The ACLU will no longer represent armed protesters

Vice

If you want to bring guns to a protest, don’t expect the American Civil Liberties Union to represent you.

The 97-year-old civil rights organization, which has been the Trump administration’s No. 1 adversary in the courts, announced the policy late Thursday, in the wake of last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville. The ACLU team in Virginia had worked with the white supremacist organizers of the “Unite the Right” protest to secure the permit necessary for a legal gathering. Many of the attendees were carrying guns, there were violent clashes with counterprotesters, and one person was killed when an alleged white-supremacist attendee plowed his car into the crowd. 

“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,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero told the Wall Street Journal. Historically, the organization has represented and defended the rights of groups across the political spectrum, including some on the far-left and Nazis.

In the past week, critics have gone after the ACLU for both its representation of the white supremacists in Virginia and for suing the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority over banned ads, on behalf of a group that includes far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. [MORE]