[M]ONTPELIER — Allen Gilbert is stepping down as executive director of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the organization announced Monday.
Gilbert said he will stay on until the organization finds his replacement, which he expects will take three to four months. A succession committee, led by board Chair James Morse, has begun a nationwide search for a new director. Gilbert said he’s willing to stay longer, if necessary, to allow the organization to find the right replacement.
“It’s been a great run. Twelve years is a long time. It’s a full-throttle job, and I just need to slow down,” Gilbert said in an interview Monday.
Gilbert has had health problems in the last year, but he said he plans to stay active.
“It’s not just bicycle riding,” either, he said. Gilbert has a list of at least 15 public policy projects that he’d like to tackle, though he didn’t go into the specifics.
Gilbert, who just turned 65, said he needs to work at a pace that will allow him to look after his health if he is to get to those projects.
As executive director, Gilbert added staff and hired ACLU Vermont’s first staff attorney. He also moved the group’s offices from the Vermont College of Fine Arts on East State Street in Montpelier to Elm Street, much closer to the Statehouse.
“The growth in staff and the strategic location are symbolic of Allen’s successful efforts to expand the ACLU’s work and visibility,” Morse said in a statement.
Gilbert said he was particularly proud of two cases during his tenure. The first was Guiles v. Marineau, a freedom of speech case that the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decided in 2006.
Zach Guiles, then a student at Williamstown Middle School, was sent home because he refused to take off or cover up a T-shirt ridiculing President George W. Bush. The school said the T-shirt, which depicted Bush’s history with alcohol and drugs, violated its dress code.
The ACLU took that case, arguing the school was silencing Guiles’ political speech commenting on Bush’s past behavior, Gilbert said. After a split decision in U.S. District Court, both sides appealed, and the ACLU won in circuit court.
“It takes some guts as a young person to be willing to complain and challenge your school’s authority over you,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert said he was also proud of another discrimination lawsuit the organization helped bring against the Wildflower Inn in Lyndonville, which in 2012 refused to host a wedding reception for a lesbian couple. The case was settled after the inn agreed to pay the couple a civil penalty.
For Gilbert, who spent years as a reporter in Vermont, what he loved most about the job was the variability. As in the news business, Gilbert said, he “never knew what was coming down the pike” as executive director of ACLU Vermont.
Digesting information quickly, deciding which battles to wage, and communicating to the public and policymakers why they were the right battles is what he loves most about the job, Gilbert said.
In the 12 years he’s led the organization, Gilbert said, he’s consistently been amazed at the permutations that those battles can take even on the same fundamental issues, such as discrimination and freedom of speech.
“A civil liberty is never completely and permanently won,” and fighting to protect them has been an honor and a privilege, Gilbert said.
