American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

The American Civil Liberties Union was formed in 1920 by a group of civil liberties activists led by Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman and Albert DeSilver, at a point when, in the organization’s own account, the Supreme Court had yet to uphold a single free speech claim. The ACLU describes itself as working “in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone,” and reports more than 4 million members, activists and supporters across all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, DC.

Legal structure

The ACLU operates as two entities filing separate returns with the IRS, both at 125 Broad Street in New York:

• American Civil Liberties Union, Inc. — the 501(c)(4) membership and lobbying entity (EIN 13-3871360, IRS ruling December 1970). It reported total revenue of $146.7 million for the 2023 tax year.
• American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Inc. — the 501(c)(3) litigation and education entity (EIN 13-6213516, IRS ruling March 1967). It reported total revenue of $185.1 million and net assets of$828.6 million for the 2024 tax year.

The split matters for how the organization can act: contributions to the Foundation are tax deductible and its work is bounded by the limits on 501(c)(3) lobbying, while the (c)(4) entity carries the political advocacy.

Surveillance and digital rights litigation

The ACLU’s own framing of its contemporary agenda includes “establishing new privacy protections for our digital age of widespread government surveillance.” Its best-documented case in this area is ACLU v. NSA, the first federal challenge argued against the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program. In August 2006 District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the program violated the First and Fourth Amendments and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Sixth Circuit overturned that decision in July 2007, and in February 2008 the Supreme Court declined to review the case.

Relevance to digital political discourse

The ACLU maintains privacy and surveillance as a standing issue area and publishes its case documents and analysis openly on its own site. Its litigation record against government surveillance is the part of its work that bears most directly on the digital-era questions this site covers.