The American Civil Liberties Committee is opposed to the pending bill to bar appeals to race hatred from the mails.
The House of Representatives subcommittee investigating the bill today made public a letter from Arthur Garfield Hays, general counsel of the ACLU, urging that racial hatred cannot be legislated out of existence,” and emphasizing that “only education and tolerance can do that.”
The letter also pointed out that a similar law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of New Jersey in 1941. Subcommittee chairman Semuel A. Weiss, Pennsylvania Democrat, introduced one of the bills. His group is expected to report them favorably to the full Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads this week.
Hays’ letter, written on Oct. 15, was made public as part of 96 pages of testimony and letters on the bill, almost all favorable. It pointed out that the ACLU is opposed to the postmaster general’s power to bar seditious and obscene matter from the hails, and therefore opposed to any extension of that power.
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