will climb every step it takes – up or down, no matter how steep – to stand up for justice.
We will lift your voice no matter what it takes. That is my promise to you tonight.