Former ACLU leaders blast ‘appalling’ anti-Brett Kavanaugh ad campaign

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Meyers said the TV ad campaign, which compares Kavanaugh to famous sex abusers, violates the civil libertarian principle of presumption of innocence and shows the ACLU is increasingly guided by partisanship over principle.

“It’s not ironic, it’s tragic,” Meyers told the Washington Examiner. “It’s hypocrisy. It’s bald-face hypocrisy. It’s outrageous hypocrisy. It’s a violation of everything we believe in as civil libertarians. It’s appalling, shocking. It’s unacceptable.”

Wendy Kaminer, an ACLU national board member from 1999 to 2006, said the ad campaign strays from the ACLU’s core civil liberties mission and could undermine the organization’s work.

“I think the ad is appalling and one more example of progressive political sentiment trumping civil liberty concerns at ACLU,” Kaminer said. “You should ask national legal director David Cole how he feels about arguing a case before a Justice Kavanaugh who the ACLU has labelled a [Bill] Cosby-like sexual predator.”

Cole did not respond to an email requesting comment.

The ACLU, which reaped a $120 million donation windfall in the 15 months after President Trump’s election, said this week it would spend $1 million on anti-Kavanaugh ads. The ACLU board issued a resolution Saturday opposing Kavanaugh over misconduct allegations and his response. It was the fourth time the group opposed a Supreme Court nominee.

Meyers wrote a letter Tuesday to ACLU President Susan Herman and executive director Anthony Romero registering his opposition to the ad campaign.

“I am embarrassed for you if neither of you opposed the national board’s policy shift or its leap to hard and fast conclusions about reports and accusations from persons whose memories are so cloudy and possibly mistaken,” Meyers wrote in the letter, which he shared with the Washington Examiner.

The letter continued: “Indeed, with this latest breach of the Non-Partisanship policy, it is now abundantly clear that the ACLU has crossed over from being a civil liberties defense and advocacy organization to a partisan in the vaunted fashion of the so-called ‘Resistance Movement’ of the screaming progressives that seemingly now constitute (according to Anthony’s estimates) in the ‘millions’ of ACLU members.”

Herman responded to Meyers, writing in an email, “Sometimes we just have to agree to disagree.”

Kaminer and Meyers are among a group of dissidents who fought, and lost, previous battles against a perceived drift toward partisanship within the organization.

Meyers now serves as president of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. He says “I am a liberal, I am not a conservative,” but that he’s alarmed and disillusioned to see the ACLU become closely linked to the Democratic Party.

“They have become a left-wing progressive movement, the resistance movement. They have taken pride in that and they are getting millions and millions of dollars. But in doing that they are violating core civil liberties principles,” he said. “I warned when I was on the board, they were playing loose and fast with our principles.”

Kaminer, author of the 2010 book Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity and the ACLU, now serves on the advisory board of the pro-free speech Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and regularly speaks out about the direction of the ACLU.

Earlier this year, Kaminer joined Romero’s predecessor as executive director, Ira Glasser, in expressing alarm at a new ACLU policy document that said the group would consider taking free speech cases in part based on review of “the potential effect on marginalized communities.”

Historically, ACLU leaders proudly defended the rights of hate groups to speak publicly, winning a 1977 Supreme Court ruling for neo-Nazis to parade through the largely Jewish town of Skokie, Ill. Last year, the group’s Virginia chapter represented white supremacists ahead of a high-profile rally in Charlottesville, Va.

The ACLU announced its opposition to Kavanaugh following Thursday testimony from the judge, who currently serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford. Ford says that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, attempted to remove her clothes, and covered her mouth when he was 17 and she was 15.

Kavanaugh denies Ford’s allegations and those of two other women. Former Yale University classmate Deborah Ramirez alleges that when he was 18, Kavanaugh exposed himself to her, forcing her to touch his penis. Julie Swetnick claims Kavanaugh was present at a party in the ’80s where she was gang raped.

“There are credible allegations that Judge Kavanaugh has engaged in serious misconduct that have not been adequately investigated by the Senate,” the ACLU board said in its Saturday resolution. “Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s credible testimony, subsequent allegations of sexual misconduct, the inadequate investigation, and Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony at the hearing lead us to doubt Judge Kavanaugh’s fitness to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.”

The resolution did not cite Kavanaugh’s stance on civil liberties, such as his 2015 defense of the National Security Agency’s dragnet collection of domestic call records, or free speech issues.

“Frankly, I was appalled to read its reasoning,” Meyers wrote to the current ACLU leaders.

Kaminer, meanwhile, said a decision on whether allegations against Kavanaugh disqualify him are “a judgment call — but not one ACLU should be making.”