Ripston Reportedly Asked to Resume Post in ACLU

Ramona Ripston, the former executive director of the Southern California affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union who helped shape it into a national leader on constitutional issues, has been asked by board members to return to the post, informed sources said Wednesday.

With only one dissent, a knowledgeable source said, about 150 board members of the Los Angeles-based unit voted in two meetings last month to urge Ripston to again take the job she held for 13 years until her resignation in January, 1986. At that time, Ripston became vice president of People for the American Way, television producer Norman Lear’s civil rights lobby founded to counter the religious right.

“My understanding is that she’s committed” to returning, one ACLU source said.

New York Native

Ripston, 55, a New York native who is a product of activist and civil rights groups of the 1960s and who has two decades of ACLU experience on both coasts, was traveling on the East Coast and could not be reached for comment.

A spokeswoman for the Lear organization said that Ripston, when asked about the ACLU job on Wednesday, said: “Discussions are going on, but no decision has been reached.”

Her husband, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stanley R. Malone, Jr., said, “She hasn’t made up her mind.”

The top ACLU post has been open since March when Ripston’s successor, Gayle Binion, decided to return to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is a professor of political science.

ACLU sources said the changeover is not due to any unusual turmoil within the organization, which has a membership of about 23,000, placing it second only to the New York ACLU operation in size. Binion, they noted, had committed to the $57,000-a-year job for only one year. It is expected, they said, that Ripston would be offered slightly more pay.

Repaired Finances

Ripston, former associate director of both the New York and New Jersey ACLU units, found the Los Angeles affiliate in financial difficulty when she took the executive post in 1972. But in only a few years, fund raising improved dramatically and the unit returned to the black.

Ripston led the Los Angeles affiliate on such issues as pushing for pregnancy disability leave, championing gay rights and preserving the Freedom of Information Act.