The ACLU's Andrea Guerrero speaks in La Mesa

See ACLU lawsuit to stop Los Angeles Unified School District from laying off large percentages of staff at schools with inordinately large numbers of new teachers: Lawsuit: Layoffs hurt minority kids

See also: Judge to LAUSD: No Layoffs at Gompers, Liechty and Markam This Year

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Last night ACLU speaker Andrea Guerrero told La Mesa Democrats, "We defend you whether you are of our political liking or not." The fact is that it's impossible for a large organization to function--and even harder for it to get funding--without some horsetrading. Of course the ACLU plays politics; it just does it in a more restrained manner than most organizations.

There have been times when the ACLU has defended people with whom it disagreed. An example of this was when Oliver North testified before Congress about shenanigans in the Reagan administration such as selling missiles to Iran to get secret money to quash the uprising in El Salvador. (Now there's an example of some heavy-duty horsetrading: selling missiles to Iran!?! I don't recall the ACLU ever sacrificing its principles to that extent.) The ACLU insisted that the government couldn't use anything Oliver North said before Congress in its criminal case against him. A huge firewall was instituted between prosecutors and the congressional hearings.

Ms. Guerrero indicated that the new Arizona law ordering local police to act as immigration agents is unconstitutional because only the federal government is authorized to deal with such matters. This is the reason that California's Proposition 187 was enjoined several years ago.

Andrea Guerrero is the Field & Policy Director of the ACLU in San Diego & Imperial Counties.