Lawyer for ACLU Loses in Rights Case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a precedent-setting damage award against a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer charged with violating the rights of a Newport Beach policeman by ejecting him from a public meeting on police surveillance practices.

The court, ruling without comment, rejected arguments that ACLU lawyer Rees Lloyd of Los Angeles did not violate Officer Richard Long’s rights when he ordered him to leave a 1980 ACLU meeting that was open to the public.

The case marked the first time that the ACLU, for decades a champion of individual rights, or one of its lawyers has been held liable for infringing on the rights of others. The ACLU has already paid Long $35,000 as a settlement. Lloyd, who was also named as a defendant in the suit, was assessed $10,000 in damages and $36,000 for Long’s legal fees. It was not known if the ACLU will pay any of the money assessed against Lloyd, who is now in private practice.

For Long, now a sergeant who supervises the Newport Beach police robbery-homicide squad, the end of the 10-year-old case came as a pleasant surprise.

“I’m glad to have it behind me. For me, this lawsuit was a matter of principle,” said Long, who said he took personal exception to his ouster from the meeting.

“I didn’t have a problem with registering at the meeting as a police officer, or having a policeman attending an ACLU meeting,” Long said. “But to eject you out of the meeting and make a spectacle for the purpose of embarrassing you as an individual, or embarrassing a police department, was just inappropriate, and it didn’t reflect favorably on their support of individual rights.”

Long, who had registered as a police officer at the conference in Newport Beach, was secretly tape-recording the meeting and taking notes on what was said, according to court documents. He contended that as a community relations officer, he had a right to attend and learn the ACLU’s opinion of his department’s activities.

Lloyd’s attorneys had challenged a California Supreme Court decision last April that let stand a lower court’s ruling that Long’s removal from the conference was discriminatory under the Unruh Civil Rights Act.

ACLU lawyers had vigorously defended the officer’s ejection, saying the right of free association allowed conference organizers to turn away someone they believed was an undercover “government agent.”

Hugh R. Manes, a Los Angeles lawyer who represented Lloyd, said the lower court decision would have set a “dangerous precedent” by lowering the safeguards for freedom of speech.

“It says basically that you can’t throw a police officer out of a meeting who is spying on you,” Manes said. “This is a freedom of speech issue and freedom of association (issue), and the right to protest.”