August 21, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of six nonprofit community and advocacy organizations, has filed a legal challenge to the controversial USA Patriot Act, an antiterrorism law enacted after the September 11 attacks.
The ACLU said that the law wrongly permits FBI officials to order charities, political organizations, libraries, hospitals, Internet service providers, and others to turn over the records or personal belongings of others — while requiring that the targets of the order never be notified.
“Ordinary Americans should not have to worry that the FBI is rifling through their medical records, seizing their personal papers, or forcing charities and advocacy groups to divulge membership lists,” Ann Beeson, associate legal director of the ACLU, said in a statement.
The Patriot Act expands the government’s ability to gather information in the hunt for terrorists and beefs up sanctions against people and organizations that support terrorism.
The U.S. Department of Justice said that the provision of the Patriot Act being challenged in the lawsuit — Section 215 — has “a narrow scope that scrupulously respects First Amendment rights, requires a court order to obtain any business record, and is subject to Congressional reporting and oversight on a regular basis.”
The ACLU said that the lawsuit — which was filed in federal court in Michigan — takes aim at Section 215 of the Patriot Act because the provision allegedly “vastly expands the power of FBI agents to secretly obtain records and personal belongings of innocent people in the United States, including citizens and permanent residents.”
The ACLU said that the provision improperly allows the FBI to obtain personal belongings, including books, records, papers, documents, and other items, directly from a person’s home without showing probable cause that a person is a criminal suspect or foreign agent.
Muslim Organizations
Most of the groups pursuing the lawsuit have significant numbers of members, constituents, or clients who are Muslim. Two of them — the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, in Michigan, and the Islamic Center of Portland, Masjed As-Saber, in Oregon — operate mosques.
The other four are the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, in Washington, D.C.; the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, in Dearborn, Mich.; Bridge Refugee & Sponsorship Services, in Knoxville, Tenn.; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in Washington, D.C.
The lawsuit said that the Patriot Act has caused some members and clients of the six nonprofit organizations “to be inhibited from publicly expressing their political views, attending mosque and practicing their religion, participating in public debate, engaging in political activity, associating with legitimate political and religious organizations, donating money to legitimate charitable organizations,” and engaging in other actions that are protected by the Constitution.
The lawsuit said that the Patriot Act violated constitutional guarantees, including free speech and due process.
