LIBERTY AND JUSTICE

Anti-Drug Group Has Right To Keep Membership List Private

The government has no business forcing a private organization to hand
over the names of its members.

The right of citizens to assemble and associate with each other is a
well-established constitutional right.

So a public defender's subpoena of the rolls of an anti-drug group in
Hazard is a waste of time.

Public defender Barbara Carnes argues that potential jurors'
membership in People Against Drugs could bias them against a
defendant accused of drug crimes. She has subpoenaed the group's
membership list and other records.

We commend her vigilance in protecting her client's right to a fair
trial. But there are ways to ascertain a potential juror's biases
without infringing on the constitutional rights of others.

The pivotal Supreme Court decision on this came 43 years ago after
Alabama tried to force the NAACP to turn over its membership rolls.
The government's misuse of its power to intimidate citizens
exercising their constitutional rights was aimed at crushing the
civil rights movement.

Courts later struck down similar efforts by local and state
governments in Arkansas, Virginia and Florida to obtain NAACP
membership lists.

Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote in the 1958 case that the freedom
of citizens to associate with each other to advance their ideas and
beliefs is ``an inseparable aspect of `liberty.'''

That applies also to hate-filled beliefs espoused by the Ku Klux
Klan, the target of anti-mask laws in nearly 30 Kentucky towns or
counties.

Klan members have as much right to peaceably assemble in the privacy
of their hoods as the good drug-fighters of Hazard have to keep their
membership rolls from government control.