Defending liberty

Lori Shepler is an animal welfare advocate who opposes the practice of declawing cats and operates a website and Facebook page dedicated to that purpose. Cheryl McCloud operates a non-profit animal rescue shelter in Newaygo County.

Shepler contacted McCloud, expressed her opposition to McCloud’s practice of declawing cats, and posted references to McCloud’s cat declawing activities on Facebook. There was no allegation that Shepler threatened McCloud or her animal shelter. But other persons, some of whom follow Shepler’s website and Facebook page, contacted McCloud and her associates, expressing their opposition to declawing cats, sometimes with inflammatory rhetoric. 

In December 2017, McCloud persuaded a judge in Newaygo County to issue a personal protection order prohibiting Shepler from continuing to post online about McCloud or her shelter. In March 2018, the ACLU of Michigan filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Shepler’s motion to vacate the order, explaining that the First Amendment protects Shepler’s speech, and the speech of others cannot justify censoring Shepler. The case settled. 

(McCloud v. Shepler; ACLU Attorney Miriam Aukerman; Cooperating Attorney Michael Nelson.)

In 2016 racial slurs were repeatedly spray-painted on Eastern Michigan University buildings and dorms, including statements promoting the KKK and calls for black students to leave the university. In the best American tradition, students of color and allies began to organize and demonstrate in a peaceful manner. 

One of the protests involved an evening sit-in in the student center, where the students chanted for a short period and then settled in to do homework and talk. When the student center closed, half the students left at the request of the campus police and the others stayed until morning without incident and then left. 

In response to this harmless protest against hate and intolerance, EMU singled out four African American students who helped organize the sit-in for expulsion proceedings. In November 2016, the ACLU of Michigan wrote a letter and engaged in other advocacy on behalf of the students. In February 2017, the university president agreed to drop the charges. 

(ACLU Attorneys Michael J. Steinberg and Mark Fancher.)

The 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon is a political and psychological critique explaining the reason people of color sometimes experience feelings of dependency and inadequacy by virtue of living in colonial societies or countries dominated by white culture.Although the book is widely acclaimed and relevant today, the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) has placed this classic on its “banned book” list, meaning that prisoners cannot obtain or read it.

In June 2019 the ACLU of Michigan joined with the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard Law School in writing a letter to the MDOC explaining how the censorship violates inmates’ free speech rights and urging that the book be removed from the list of prohibited publications.

(ACLU Attorney Michael J. Steinberg; Professor Justin Hansford of Howard University Law School.)