Once upon a time at least some branches of the ACLU were worth a damn. Now?

"We defend the rights we approve of.  And can use to force people to do what we want."
In Virginia’s Fairfax County, mothers Debra Tisler and Callie Oettinger suspected their Fairfax County school district was wasting taxpayer money on excessive legal fees. Tisler made a Freedom of Information Act request, and Oettinger published some of the records Tisler received on her website, after redacting any confidential information. School officials sued both women, demanding that the court order the mothers to return the documents—even though Tisler had legally obtained them—and order Oettinger to take the information off her website.

Incredibly, a state court judge granted a temporary order last month ordering Oettinger to take down the information. This was a flagrant, obvious violation of Supreme Court rulings declaring that such court orders against speech are unconstitutional “prior restraints” that violate the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has long made clear that people can’t be prevented from publishing information given to them by the government, even when the government gave them that information by mistake, and even when the information is highly private in nature. (See, e.g., Florida Star v. B.J.F. (1989)).

As of today, the ACLU has not said one word about this highly-publicized instance of censorship, which has been widely discussed in the media in the last couple weeks, such as at Fox News, on TV, and in print publications.

But what they do get upset about,
On October 14, the ACLU announced, “Three teachers in Loudoun county are going to court simply because they don’t want to use trans & nonbinary students’ pronouns. We and partners filed an amicus brief to tell the court: Refusing to use a student’s pronouns because of who they are is discrimination.” The ACLU’s brief was filed in Cross v. Loudoun County School Board. In that case, the Virginia Supreme Court, relying on the First Amendment, earlier upheld a court order temporarily reinstating a coach who was suspended for objecting to transgender-pronoun mandates at a school board meeting.