Civil-Liberties Group Withdraws Controversial Provision

The American Civil Liberties Union has withdrawn proposals that would have curtailed the ability of its trustees to publicly criticize the organization, reports The New York Times.

In a statement on the group’s Web site, Nadine Strossen, the ACLU board’s chair, said the proposals were eliminated after criticism from trustees and the organization’s executive director “on the grounds that those passages might have some chilling effect on board members’ freedom of speech and dissent (even though that was not the committee’s intent).”

Norman Siegel, a civil-rights lawyer who headed the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and has been very criticial of the controversial passages, said that a question still remains: “How could such proposals get this far at, of all places, the American Civil Liberties Union?”