Associated Press Witold "Vic" Walczak, the Pennsylvania legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, left, leaves the federal building in Scranton, Pa., with Anthony Romero, ACLU Executive Director, last Monday after opening arguments in the Hazelton immigration case. Click photo for larger image.

In an era of increased attacks on civil liberties, state and local American Civil Liberties Union chapters have played a vital role in upholding core American values, the organization's executive director told members at an annual meeting at the University of Pittsburgh yesterday.

Anthony D. Romero said that since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has chipped away at constitutional protections in the name of national security. But he assured the crowd of about 150 Pittsburgh area ACLU members that advocates are making headway.

As an example, he cited the lawsuit being argued this month in Scranton, alleging a Hazelton, Pa., ordinance unfairly limits the rights of immigrants.

After Mr. Romero watched the opening arguments in the Scranton trial, he said, "I told [CNN anchor] Lou Dobbs, 'I'm absolutely sure we're going to win this case.' "

He commended Witold Walczak, state ACLU legal director, for his clarity in arguing the Hazelton case and his victory in a York County case against the Dover Area School District board for including intelligent design in its science curriculum.

Mr. Romero spoke about the ACLU's work at home and abroad, tackling the abuse of foreign detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Department of Justice's inspector general's report exposing the FBI's widespread abuse of extra-judicial warrants.

Provisions in the USA Patriot Act gave broad new powers to the executive branch, and consequently, he said, "our greatest fears and our greatest suspicions have been borne out."

The inspector general's study tracked nearly 800 national security letters the FBI sent to telephone companies requesting customers' phone records. Each letter promised a subpoena for the individual's phone records was forthcoming. Not a single subpoena was issued, he said.

With Guantanamo Bay, he said, "the government tried to find the one free spot on the globe where international and national laws would not apply" and inmates have stagnated at the base for years, deprived of due process and human rights.

The organization has fought uphill battles throughout its 86-year history. If nothing else, Mr. Romero said, its losses document a record of injustices.

He compared the ACLU's case on behalf of German citizen Khalid El-Masri, who was mistakenly detained by CIA officials and beaten and interrogated in Afghanistan in 2004, with that of Fred Korematsu, who was apprehended in 1942 for refusing to comply with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's order to intern Japanese Americans.

The U.S. courts have refused to hear Mr. El-Masri's case. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Mr. Korematsu in 1944. Forty years later, a federal judge dismissed his conviction.

Before Mr. Romero spoke, local ACLU members voted to retain 12 incumbent board members and approved the admission of three new members: former District Court Judge Robert J. Cindrich; therapist and mediator Prabha Sankaranarayan; and Barbara White Stack, a former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer who is now a spokesperson for the United Steelworkers.

Dan McIntosh, a Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania professor, was named volunteer of the year. Attorney David J. Millstein won the Marjorie H. Matson Award for Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, and Marion Damick won the Thomas M. Kerr Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ms. Damick, 81, who joined the local group in 1962 and later became executive director, said she's seen the same types of cases repeat themselves over and over.

She said she doesn't expect the types of civil liberties disputes the organization engages in to abate, "but without the ACLU, I'm not sure we'd live through these times."