Hexas Civil Liberties Reporter the Bi'monthly Publication of the Texas Civil Liberties Union

Hexas Civil Liberties Reporter The Bi'Monthly Publication of the Texas Civil Liberties Union SEPT./OCT. 1986 AUSTIN,TEXAS New Director Named TCLU Blasts Austin INS Raid For South Texas by Julia Fitzgerald It was 6:13 a.m. on June 6 when the Project INS men boarded the Austin city bus and asked Gerato Hernandez where he was A new director has been named for the from. Hernandez, who was bom in the South Texas Project as the Project's focus United States, refused to answer. But he has been expanded to deal with immigra looked at his watch to check the time. tion-related issues as well as traditional He was already planning to complain Project concerns involving the rights of about this blatant violation of his rights. farmworkers in the Rio Grande Valley. The INS agents made their way down The new director is Carter "Gappy" the aisle of the bus, stopping to interro White, an attorney who most recently X. gate each Hispanic male. Anyone who served as a law clerk to Texas Third Court answered in Spanish or could not provide of Appeals Judge Robert Gammage and documentation was led to a waiting INS as an aide to State Senator Gonzalo van. Barrientos. White began work in the San For over an hour at an intersection in Juan office of the Project on September the largely Hispanic neighborhood of East 1. INS Agent questions an East Austin Austin INS agents boarded buses and The South Texas Project, also known resident. See INS Raid, p. 6 as Oficina Legal del Pueblo Unido, was founded by the ACLU in the early 1970's Time To Return To Our Activist Roots to deal with the extraordinary plight of Valley migrant farmworkers. Tens of by Gara LaMarche thousands of them — more than one It's abundantly clear that the federal courts, long our most important ally in the quarter of the migrants in the country — struggle to affirm individual rights against encroachments by the state, are increasingly lived without even access to drinking closing their doors to civil liberties claims, and may continue that way for the next water. Incipient efforts to organize the generation. Yet I'm feeling more optimistic than 1 have in a long time about the workers — the vast majority of whom were prospects for civil liberties. 1 realize this bears further explanation. Mexican-American — were met with The new court term is almost certain to begin with William Rehnquist as Chief Justice brutal resistance by local government and and Antonin Scalia an almost certain ally for a crabbed reading of the Constitution powerful growers. which tips the scales of justice against individual liberty, with a heavy thumb on the In short, South Texas of the early state's side of the scale. The entire federal judiciary is moving in the same direction I970's was a cross between Marian — by 1988, half of the district and appeals court judges will owe their appointments County and Jersey City of the 1930's. to Ronald Reagan and Edwin Meese. Few situations in the 20th century So what's the good news? It's that these cataclysmic changes give us two choices. American rights struggle cried out so One is to pull into our shells and wait for better days, when the judicial climate powerfully for legal challenge. The South is more to our liking. The other is to renew our activist roots, in order to revitalize Texas Project became the vehicle for that public awareness of, and support for, the principles of the Bill of Rights. Former challenge. In its early years, under the Federal Judge Marvin Frankel recently had some important things to say about this. leadership first of David Hall, now In a talk to ACLU members in Westchester County, N.Y., Judge Frankel touched director of Texas Rural Legal Aid, and on some unsettling truths when he said: then of James C. Harrington, now the "Instead of being astonished that our beliefs are rejected by a great majority of TCLU legal director, the Project won a our fellow citizens, we act as if such an attitude were inevitable. At most our response See South Texas, p. 6 See Renewing Our Roots, p. 2 SEPT./OCT. 1986 PAGE 2 Texas Civil Liberties Reporter SEPT./OCT. 1986 Texas Civil Liberties Reporter PAGE 3 TCLU Ponders Options in Farmworkers Win Renewing Our Activist Roots continued from p. I Joan Glantz 1942 — 1986 to the hostility so many Americans express toward the charter of their and our Wake of Sodomy Law Setback Texas Supreme by Julia Fitzgerald liberties is a wry chuckle .. reflect(ing) an attitude too common among us that The TCLU and gay rights groups are may fairly be condemned as condescending. The TCLU was disgusted but not now considering various strategies for