ACLU: From Free Speech to Pimps and Predators

When I worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, I supported the ACLU. Many of us did. They were the champions of digital privacy and free speech. But that mission has been overshadowed by a dangerous anti-incarceration absolutism.

In 2016, the Brock Turner case provided a clear warning. Turner assaulted an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Because the law did not classify the sexual assault of an intoxicated person as a serious felony, a loophole allowed a judge to grant probation. Judge Aaron Persky handed down a sentence of six months in county jail, and Turner served just three. The public was rightfully outraged and recalled the judge in 2018.

In late 2016, California lawmakers moved to close that loophole by mandating state prison time for raping an unconscious victim. It was an overwhelmingly bipartisan effort that passed the State Senate unanimously. Yet the ACLU officially opposed the change.

That extremism escalated in 2023 when the legislature shifted its focus to protecting children from sex trafficking with Senate Bill 14. The premise was simple:

Make the human trafficking of a minor a "serious felony."

This would trigger California's Three Strikes law and ensure child predators actually go to prison. Yet the ACLU stood against it.

The organization's opposition relied on an intellectually dishonest argument. In their official policy statement, the ACLU claimed that making trafficking a strike would victimize survivors because prosecutors would use those sentences to coerce victims. This claim ignored the fact that California law had already established robust immunity for trafficking victims years before this debate. The ACLU invented a legal threat to victims to prioritize a theoretical concern for defendants over the physical safety of children.

This ideology led the Assembly Public Safety Committee to initially block the bill in July 2023. Even after massive public pressure forced a re-vote, Assemblymembers Isaac Bryan and Mia Bonta abstained from the final vote. It remains a staggering pro-trafficker stance from elected officials, especially coming from Bonta, the wife of our state's Attorney General.

The pattern repeated in 2024 with Senate Bill 1414, designed to ensure that anyone who buys a child for sex faces a mandatory felony.

ACLU Director of Legislative Affairs Alicia Benavidez officially logged the ACLU's opposition on video in July 2024.

Senator Scott Wiener supported this lobbying and gaslit the public to justify it. Rather than admitting the bill targeted adult men buying children, he claimed the law would have "unintended consequences" for teenage peers in an effort to water down the legislation. He spearheaded hostile amendments in the Senate Public Safety Committee that downgraded the penalty for first-time buyers of children 15 and under to a "wobbler" to help them dodge a felony, and he stripped out felony protections for 16- and 17-year-olds entirely.

When the bill reached the Assembly Public Safety Committee, lawmakers erected an impossible standard for those older teens. They dictated that buyers of 16- and 17-year-olds can only face a felony if prosecutors prove the child was a victim of human trafficking, effectively ensuring these crimes remain mere misdemeanors.

It took the relentless reporting of KCRA's Ashley Zavala to expose these maneuvers. Her investigative breakdown cornered lawmakers who tried to avoid a public record of their refusal to protect California's children.

Voters should be leery of any politician who boasts a near-perfect scorecard from today's ACLU. Politicians like Eric Swalwell wear those high ratings as a badge of honor, but those scores are bought by abandoning common sense and public safety.

Some may be willing to empty their souls to empty prisons at the expense of children.

I most certainly am not.