1) The NDAA allows the indefinite detention of anyone, without charge or trial. Last year’s NDAA codified indefinite detention into law for the first time in American history. Those detention provisions authorize the president — and all future presidents — to order the military to pick up and indefinitely imprison people captured anywhere in the world, even far from any battlefield. This year’s NDAA extends those provisions.
2) The NDAA compromises Obama’s ability to keep his promise to close Guantanamo—a promise reiterated as recently as this fall. The NDAA restricts Obama’s ability to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo for repatriation, for resettlement in foreign countries, or for prosecution in federal criminal court. The New York Times published an editorial blog sharing our concerns yesterday. As ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero notes here, scores of men who have been held for nearly 11 years without being charged, including more than 80 of whom have been cleared for transfer, will have to endure another year of unlawful detention.
3) The NDAA contains a dangerous provision that requires the military to accommodate the conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs of service members without accounting for the harm those beliefs could cause to others. We strongly support accommodating beliefs, but there must be protections against illegal discrimination. According to Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, the provision has the potential to, “give rise to dangerous claims of a right to discriminate against not just lesbian, gay, and bisexual service members, but also women, religious minorities, and in the provision of health care.”
Encouragingly, in a signing statement accompanying the NDAA, the president recognized that the accommodation provision is unnecessary and ill-advised, and said he “remains fully committed to continuing the successful implementation of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and to protecting the rights of gay and lesbian service members.”
The ACLU will work to hold President Obama to that pledge, as well as to fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can – be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.
