Ahilan T. Arulanantham is director of immigrant rights and national security for the ACLU/SC. He wrote this piece for the American Constitution Society.

The Supreme Court heard argument earlier this week in Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, an extremely important First Amendment case involving the criminal prohibition on so-called "material support" to designated terrorist organizations. Although plaintiffs' attorney Professor David Cole did a superb job of focusing the Court's attention on how the law prohibits pure political speech, lurking not far in the background was the law's effect on humanitarian assistance. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is often a key swing vote on the Roberts Court, devoted his first question to that issue, asking whether the government could "forbid any person from giving tsunami aid to one of these organizations."

This was not an abstract hypothetical; I spent several weeks in my ancestral home of Sri Lanka doing relief work in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. While there I saw first-hand how humanitarian organizations could not help many of the victims because they lived in territory controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, one of the State Department's designated terrorist organizations. (I wrote about my experience in an ACS Issue Brief, "A Hungry Child Know No Politics:" A Proposal for Reform of the Laws Governing Humanitarian Relief and "Material Support" of Terrorism.)

As the questioning returned to that issue several times, at least some of the justices seemed open to Solicitor General Elena Kagan's argument that Congress could ban such humanitarian aid consistent with the First Amendment. As Justice Kennedy put it, "if you get tsunami money that frees up your other assets for terrorist money." Professor Cole countered by focusing on some of the obvious weaknesses in the argument: if Congress can ban any support that is "fungible" with money that a designated group might otherwise spend, then what about legal support? The answer, said Kagan, was "yes . . . to the extent that a lawyer drafts a brief for the PKK or the LTTE . . . that would be prohibited."

That response did not go over well. Justice Kennedy asked if Kagan would "stick" to that view, and when she did, Justice John Paul Stevens said that meant Professor Cole's activity in this very case must be unlawful. After Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed yet more skepticism, Justice Stephen Breyer said what others were clearly thinking: "I'm more worried about the lawyer." The specter of punishing people who form so intricate a part of the Court's daily activities obviously troubled several of the justices.

As an attorney who represents people charged with terrorism offenses on a regular basis, I too am worried about us lawyers, and was glad to see that I'm not alone. Yet the Court's sympathy for that particular class of victims struck me as rather odd. I could not help but wonder if the justices, and Kagan for that matter, would have been so sanguine about allowing the government to ban pure humanitarian assistance if they had been as close to relief workers as they were to lawyers. Would they have accepted a proscription on vital assistance to tsunami victims if they had seen the devastation I saw the day after that giant tidal wave killed 30,000 Sri Lankans in a matter of minutes? Surely if they had looked into the eyes of the children who had lost their parents in the blink of an eye, or seen the desperation on the faces of refugees who needed drinking water at the camps I visited, they would not have allowed Congress to prohibit relief groups from giving aid to the people who could most efficiently deliver it to the victims, even if they happened to be humanitarian workers who were members of the LTTE.

While the LTTE no longer controls territory in Sri Lanka, the material support laws at issue in Humanitarian Law Project continue to vex humanitarian groups around the world. The American Civil Liberties Union (for whom I work as an attorney) filed an amicus brief on behalf of nine humanitarian organizations, including the Carter Center, the Christian Peacemakers, and Human Rights Watch. The groups teach conflict resolution, provide humanitarian aid, and engage in various other activities that require them to work with designated terrorist organizations. These groups told the Court that they may be forced to severely curtail many of their activities because of the material support laws, and asked the Court to recognize that the First Amendment protects their right to provide humanitarian assistance that is intended to promote non-violent, humanitarian purposes, even if it also constitutes "material support" to the designated terrorist groups under the broad language of the Patriot Act.

