About Us

"So long as we have enough people in this country willing to
fight for their rights, we’ll be called a democracy."
Roger Baldwin, ACLU Founder

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is the nationwide non-profit, non-partisan organization devoted to ensuring free speech, equal rights, and other civil liberties. With a membership of over 5,000, the ACLU of the National Capital Area (ACLU-NCA) now defends and expands civil liberties in the Nation’s Capital, including important Federal employee matters. Those who join us also become members of the National ACLU.

Until April 2009, the ACLU-NCA also serviced civil liberties, including several U.S. Supreme Court cases, in Prince George's and Montgomery Counties, which is now covered by the ACLU of Maryland. And until 1973, the ACLU-NCA similarly covered Northern Virginia, including the landmark Loving Supreme Court case striking down laws prohibiting mixed-race marriages. Attorney General Robert Kennedy referred Mr. and Mrs. Loving to the ACLU-NCA. The ACLU of Virginia now handles cases from Northern Virginia.

Since the formation of the ACLU-NCA in 1961, our Mission has been to protect and expand civil liberties through legal action, legislative advocacy, and public education.

Each year we review more than 10,000 requests for legal assistance. Sometimes our local case goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

We also work with government agencies, trying to defend liberty without litigation. For example, we worked for months to get Prince George’s County to set up a system for educating the juveniles it detains, instead of just warehousing them until their release.

Besides individual court cases, we are using public education, coalition-building and legislation to get, for instance, effective citizen review systems for police in each of our local jurisdictions.