Outlet profile

American Civil Liberties Union

U.S. left-liberal advocacy organization

Owned byMember-governed nonprofit; no single owner. Operates as two affiliated entities — the ACLU Inc. (501(c)(4)) and the ACLU Foundation (501(c)(3)) — with 50 state and territorial affiliates.

FundingMember dues, individual donations, and grants from private foundations (e.g., MacArthur Foundation). Does not accept government funding. Annual revenue across all entities was approximately $357 million in fiscal year 2025.

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The ACLU was founded in January 1920 by Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, and other reformers, growing out of the National Civil Liberties Bureau that had defended anti-war dissidents during World War I and the Red Scare. Baldwin, who led the organization until 1950, had strong labor and left-wing sympathies, though the ACLU also litigated cases on behalf of groups across the ideological spectrum, including defending the speech rights of far-right demonstrators. In 1940 it purged co-founder Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a Communist Party member, reflecting Cold War-era internal tensions. Over the following decades the ACLU expanded from free-speech work into voting rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality, immigrants' rights, and criminal justice reform, establishing itself as the dominant liberal civil liberties litigator in the United States. Critics on the right characterize it as a partisan progressive organization; critics on the left have at times faulted it for defending the civil liberties of hate groups. Funding surged dramatically after the 2016 election, and again after Trump's second inauguration in January 2025, when the ACLU launched an explicit campaign — 'ACLU vs. Trump' — filing over 110 lawsuits in the administration's first 100 days alone, targeting executive actions on immigration, transgender rights, birthright citizenship, and deportation procedures. The organization reported winning or partially winning about 64 percent of those cases through mid-2025.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-08-04; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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