As I remembered the people I had seen suffer in Sri Lanka, it filled me with great sadness to watch President Barack Obama's hand-picked representative to the Supreme Court defend a position so blind to the needs of innocent civilians. Twenty years ago, President Reagan famously authorized food aid to the Communist dictatorship in Ethiopia at the height of the Cold War, proclaiming that "a hungry child knows no politics." He could just as easily have been referring to the children of Pakistan, Colombia, Iraq, or any number of other countries today, where humanitarian groups have sought to ameliorate the misery suffered by civilian victims of war and natural disaster. The Red Cross has enshrined that same principle in its own Code of Conduct, which states that "the humanitarian imperative comes first. The right to receive humanitarian assistance, and to offer it, is a fundamental humanitarian principle which should be enjoyed by all citizens of all countries." We can only hope that Justice Kennedy and his colleagues will remember those widely-revered words, and those of the president who appointed him, as they consider how to resolve this important case.

Massive teacher layoffs at three Los Angeles Unified School District middle schools have deprived thousands of low-income students and students of color of their legal right to an education consistent with prevailing statewide standards, a team of civil rights attorneys said in a class-action lawsuit filed today.

The lawsuit targets the state and LAUSD for carrying out budget cuts last year that disproportionately affected the three schools, decimating their teaching staffs. While many schools around the state lost zero teachers to the budget crisis, more than half of the teaching staffs at Gompers, Liechty, and Markham middle schools lost their jobs as permanent teachers. At Liechty, fully 72 percent of the teachers received layoff notices; at Markham, the layoffs included almost the entire English department along with every 8th grade history teacher.

The lawsuit was filed in superior court by the ACLU of Southern California, Public Counsel Law Center and the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, on behalf of students at the three schools.

“At a time when California is already 46th in the nation in per-pupil spending -- and is about to drop lower -- our state and school district have chosen to balance their budgets by decimating the teaching corps at schools like Gompers, Liechty and Markham, schools which serve nearly exclusively students of color from low-income families,” said Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel for the ACLU/SC. “Every student knows that you don’t reform a school by removing great teachers. If government can bail out the bankers of Wall Street, then it can bail out the children of Watts and Pico-Union.”

Last year California slashed its education budget and LAUSD sent layoff notices to thousands of teachers. Because state and district policies allowed an overwhelming number of the newest teachers to be hired at the highest need schools, Gompers, Liechty and Markham suffered enormous and disproportionate impacts on their teaching staffs.
“The state and school district turned back the clock to the bad old days when some kids had opportunity and others had none,” said Catherine Lhamon, director of impact litigation at Public Counsel Law Center. “We know better, and our Constitution guarantees better, for all students. This suit stands up for our children, and seeks to end the all-too-predictable decimation of their educational chances.”

Because of the layoffs, a high percentage of positions in core academic subjects at all three schools were staffed by a series of temporary replacements or rotating substitutes. Some students have had six to 10 different teachers in the first four months of the current school year. This level of instability prevents teachers and students from establishing ongoing relationships that foster trust and respect and lead to improvements in academic motivation and performance. The instability also precluded the possibility of a stable teaching corps, which studies have consistently demonstrated to be essential to effectively providing students with a successful education.

This suit is about how it’s wrong for us to have so many different teachers and not really to be learning,” said Sharail Reed, an 8th grader at Markham. “In my history class this year I had so many different teachers that it was a blur. They would write their names on the board and the next day the name would be erased because the teacher would be gone. I’m part of this suit because I’m standing up for what I believe and what I know is right.”

In the end, the teacher layoffs caused educational efforts at Gompers, Liechty, and Markham to fall below the state constitutional guarantee that all students will receive a basic education consistent with prevailing statewide standards.

Anticipating another round of threatened layoffs at LAUSD, the lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction preventing the state or LAUSD from laying off teachers at the three schools for the 2010-11 school year. Among other things, the lawsuit also seeks a permanent injunction directing the state and LAUSD to allocate funds and oversight that will enable the three schools to develop an effective and stable faculty for the more than 5,000 current and future students at Gompers, Liechty and Markham.

“For a student, there is nothing more important about school than the quality of the teachers,” said Jack Londen, a partner at Morrison & Foerster. “At the schools described in the complaint, teacher layoffs are being imposed and handled in ways that lower the ceiling on students' prospects in life. What this case challenges is a clear denial of a fundamental Constitutional right to educational opportunity in California.”

