ACLU
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40 free ACLU trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The American Civil Liberties Union has spent more than a century in American courtrooms, and almost every argument about free speech, privacy, religion in schools or equal treatment under the law has passed through its offices at some point. It has also made a habit of defending people its own members cannot stand, which is why its history is full of clients you would never expect. This quiz covers the ACLU from its beginnings in the aftermath of World War I to its recent battles: the people who started it, the trials that made its name, the Supreme Court rulings it argued or supported, the internal splits over whom to defend, and the way the organization is set up and run. Expect questions on famous cases about students, teachers, protesters, writers and couples, along with a few figures from across the political spectrum who turned to the ACLU for help. It suits civics and government classes, law students, debate teams, history buffs and anyone who follows the Supreme Court. Every answer comes with a short explanation of what happened and why it mattered.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which celebrated author and lecturer, a Radcliffe College graduate, was among the founders of the ACLU in 1920?
Helen Keller
Helen Keller helped launch the ACLU eleven years after joining the Socialist Party; she also campaigned for women's suffrage, labor rights and world peace.
Q 02The ACLU recruited teacher John Scopes in 1925 to defy a state law against teaching which scientific theory?
Evolution
Evolution was barred from the state's public schools by the Butler Act. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality.
Q 03In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the ACLU won a landmark 1969 free-speech ruling while defending a leader of which group?
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan leader Brandenburg had invited a TV reporter to film a rally in rural Ohio. The Court held that only speech advocating imminent violence could be outlawed.
Q 04The ACLU defended a neo-Nazi group's right to march in 1977 in which Illinois suburb, home to many Holocaust survivors?
Skokie
Skokie answered the permit request with an injunction and new ordinances. Taking the case cost the ACLU's Illinois affiliate about a quarter of its members.
Q 05Which gun-rights group did the ACLU represent at the Supreme Court in 2024, winning a unanimous free-speech ruling?
National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association was represented by the ACLU's David Cole, who argued that a state regulator had pressed banks and insurers to cut ties with the gun group.
Q 06Which future Supreme Court justice co-founded the ACLU's Women's Rights Project and argued six cases for it?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg won five of those six cases between 1973 and 1976, and she kept working on the project until she was appointed to the federal bench in 1980.
Q 07Which Democrat did George H. W. Bush attack during the 1988 campaign for calling himself an ACLU member?
Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis had described himself as an ACLU member, and Bush cited it as proof that his opponent was out of the mainstream. The ACLU later used his wording in an advertising campaign.
Q 08ACLU volunteer lawyers won 1967's Loving v. Virginia at the Supreme Court, ending state bans on what?
Interracial marriage
Interracial marriage was still outlawed in 16 states. Mildred Loving had written in protest to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who referred her to the ACLU.
Q 09The ACLU was the first national group to call for which president's impeachment, citing six civil liberties violations?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon was still in office, with the Watergate scandal unfolding, when the ACLU made its call in 1973. Its leaders had at first been divided over taking the step.
Q 10The ACLU represented a gay couple in a 2018 Supreme Court case after a Colorado business refused to make them what?
A wedding cake
A wedding cake was what Charlie Craig and David Mullins sought from Masterpiece Cakeshop. The Court ruled 7-2 for the baker, citing a state commission's hostility to his religious views.
Q 11Which Chicago defense lawyer, an ACLU National Committee member, led John Scopes's legal team at his 1925 trial?
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow was at first unwanted by the ACLU, which feared his staunch agnosticism would hurt the defense. A year earlier he had defended the killers Leopold and Loeb.
Q 12In Tinker v. Des Moines, the ACLU defended students suspended for wearing what to school as a Vietnam War protest?
Black armbands
Black armbands were a silent symbol that caused no disruption, the Court held in 1969, so 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker and her fellow students had engaged in protected speech.
Q 13In 1997's Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law against "indecent" material in which medium?
Q 21Which ACLU co-founder served as its first executive director, leading the organization from 1920 until 1950?
Roger Baldwin
Roger Baldwin's charisma drew many supporters to the young ACLU. He was succeeded by Patrick Murphy Malin, under whom membership tripled to 30,000 within five years.
Q 22Which Socialist Party candidate for president in six straight elections helped found the ACLU's forerunner in 1917?
