What would that meaningfully look like? Can you come up with an example? The majority of the ACLU cases are filed against a government or individual representing the government, so perhaps you can find one where it's against a Democratic administration or official.
An example: Forbes argues that the ACLU explicitly refused to take a position against free-speech infinging anti-religious-defamation resolution at the UN, even though they have taken public stances on many international resolutions more aligned with the left.
Another example: Techdirt argues that ACLU fails to defend free speech of wedding photographer who violated equal protection legislation by refusing photograph gay wedding.
Right off, I want to clearly state that I'm not a lawyer, so my ability to judge the merits of these cases is very suspect. To the point where I'm hesitant to attempt to address them at all for fear of appearing exceedingly ignorant.
With the UN resolution, I see the inconsistency between their avowed reason for not joining the other groups (we don't get involved in international issues). The rest of the article is speculation as to the real reason why, on which I think reasonable people can disagree on. It's not clear to me that this is a clear-cut case of consistent anti-conservative bias. For example, I can imagine without too much difficulty American religious conservatives wanting protection from defamation of religion.
For the wedding photography case, I don't think it's a free speech issue: I think it's a protected-class issue which falls under the Civil Rights Act and its extensions, as in this instance the wedding photographer is acting as a business providing a service, and depending on the jurisdiction, the couple may be a protected class. I'm exceedingly unsure about this whole area of law, though, I'd defer to just about anyone. I don't know how judges decide the balance between free speech and the Civil Rights Act, though I'm sure there's precedent and guidelines.
Yea, I don't know nearly enough about these cases to have an opinion. But this is what strategic differential vigor would look like: lots of cases like that, slanted toward one party, with each case having a plausible justification, yet in aggregate being hard to defend. But I have no idea if there actually is such a slant (rather than there being a similar number of cases in the opposite direction).
Exactly. I meant to include exactly this. Thanks again for the links. I did see that the author of one of the articles, Wendy Kaminer, used to work at the ACLU and does make claims of ethical decline at the ACLU.
Her 2009 book Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity and the ACLU critiques what she regards as the ACLU’s ethical decline, ideological hypocrisy, and descent into groupthink.
> In 2003, during her tenure on the national board, she became a strong critic of the ACLU leadership and was centrally involved in a series of controversies that culminated in a highly publicized effort to prohibit board members from criticizing the ACLU.
