Civil Liberties               The National Newsletter of the ACLU
#380, Spring 1994             (c) 1994 American Civil Liberties Union

AFFILIATE NOTES describes activities of the ACLU's affiliate and
chapter offices.  Through dedicated staffs and the help of
volunteers from the legal community, the ACLU has a broad
national network at work every day to protect and defend the Bill
of Rights.  Consult your local affiliate or chapter for
assistance from, or information about, the ACLU.  

ILLINOIS
 The affiliate won an unusual reproductive freedom case in which
its 22-year-old pregnant client, called "Mother Doe" in court,
was ordered by the Public Guardian of Chicago's Cook County to
undergo a caesearean.  Doctors at St. Joseph's Hospital had
recommended the procedure after discovering that Doe's
36-week-old fetus was not receiving adequate oxygen and
nutrition.  Doe, a Pentecostal Christian, refused the operation
on religious grounds, including the belief that God would protect
her unborn baby.  Fearing liability, hospital officials notified
child welfare authorities, who sought government intervention in
juvenile court.  The state's attorney, after failing to prevail
at a hearing, appealed to the Illinois appellate and supreme
courts, both of which affirmed Doe's right to make her own
decisions regarding medical treatment.  On December 29, 11 days
after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case, Doe
delivered a healthy baby boy.

MARYLAND
 The affiliate, working with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project,
has won a federal court judgment requiring Worcester County, on
Maryland's Eastern Shore, to elect candidates to countywide
offices by a cumulative voting scheme that will correct the
under-representation of racial minorities.  The ACLU represented
the Worcester County Voting Rights Coalition, which praised the
court order as both avoiding the difficulties inherent in
designing a black-majority district and producing a remedy that
is likely to withstand legal challenge.  Cumulative voting, a
remedy advocated by Lani Guinier, whose nomination to head the
Justice Department's civil rights division was withdrawn by
President Clinton, is in use in several localities around the
country due to settlements reached in voting rights suits.  Under
cumulative voting, electors may cast as many votes as there are
open seats on the county commission, giving all of their votes to
one candidate or distributing them among several candidates.

NEW JERSEY
 In one of several affiliate cases challenging so-called
"student-initiated" graduation prayers, a federal district court
ruled that student-initiated prayer is not an exception to the
1993 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lee v. Weisman.  The ruling
directly contradicts the Fifth Circuit's decision to permit
student-initiated prayer in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.  If
appealed, the Jersey holding could provide the U.S. Supreme Court
with yet another opportunity to address this issue.

PENNSYLVANIA
 The affiliate's Pittsburgh office has filed suit in federal
court on behalf of corrections officer Dieter "Mike" Troster, who
has refused to comply with a requirement that he wear an American
flag patch on his work uniform.  Troster, a retired Army major,
regards flag displays on clothing as desecration of a symbol he
reveres, and he feels that being forced to wear it is a form of
coerced "patriotic" speech.  So far, the ACLU has won an
injunction blocking Troster's suspension.  A full hearing is
scheduled.

PUERTO RICO
 In a case that tested one legal strategy being developed to
avert the government's establishment of programs that threaten
both religious freedom and the goal of educational equity, a
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico court struck down the critical
portion of a private school voucher law on April 19.   Local
cooperating attorneys had challenged the law under the Puerto
Rican constitution, which explicitly prohibits tax support for
private schools.  Voucher initiatives failed in Oregon in 1990,
Colorado in 1992 and California in 1993.  Their adherents,
however, have pressed on.  Americans for School Choice, headed by
former education secretary Lamar Alexander, announced plans to 
target at least five states in 1994 and eight in 1996.  Voucher
bills have lately been considered by 20 state legislatures. 

TEXAS
 The affiliate's threat of litigation sufficed to beat back 
Texas public school attempts to discriminate against pregnant
students.  The Hempstead School District's board had voted to bar
pregnant teens and teen mothers from cheerleading and other
extracurricular activities.  When the affiliate, with the Women's
Rights and Reproductive Freedom Projects, gave notice that the
policy was illegal, the board reversed itself.  A school in the
Bartlett Independent School district, claiming health concerns,
told a high school senior she could not take part in any
extracurricular activity in which she would be visible to the
public without permission from her physician.  But the student
was allowed to participate in a school play as a member of the
backstage crew.  The ACLU warned the school to desist or face a
lawsuit. 

WASHINGTON
 The affiliate, representing musicians of the Seattle-based
Washington Music Industry Coalition, scored one for artistic
freedom with the overturning of Washington's "erotic music" law -
- the first in the nation to target the sale of sound recordings
to minors.  After the ACLU had obtained an injunction from Kings
County Superior Court to block enforcement, the state supreme
court declared the law an infringement of customers' and
retailers' free speech rights, and of retailers' due process
rights -- the latter because it lacked a mechanism for notifying
stores that a court had found specific material illegally erotic.

- Lynn Decker

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