Norman Thomas
Norman Thomas ran in every election from 1928 to 1948. During World War II he accused the ACLU of dereliction of duty for accepting the internment of Japanese Americans.
Q 23Which labor organizer, an ACLU founder, was expelled from its board in 1940 because she was a Communist Party member?
The internet
The internet won full First Amendment protection when the Court voided parts of the Communications Decency Act, its first major ruling on regulating material distributed online.
Q 14What Latin name is given to the briefs the ACLU files in cases where another law firm already represents the client?
Amicus curiae
Amicus curiae means friend of the court. Such briefs let the ACLU argue in cases it did not bring, as it did in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education.
Q 15Which conservative radio host did the ACLU back in court after Florida investigators seized his private medical records?
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh was being investigated under Florida's doctor shopping laws. The ACLU filed a brief agreeing that prosecutors had violated his rights by seizing the records.
Q 16The ACLU turned down grants from two major foundations in 2004 because the terms borrowed language from which law?
The Patriot Act
The Patriot Act wording barred any spending on terrorism or other unacceptable activities, a clause the ACLU called so broad and ambiguous that it threatened civil liberties.
Q 17The Supreme Court sided with the ACLU in Engel v. Vitale in 1962 by barring which official practice in public schools?
Classroom prayer
Classroom prayer composed by state officials was the target. That same year the ACLU issued a policy statement condemning in-school prayers and Bible reading.
Q 18ACLU attorney Ben Wizner became the lead lawyer in 2013 for which whistleblower, then stranded at a Moscow airport?
Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden was put in touch with Wizner by the journalist Glenn Greenwald after his passport was revoked, leaving him stuck in the airport's transit zone.
Q 19Besides all 50 states and Washington, D.C., the ACLU has an affiliate in which United States territory?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is the one place outside the 50 states and the capital with its own ACLU office, formally named the ACLU of Puerto Rico National Chapter.
Q 20A West Coast director of the ACLU backed which Japanese American welder's challenge to wartime internment orders?
Fred Korematsu
Fred Korematsu was approached after his arrest by Ernest Besig, who took the case even though the national ACLU, wary of opposing President Roosevelt in wartime, urged him not to.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was voted off after a contentious six-hour debate. Many saw the purge as a betrayal of ACLU principles, and she was reinstated after her death.
Q 24Which Harvard law professor, appointed to the Supreme Court in 1939, was among those who helped found the ACLU?
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter thought legislation, not court rulings, was the best long-term way to protect civil liberties, a view that set him against other early ACLU leaders.
Q 25The ACLU was founded in 1920 in response to which mass arrests and deportations of suspected radicals?
The Palmer Raids
The Palmer Raids took their name from Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Thousands were arrested in dozens of cities, but Labor Department officials blocked most of the deportations he wanted.
Q 26The ACLU grew out of a 1917 bureau formed to defend anti-war speech and to support which group during World War I?
Conscientious objectors
Conscientious objectors who refused to serve were the bureau's first cause. One of its founders, the attorney Crystal Eastman, resigned in 1918 because of ill health.
Q 27In 1937 the ACLU's leaders split over defending which carmaker's right to hand out anti-union literature?
Henry Ford
Henry Ford's case was awkward because the early ACLU had spent most of its effort defending the labor movement, and had been attacked by conservative groups for doing so.
Q 28Which Marine lieutenant colonel in the Iran-Contra affair had convictions overturned on an appeal the ACLU supported?
Oliver North
Oliver North's three convictions were vacated in 1990 because witnesses at his trial might have been affected by the testimony he had given Congress under immunity.
Q 29The ACLU split its board by backing the winners of which 2010 Supreme Court case on corporate election spending?
Citizens United v. FEC
Citizens United v. FEC drew an ACLU brief arguing that a 2002 campaign finance law curtailed political speech. The stance caused considerable disagreement inside the organization.
Q 30The ACLU sued Missouri in 2006 on behalf of which Kansas congregation, notorious for picketing at soldiers' burials?
Westboro Baptist Church
Westboro Baptist Church member Shirley Phelps-Roper had been threatened with arrest under a state ban on such pickets. The ACLU won, arguing that the law infringed free speech.