Inspiring Hope, Defending Rights, Saving Democracy
I served for 45 years as the Executive Director of two state affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), almost evenly split between Michigan and later Florida. I led the organization through many battles – protecting abortion rights, combatting censorship and defending the First Amendment, resuscitating church-state separation, ending the death penalty, expanding equality for the LGBT community and protecting the right to vote.
Reflecting on those decades, I have been thrilled by the advances won for freedom and equality – but also devastated by defeats suffered at the hands of hostile politicians. (Afterall, I served in Florida!).
Nevertheless, in the face of the current extreme backlash, to borrow from Thomas Paine, I want to explain why I still believe that we have it within our power to save democratic values including the rule of law and shape the future of our civil rights and civil liberties.
Howard Simon is the former Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida, where he served for 21 years, following 23 years as Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan. Upon his retirement in 2018, he became the longest-serving state affiliate director in the ACLU’s nearly 100-year history.
During his tenure in Florida, Howard led the ACLU’s involvement in many of the state’s most significant civil liberties cases and policy battles. Under his leadership, the ACLU successfully challenged Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage, winning a federal court decision in January 2015—weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court’s nationwide ruling. The organization also prevailed in litigation ending Florida’s ban on adoption by lesbians and gay men.
Howard directed legal challenges to repeated efforts by Florida lawmakers to restrict voting access, including laws limiting voter registration drives, reducing early voting days and hours, and restricting Sunday voting. He was a leading advocate for the 2010 Fair Districts Amendments, which curtailed partisan gerrymandering in Florida. Most notably, he led the ACLU’s decades-long campaign to end Florida’s Civil War–era system of lifetime felony disenfranchisement, culminating in the passage of Amendment 4 in 2018, which restored voting rights to more than one million Floridians who had completed their sentences.
He also played a key role in reforming Florida’s voting systems, helping move the state away from paperless electronic voting machines following the disputed 2006 Sarasota congressional election and toward secure, auditable paper ballots.
Howard’s commitment to voting rights began as a college student in Selma, Alabama, during the movement for passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He holds a Ph.D. in legal and political philosophy from the University of Minnesota, is a graduate of the City College of New York, and previously taught at the University of Minnesota and DePauw University. He is a frequent media commentator and currently writes a regular column for Florida’s Gannett/USA Today newspapers.
He lives in Gainesville, Florida with his wife, Beth Wilson, former Executive Director of the ACLU of Kentucky and former Deputy Director of the ACLU of Florida.
In person at 38 Old Country Road, Garden City or on Zoom.
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Meeting ID: 871 9982 1900
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