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – ACLU/SC Executive Director Ramona Ripston, for decades one of the region’s most respected and outspoken voices on civil rights and civil liberties issues ranging from education and police reform to privacy, freedom of speech, and the rights of immigrants and homeless people, announced today that she will step down from the post she has held for 38 years.

“This organization has not only been my work but also my life for a long time, so a decision like this one certainly comes with mixed emotions,” Ripston said. “And I must tell you, it came after much deliberation. I just feel that it’s the right time for me to announce that I will move on, and for someone new to bring fresh ideas to this tremendously important organization and steer it into the new century.

“Although I’m retiring, I still feel enormously productive, and I intend to spend a portion of my time working on the issues that have always been important to me, such as economic rights, justice and equality. I also look forward to doing more traveling and to studying Spanish."

Ripston’s retirement will become effective Feb. 15, 2011.

"Ramona Ripston has been a rock for the ACLU during an amazing time in America's history,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the national ACLU. “She was the first woman to assume a leadership role in the organization during a time of enormous change in the country. Some of her many accomplishments include ending segregationist policies at the Los Angeles Unified School District, spurring meaningful reform at the notoriously hard-headed LAPD, fighting successfully for voting rights for Latinos, and providing leadership in battles for equal rights for the disabled, immigrants, gays and lesbians, and the homeless. She extended the impact and reach of the ACLU in Southern California even as she played a key role in helping us grow into an effective and truly national organization. Her acute political instincts and fierce passion for civil rights and civil liberties will be deeply missed."

"Ramona Ripston has spent her entire career giving a voice to the voiceless," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. "With the ACLU of Southern California as her megaphone, she worked tirelessly to protect the constitutional rights of the poor, disabled, homeless, and gays and lesbians, among many others. I was proud to appoint her to and work with her on the Homeless Services Authority Commission. Her decades of experience advancing civil rights and liberties have had an immeasurable impact on the City of Los Angeles, our region, and beyond. We all owe her a debt of gratitude for her years of selfless service advancing social justice and equality."

Stephen Rohde, chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said that "in every important struggle for justice and equality over the last four decades, Ramona's leadership and humanity have left an indelible mark because she has proven highly adept at building coalitions and communicating complex constitutional issues in clear and compelling terms that everyone can understand."

Ripston was the first woman to head a major ACLU affiliate when she took over in 1972, and she has guided the ACLU/SC from a six-person group with offices above a wig shop to a 50-person legal powerhouse that has not only had a profound impact on Southern California’s institutions but also touched the lives of virtually all its diverse residents. Among countless other accomplishments, the ACLU/SC under her leadership successfully litigated an end to segregationist policies at the Los Angeles Unified School District that denied thousands of minority children their right to equal educational opportunities under the state constitution; took a lead role in a voting-rights lawsuit that paved the way for the election of the county’s first Latina county supervisor; helped overturn the anti-immigrant Prop. 187; and won the right for community groups to have a voice in shaping reform at the Los Angeles Police Department through the federal consent decree.

At the same time the ACLU/SC was winning these and many other legal victories, Ripston was expanding an outstanding legal staff and building a multi-faceted nonprofit corporation with communications and field organizing departments. In 2005, the ACLU/SC opened an Orange County office that has been tremendously successful in expanding and protecting civil rights in
communities in that region. That same year, Ripston was appointed to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Commission by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and in 2006, the Los Angeles Times named Ripston as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Southern California. In 2008 the ACLU/SC moved into a new headquarters building in downtown Los Angeles that the affiliate purchased outright and extensively renovated. That building was dedicated on Oct. 15, 2008 as the Ramona Ripston Center for Civil Liberties and Civil Rights.

The announcement that she is retiring will have repercussions in Southern California’s political, legal and civil-rights communities for months to come. Ripston has been an influential figure for decades in these circles, determining where, when and to what issues the ACLU/SC lends its name and support.

Ripston will continue to direct the ACLU/SC in the coming year. A committee -- composed of members of the boards of the ACLU/SC Foundation and its separate Union -- has been appointed to oversee a national search for her replacement. Once her retirement becomes effective on Feb. 15 of next year, Ripston will become executive director emeritus of the ACLU/SC, and will assist the organization in fundraising, among other areas.