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Comment by int_19h | Hacker News Reader

On the subject of abortion and drugs, it's fairly straightforward. ACLU is not a "states' rights" organization. It is an "individual rights" organization. It sues states for infringing people's rights as much as it sues the feds. So from their perspective, if they can enshrine the protection of a right at a federal level, they'll go for it, because it's easier than forcing all 50 states to do the same.

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Yes, it may be "easier" for the ACLU to abuse/"reinterpret" the Constitution rather than work to amend it or work within its strict framework... but doing so makes things worse for more people in the longterm.

States' Rights limit the Federal Government from being so powerful that it can more easily violate civil rights... a bigger picture which ACLU should take into account.

Likewise, "legislating from the bench" may have protected some rights of individuals... but, far more often, it has "enshrined", as you say, new Federal powers at the cost of individual liberties.

Most work that ACLU does on the federal level involves strengthening the 14th Amendment, such that it is the judicial branch of the federal government that grows stronger, specifically with respect to its power to limit infringement of individual rights by the states. That's narrow enough in scope to not be worrisome.

Cause states rights weren't used to shield Jim Crow for a hundred years... oh, right. States just as easily trample individual rights as the federal government.

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