St. Paul Recorder

Civil Liberties Union Challenges Arkansas Ordinance As Biased

North Little Rock, Ark (ANP) The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday, challenged as a violation of freedom of association, a local ordinance requiring organizations to register with the city and disclose their members and contributors. The ordinance grew out of the Little Rock school segregation controversy.

The Union's executive director, Patrick Murphy Malin, submitted an affidavit to City Clerk Percy H. Machin charging that the ordinance is unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution and the Arkansas State Constitution.

The ACLU, along with five other organizations, had been requested to furnish lists of their members, officers, financial standing and other information.

In refusing to submit a list of its members and contributors, Malin said that the Union believed the ordinance "is designed to harass these residents of North Little Rock who believe that, under our form of government, the United States Supreme Court is the final interpreter of the meaning of the federal constitution, and that its decisions and all inferior court decrees made pursuant thereto must be obeyed."

"The American Civil Liberties Union," he continued, "believes in full equality before the law without regard for creed or color, but that is not the issue here. What is the issue is the right of the people of North Little Rock freely to associate for a common lawful objective without such harassment by any governmental body . . . we believe that it is not incumbent upon any organization to comply with (the) registration requirements, at least insofar as they require identification of members and contributors."

Emphasizing the non-partisan civil liberties character of its action, the ACLU affidavit pledged to support "to the full the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Capital City Citizens Council (of White America) or any other organization in a proper legal challenge of this ordinance."