February 14, 2025, would have been Justice Louis Sconik’s 102nd birthday. For many years, he was the only ACLU volunteer lawyer in Maine. In 1968, Lou, Orlando Delogu, and a group of committed activists formed the Maine Civil Liberties Union, now the ACLU of Maine.
For many decades, the litigation work of the MCLU was carried out by volunteer attorneys who would meet each month to divide up the requests for legal assistance. In 2004, the MCLU hired me as the organization’s first staff attorney, and Lou was one of the first people to reach out. He told me how excited he was about this new development and what it would mean for the people of Maine. And, he told me about how far the organization had come since its founding.
We now have seven lawyers on our staff of fifteen people, including our executive director, Molly Curren Rowles. We are in the legislature every week. We are building out a new community engagement and education program. We have dedicated communications, development, and operations staff. We have a class action lawsuit against the state over inadequate public defense services. And just this week — Lou’s birthday week — we were a part of the team that sued the president over his unconstitutional attack on birthright citizenship (and we won).
All that the ACLU of Maine can accomplish today is because of what Lou Scolnik and a small group of activists started 57 years ago. Over the years, when Lou would hear about something we were doing or read about our work in the newspaper, he would call me up and want to know all about it: who were our clients, what were we trying to accomplish, did we think we might prevail. And after I shared everything, he would say, “That’s terrific!”
I’m now the longest-serving staff member of the ACLU of Maine, so I get to be the one to tell my younger colleagues about how far we’ve come as an organization, and how terrific it is that we can accomplish so much. And, when I do, I hear Lou’s voice in my head. May his memory be forever a blessing.
Read our remembrance of Justice Scolnik following his passing on October 10, 2024, at age 101.
