ACLU wins, someone loses

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is often mistaken for being a protector of individual rights although its very name distinctly references not personal freedoms but civil liberties. The ACLU, in fact, is now attempting to nullify laws banning sex change surgeries on minors, which would diminish individual parental rights as Child Protective Services (CPS) may obtain a court order mandating gender surgeries, against parental wishes, in any state not banning the procedure or by CPS moving a child to a state that allows gender surgeries.  

Civil rights vs civil liberties

In practice, the ACLU builds legal cases around both civil liberties and civil rights, the difference between them is summarized by Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute as follows:

• Civil liberties are constitutionally protected freedoms.
• Civil rights are claims built upon legislation. 

In either case, the freedoms are understood to be those granted by the government, not automatically conferred upon a person. So even civil liberties may, ultimately, limit freedom. Civil rights are even further removed from individual rights, though, as they are generally based on legislated “group rights” which, by their very enforcement, impinge upon the individual rights of those not belonging to the preferred group. 

Government granted rights

Becky Akers, a privacy expert and American Revolution historian, writing for The New American, explains the conflict between civil rights and individual rights.

Despite its reputation for having freed minorities from bigots’ oppression, civil rights does exactly what its name implies: it robs the individual of his liberty on behalf of the State (“civil” derives from the Latin “civis,” meaning “citizen or townsman” — not a person in his own right but as he relates to his fellow subjects under a ruler). No wonder every government in America, from townships and villages to the Feds, obsesses over “civil rights” and spurns liberty: the former empowers them while the latter elevates us. (This also explains your instinctual distrust of the American Civil Liberties Union — even when it’s right.) [Emphases added.]

As Akers notes, the ACLU occasionally gets it right, protecting citizens from government excess in violation of the Bill of Rights, a set of distinctly individual rights. The ACLU cannot be counted on to protect those rights in all cases, though, as when it fails to support the individual right to defend oneself as defined by the Second Amendment.

[T]he ACLU will not oppose governmental regulation of firearms as long as such regulation is reasonably related to a legitimate governmental interest, such as protection of the public health, safety, or welfare. Deference should be given to legislative judgments limiting gun ownership or use so that state and local governments are allowed an opportunity to experiment with solutions to the complex problems involving guns.

Versus inalienable rights

Such infringement of the Second Amendment would not be possible were the right to means of self-defense considered so fundamental that it need not be enumerated. Alexander Hamilton, writing in The Federalist 84, argued against adopting any part of the Bill of Rights, preferring to leave those rights to be self-understood:

I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? [Emphases added.]

Rabbi E. David Smith, Esq. analyzes the origin of the American conception of inalienable rights:

The American conception of individual rights and liberties accords with the Biblical view that by the very Creation of a man “in the image of G-d," people have inalienable rights no matter where or when they live.  Civil rights and liberties, on the other hand, are bestowed upon the resident of the "civic" (the city or state) by the "civic" and those rights can be taken away by the "civic" and only apply while in the place that granted them. [Emphases added.]

Civil rights favor one, marginalize the other

Akers goes on to analyze how advocating for civil rights, a role the ACLU often takes opens the door for the “State’s endless meddling in our lives":

“Civil rights” is an actual philosophy, not just a pastime for strung-out, unkempt Marxists still hallucinating about the 1960’s. And it is liberty’s opposite in every way, from its premises to its conclusions. Like its Progressive cousin, it sees the State not as our worst enemy but as our best friend — or, more accurately, as God: omniscient, omnipotent (not just in fact but in ability as well, since government can fix all problems, even those of the human heart), and protective of all its children.

Those dependents have little identity apart from the State; they are “citizens,” not individuals. Everything is political, with the private sector so despised and anemic it might as well not exist; everyone is a member of one or more groups, whose “rights” conflict with others — a welcome result, you see, because it guarantees the God-State’s endless meddling in our lives. [Emphases added.]

Harvard doesn't have unlimited spots

Thus, when one group of people obtain extra rights, those who are not members of the preferred group are at risk of having their rights diminished. Thus, when civil rights groups like the ACLU attempt to use activist judges to nullify state constitutional amendments banning affirmative action, individuals lacking a special “group status” lose opportunities for education, employment, promotion, and more. 