the Court Victory surprised by the Supreme Court sodomy "Too many of us resign ourselves too much of the time to the idea that we will overturning of the Texas sodomy law. Farm workers in Texas won a signifi ruling this summer. In Bowers v. Hardwick One alternative is to seek repeal in the cant victory in the Texas Supreme Court always be a minority. We tend to take pleasure in the fact that the Bill of Rights the Court upheld a Georgia statute is an anti-majoritarian document. Technically, of course, it is. The great constitutional 1987 Legislature. Another is to challenge when the court ordered Country Court prohibiting various forms of consensual the law in state court under the Texas No. 3 of Hidalgo County to require rights are truly protections against majority pressures and majority power. The rights sex between members of the opposite sex to free expression, freedom of religion and the due process of law are not subject Constitution, which may be inclined to western Hidalgo County's largest grower, as well as between homosexuals. to modification or repeal by majority vote. interpret individual rights more Bannworths, Inc., to reinstate Mrs. Maria In a short but frightening majority expansively than an increasingly "But it isn't enough to say that the Bill of Rights is so great and secure that Guadalupe Vasquez to her former employ opinion Justice White dismissed as irrele we can count on unelected judges to preserve it. As we're seeing now, and have Reaganized federal judiciary. ment with the company. vant twenty years of Supreme Court seen before, the judiciary may not always be a dependable resource. But even if Bannworths had fired Mrs. Vasquez in privacy rulings and focused instead on the judges were more predictably in our comer, it would be a mistake to rely almost long history of sodomy laws and "majority TCLU Opposes 1982 for reporting the company to the exclusively on the courts." state health department for not providing sentiments about the morality of homo Abortion Regulations Frankel's speech (adapted as an article in the July 5/12 issue of The Nation) is Longtime TClU activist Joan Garfinkel sexuality." toilets to field workers. a challenge to the comfortable assumptions of many civil libertarians. Those of us Glantz died on August 27 in Houston after Proposed amendments to the Texas a long and gallant battle with cancer. "We're lucky that kind of reasoning The TCLU represented her in a who grew up in the Warren Era tend to have the mindset that rights are something Department of Health regulations govern successful jury trial in which she was you get from courts, when in fact that has been the case for a relatively brief window Glantz was for ten years co-director (with wasn't used by the Supreme Court in ing licensing of abortion clinics would Dassia Porper) of the TCLU Greater awarded $3,000 in lost wages. However, of opportunity in American history. In search of our activist origins, 1 recently took Brown v. Board of Education, which might unduly burden the constitutional right to Houston Chapter; for fifteen years a member then have sanctioned segregation on the even though the jury found that she was a look at the first annual report of the ACLU, published in 1921, and found a of the TCLU State Board of Directors; for freedom of reproductive choice, according basis of centuries of traditional subjuga fired because of anti-union motivation section, probably written by Roger Baldwin, on "How to Get Civil Liberty." It five years (1980-85) the TCLU President; TCLU testimony before Health De tion of blacks," points out TCLU Execu and that the company would not rehire barely mentions the courts, but asserts; and for ten years (1974-84) a member of the partment hearing officers in July. national ACLU Board of Directors. She was tive Director Gara LaMarche. her in the future, the judge refused to "We realize that these standards of civil liberty cannot be maintained as abstract the first woman to serve in these latter two TCLU Legal Director Jim Harrington Authority for the Health Department reinstate her. principles or as constitutional guarantees. Economic or political power is necessary to regulate abortion clinics to protect the positions. In 1985 she was elected to the also criticized the Court "for deciding to to assert and maintain all 'rights.' In the midst of any conflict they are not granted planning committee for the ACLU's 1987 health and safety of women was provided The Supreme Court ruled that Garcia use the Hardwick case as a vehicle to halt by the side holding the economic and political power, except as they may be forced Biennial Conference.

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