Turkey Day Talking Points

Hosts Shereen Marisol Meraji and Matthew Beat give a glimpse into the ACLU’s new podcast covering some of the most influential court cases in history.

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union today launched Let the Record Show, a new, irreverent American history podcast that looks back on the people and places behind defining legal moments for rights and freedoms in the United States. At a time when people are overwhelmed by the threats to our civil rights and civil liberties, Let the Record Show invites listeners to explore legal cases that give us insight into what we faced back then and what we’re facing today. Let the Record Show is hosted by schoolteacher and YouTube creator Matthew Beat, also known as Mr. Beat, and professor and audio journalist Shereen Marisol Meraji. On every episode, our hosts explore a major court case from U.S. history. Cases that shape how we live our lives today. And it’s more than just the case and its outcome – it’s about the people and places beyond the courtroom, and the nail-biting moments that came to define our country’s complex system of laws. “Let the Record Show is about more than just old court cases. It's about the real people behind the scenes, the stories they told, and the rights that we fought for and won along the way. I've told these stories in the classroom and online for 17 years, and I'm pumped to co-host the ACLU's new podcast to breathe new life into them,” said Matt Beat. “The ACLU has been at the center of so many important moments in our country’s history — from fighting for racial and gender justice to defending the rights of immigrants. And right now, there’s so much noise about what is happening to our civil rights and liberties that it can be hard to understand what matters most and why. We need a podcast like Let the Record Show help us decipher what’s at stake and figure out what we can do about it,” said Shereen Marisol Meraji. Listeners will be introduced to plaintiffs like Wong Kim Ark, who we can thank for affirming birthright citizenship; lawyers like Pauli Murray, who made it the nation’s business to take both racial and gender equality seriously; and everyday people who spoke up for their rights and the rights of their neighbors, especially when that took a lot of courage. Season 1 of the biweekly podcast will feature cases such as White v. Crook (exclusion of women and Black people from juries), Engel v. Vitale (school prayer), and Gitlow v. New York (free speech), and will be available on audio on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and on video on YouTube. Let the Record Show pulls from the ACLU’s century-long archive of legal cases to help listeners understand how, throughout history, key figures have stood up to defend their rights and freedoms in the face of brutality and injustice to expand freedoms for us all. Listeners will also hear from guests, including ACLU legal experts, as part of a recurring Sidebar segment where the hosts pause the story to explain a complex legal topic. The first episode of the podcast, on J.G.G. v. Trump, is available here: https://www.aclu.org/podcast/what-happens-when-the-president-defies-a-judge

In our series, the ACLU has teamed up with artists, authors, Hachette Book Group, and content creators to share books that have helped them better understand civil liberties and civil rights, fight for our communities and our Constitution, and increase engagement in creating a more perfect union.

ACLU and ACLU of Georgia have filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of Georgia supporting a grieving mother challenging the removal of her children without notice, a hearing, or any finding that the children faced danger because one of her children had just died by suicide. A Georgia appellate court found that the State can take children from a parent ex parte—before the parent is ever heard—whenever circumstances are "exceptional," which the court below defined to mean merely "unusual" rather than a genuine emergency. The juvenile court later returned the children, finding no basis for their removal and reprimanded the State for further traumatizing a grieving family. Because these removals are brief and the appeals process is slow, the practice largely evades review, and it falls hardest on the families with the least resources to challenge these kinds of removals. The brief urges the court to require a genuine emergency before the State may remove a child without first hearing from their parent.