ACLU slams Mayor Parker for invoking the organization’s name amid ‘DEI rollback’
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker did not say that her administration worked directly with the ACLU in crafting its contracting policy. The organization still wants to distance itself from it.
The ACLU’s Pennsylvania chapter slammed Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration for invoking the organization’s name during a news conference this week, saying the group was not involved in what its leaders described as the mayor’s “DEI rollback.”
In a blistering statement issued late Wednesday, the ACLU-PA said Parker’s use of the organization’s name during a news conference announcing controversial changes to the city’s contracting policies created “the impression that the city’s decisions were vetted by our constitutional experts and aligned with our values.”
That was not the case, the group said.
“ACLU-PA was not consulted nor involved,” the statement said. “We welcome genuine collaboration with city leadership on policies that advance justice, liberty, and equity, especially for historically marginalized communities. Until such a partnership occurs, we ask that the administration refrain from using our name as a buzzword seal of approval.”
The Parker administration pushed back, with City Solicitor Renee Garcia saying Thursday that officials “were clear” that the administration consulted with an attorney who worked for the city’s outside counsel and who later went to work for the ACLU.
“We didn’t give ‘impressions,’” Garcia said, “we just gave the facts.”
Still, the civil rights group’s distancing from Parker was the latest criticism the mayor faced over her decision to eliminate a decades-old program that aimed to direct a significant portion of the city’s contracting dollars to firms owned by people of color, women, and people with disabilities.
Parker and her administration said the decision was made to align city policies with shifting legal precedent that has threatened affirmative action-style government programs. But critics have said the city preemptively conceded to the conservative legal movement that has sought to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the country.
Parker has said the city’s new system, which will incentivize contracting with businesses considered “small and local,” will ultimately be a more effective and equitable program.
In announcing her decision to make the city’s procurement policies race- and gender-neutral, Parker did not say that her administration worked directly with the ACLU in crafting its policy shift, nor did she mention the organization’s Pennsylvania chapter.
But Parker and members of her administration invoked the group’s name during the Tuesday news conference as they described the timeline of events that led up to the city’s decision to quietly change its policies this fall before announcing them publicly.
» READ MORE: Philadelphia is halting the use of some diversity targets in city contracts as national DEI backlash grows
Garcia said that the administration consulted in June with constitutional law experts, including Carmen Iguina González, who was at the time a Washington-based attorney at Hecker Fink, a law firm. Iguina González is a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, considered one of the most liberal jurists on the high court.
About three months after the meeting with city officials, Iguina González became the deputy director for immigration detention at the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
She could not be reached for comment.
» READ MORE: Philly Council president says Mayor Parker was ‘strategic’ in dropping diversity contracting goals
During Tuesday’s news conference, Vanessa Garrett Harley, a deputy mayor and a top aide to Parker, cited the meeting with Iguina González in response to critics who have called the administration’s policy shift “conservative.”
She said Iguina González counseled the city to strike race- and gender-based diversity goals from its contracting policies.
“People [are] saying, ‘Oh, it was a conservative move. It was a conservative way of looking at the law,’” Garrett Harley said. “She had clerked for Justice Sotomayor. She’s currently at the ACLU. So this was not somebody who would have had a conservative mindset.”
Garrett Harley continued: “If we’ve got people on all sides... saying, ‘You have no other choice,’ then we’ve got to pivot and do what we have to do to protect the fiscal responsibility of the City of Philadelphia.”
Later in the news conference, Parker also mentioned the ACLU, saying she was glad the city sought outside an outside opinion from Iguina González.
“I remember that meeting clearly,” Parker said. “And again — although she’s not with the firm, she made the transition and she’s now with the ACLU — I believe in her.”
This week was not the first time the ACLU has been at odds with Parker, a centrist Democrat who ran for mayor in 2023 on a tough-on-crime platform.
The group’s state chapter was critical of her while she campaigned and embraced the use of stop-and-frisk as a valuable policing tactic. The ACLU, which has long contended the practice is racially biased and ineffective, monitored the city’s use of stop-and-frisk for more than a decade.
And once Parker took office last year, Pennsylvania ACLU leaders expressed opposition to parts of her plan to address the open-air drug market in Kensington, including the so-called wellness court, a fast-track court for people accused of minor drug-related offenses.