In pushing for racial factors to be considered in education, the ACLU even laments that, in the absence of affirmative action, race would be irrelevant:

If the court strikes down affirmative action — also known as race-conscious admissions policies — it would make it unconstitutional for universities across the country to consider a student’s race as one factor in a holistic admissions review process. [Emphasis added.]

For each student whose overall score gets bumped over the line for admission with the points assigned to their race, another student who doesn't benefit from race points becomes excluded.

Can't have two gold medal winners

More recently, the ACLU has advocated for the group rights of biological males claiming female status supersede the rights of biological females, nullifying biological females' rights to have sports competitors limited to members of their own biological sex:

Opponents of Connecticut’s policy letting transgender girls compete in girls high school sports will get a second chance to challenge it in court, an appeals court ruled . . .

The American Civil Liberties Union said it welcomes a chance to defend the rights of the two transgender high school track runners it represents. [Emphases added.]

To state the obvious, if either biological male takes the gold, a biological female will not.

Parental rights in medical decisions

When a minor child receives positive feedback from teachers in government schools for agreeing to identify as transgender and are then referred to the schools' guidance counselors who recommend gender transition procedures, individual parents may lose the right to make such decisions for their children to government actors. 

The Washington Free Beacon reported on the ACLU's advocacy of the transgender activists:

The American Civil Liberties Union has a new target in its fight to uphold transgender surgeries for minors: Do No Harm, the anti-woke medical group that opposes identity politics in the medical field.

On Monday, the ACLU sent a public records request to Missouri Republican lawmaker Andrew Koenig regarding the state's SAFE Act, the 2023 law that bars doctors from performing transgender surgeries on minors. The request, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, seeks communications between Missouri lawmakers and a number of activist groups, including Do No Harm, that reference the law and other transgender-related terms, such as "sex reassignment surgery," "sex change," and "gender transition."

The request marks the latest attempt from the ACLU to beat back laws in red states outlawing sex change surgeries and other transgender treatments for minors. The ACLU sued to block the SAFE Act last year but failed, prompting the law to go into effect in August. The nonprofit has challenged similar bills in Texas and Idaho, and it has also targeted state laws that bar biological men from competing in women's sports. [Emphases added.]

If the ACLU succeeds, there could be more cases like that of Krista and Todd Kolstad, who not only lost custody of their minor biological daughter for refusing to transition her but saw CPS move her out of Montana, where gender surgeries on minors are illegal, to Wyoming, where they are allowed. The couple even faces arrest for violating a gag order by talking about their situation publicly.

Thanks in part to the ACLU, such cases of the government overruling the traditional rights of individual parents to raise their children as they see fit, and arranging irreversible gender surgeries for their children, are becoming more common, even as studies show autistic children to be over-represented among the transgender and thus more likely to undergo those surgeries while both a minor and intellectually challenged. 

Parental rights in education

The ACLU has a long history of interfering with parental decision-making, as when it created a legal case to challenge the wishes, codified into law, of the elected legislators of Tennessee to teach their children that the Lord created Adam and Eve, the first people, in accord with the Biblical account of creation, and were therefore not evolved from animals:

One of the ACLU’s earliest battles was the Scopes Trial of 1925. When the state of Tennessee passed a law banning the teaching of evolution, the ACLU recruited biology teacher John T. Scopes to challenge the law by teaching the banned subject in his class. When Scopes was eventually prosecuted, the ACLU partnered with celebrated attorney Clarence Darrow to defend him.

Till today, those parents telling their children that the Lord was a partner in their creation will be contradicted by an ACLU-backed biology syllabus, eroding the individual rights of parents to parent their children in favor of the rights of a “protected group,” in this case atheists opposing the Biblical account of Creation.

As with all protected groups enjoying special rights, someone loses - when the atheists win control over taxpayer-funded education, God-fearing parents lose control over how their own money is used to “educate” their own children.

When individual liberties are not respected and protected, rights become precarious — group rights take precedence over individual rights, and liberties can be removed by an activist judiciary.   

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