Peck presses for free speech as if he’s still with ACLU

Friday, Aug. 28, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Sam Morris

Gary Peck, former executive director of the Nevada ACLU, calls himself "a ninth grade civics teacher at heart."

Gary Peck has for 13 years been the face — and high-volume voice — of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.

Last month he stepped down as executive director, ending a tenure marked by a series of high-profile legal battles, including over First Amendment activities on Fremont Street and the Strip, the rights of the homeless and indigent criminal defendants and the manner in which fatal police shootings are reviewed.

Last week Peck was interviewed on KNPR-FM’s public affairs show “State of Nevada” by host Dave Berns. The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Berns: It just doesn’t sound right after 13 years to call you the former director of the ACLU of Nevada.

Peck: It’s very sweet of you to say that. I appreciate that a lot. I certainly poured a lot of heart and soul and life’s energy into that job.

Berns: First, I want to talk to you about the tone of debate and free speech in this country right now. As we look at the health care debate going on right now, and whether people are standing up or yelling, or whether they are stating their minds vociferously, what do you see when it comes to the tone of free speech?

Peck: I tried to conduct my office with civility. I went out of my way to never personalize, to never vilify, to never question people’s motives or integrity if I disagreed with them. It certainly would be nice, and would get rid of a lot of background noise, if people could engage in the debate in that fashion. But there’s nothing new in America about people standing up and yelling and screaming and engaging in histrionics. I mean, that’s part of the package. That’s what comes with free speech. Nobody ever said it was clean. Nobody ever said it wasn’t incredibly messy, but it is what it is. I heard one lawmaker who said, “The fact that you can yell and scream at me this way and hold up signs that I consider profoundly offensive, that are caricatures of our president that look like Adolf Hitler, is testament to free speech and the First Amendment.” And it actually is.

Berns: Which is the classical ACLU story. Back in the 1970s you had Nazi activists marching in Skokie, Ill., which is a very Jewish community, 30 years after the end of the Holocaust, and the ACLU stood up for the free speech rights of those pro-Nazi marchers.

Peck: Just as the ACLU of Nevada has stood up for the rights of all sorts of people whose views and political goals diverge from those of the ACLU. A good example would be people who were gathering signatures on ballot initiatives opposing legislation that would advance lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender rights. We stood up for their right to be in public spaces and gather those signatures because we believe that is crucial to the democratic process. We hewed to principle unwaveringly, I would like to believe, during my tenure with the ACLU, and I have no reason to believe that the ACLU of Nevada will not continue to do just that under new leadership.

Berns: A good number of reporters and journalists listen to this program, and we’ve all had the Gary Peck phone call saying, “Why didn’t you have me on the program? Why didn’t you have me in to talk about such and such? Why didn’t you think about this question?” You’ve always been very passionate, something of a pain, in fact, for many reporters in this town.

Peck: I think Jon Ralston put it best in his “Flashpoint” the other day. He said Gary Peck is annoying and he’s really good at it. There’s probably a lot of truth to that. Look, I’m a ninth grade civics teacher at heart. That’s what brought me to the ACLU. I believe very deeply, very passionately in the importance of a free press. I think the Fourth Estate plays an enormously important role in checks on government, when government overreaches its authority, so I think it was really important to have our voices heard.

Berns: When you talk about the Fourth Estate — the news media — you primarily think about TV, radio and newspapers. But when you look at the Internet, the messiness of the Web, and everything that cycles out there, the lack of traditional journalistic standards, are you OK with that?

Peck: I’m totally OK with that. That, too, is part of the mess of free speech and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. We’ve always said the best antidote to bad speech is good speech and lots of it. That’s just another venue where people can speak their minds, be heard, share ideas, get involved, engage themselves civilly, and that’s a good thing.

Berns: One person’s bad speech is another person’s good speech and vice versa.

Peck: Absolutely. When we defended the rights of everyone on Las Vegas Boulevard to engage in the full panoply of free speech rights …

Berns: Protesting, pamphleting ...

Peck: Right. That wasn’t always very popular. Indeed, almost more than any cause that we took up, we took a lot of flak for that. People said, “What about those smut peddlers? It’s disgusting. They hand out all this stuff that’s just incredibly offensive to people.” And I said, “One person’s ugly, offensive speech is another person’s wonderful, great speech.”

The people who were saying smut peddlers should be shut down would never in a million years say that labor union demonstrators should be shut down, or anti-war protesters should be shut down. But there are plenty of people out there who do believe they should be shut down. And once you make speech available to some people, but not to others, it becomes a privilege and not a right, and that’s a problem.

Berns: Let’s get back to these town-hall meetings. So someone who values free and open debate such as yourself, when you hear that members of Nevada’s Congressional delegation aren’t having town-hall meetings to discuss health care reform, does that trouble you?

Peck: I’ll say what I always said during my tenure as ACLU director: I’m not a mind reader. I can’t plumb the depths of their hearts, I don’t know why they’ve decided not to have town-hall meetings. Maybe they have very good reasons for doing that. I certainly think town-hall meetings are a good thing, but I would leave it to them to exercise their best judgment. The First Amendment certainly doesn’t obligate them to have town-hall meetings.

Berns: Nevadans like to think of this state as having a libertarian, devil-may-care attitude toward government. Do you see it that way?

Peck: It was actually one of the things that brought me here in the first place. I sort of looked out at the Nevada landscape and I said to myself, “You know what? This is a quirky, peculiar state.” It really does tend to be true that conservatism in Nevada is more libertarian, generally speaking, than a lot of places, and that has served the ACLU well. We are nonpartisan. We have many times stepped into the breach to defend conservatives because we didn’t think we were defending individuals, we thought we were defending principles.

My favorite lawsuit maybe in the entire time I was here was a challenge to state ethics laws that created a speech police force — a candidate, anyone, could be fined for making statements that were false or misleading about a political candidate. The plaintiffs on that lawsuit were Chris Giunchigliani and Bob Beers.

Berns: A Democrat (Giunchigliani) and a Republican (Beers) — a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican.

Peck: Exactly. The person who was viewed by many as the most liberal Democrat and the person who was viewed by many as the most conservative Republican.

Berns: So what did you make of the recent verdict in the case where Republican state Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian sued state Sen. Mike Schneider over claims that were made during their 2004 campaign? Tarkanian came away with a verdict in his favor and money. Tom Mitchell, writing in the Review-Journal, argued that this could have a chilling effect on free speech when it comes to campaigns. Do you agree?

Peck: I haven’t read the papers in the case. I’m not intimately familiar with the details. It’s a very tough threshold to meet when you’re talking about public figures. I do think there needs to be broad, very broad latitude when it comes to political campaigns for people to speak their minds.

Berns: What is the responsibility that comes with free speech? Certainly there is the classic Supreme Court ruling that someone cannot stand up in a crowded theater and shout “Fire!” because there are public safety concerns. But where does free speech end and responsibility begin?

Peck: That was a ruling — that you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater — that has been widely misunderstood. It was meant to put very severe limits on the government’s ability to censor speech. The ruling stands for the principle that unless speech creates an immediate threat to public safety, it becomes very problematic and impermissible for the government to censor that speech.

Certainly, with free speech comes responsibility, but the answer to irresponsible speech is not censorship. The answer to irresponsible speech is responsible speech.

Berns: Does it bother you that we don’t have public access television channels like many communities do where the average citizen can get on the air?

Peck: I can’t tell you how profoundly that bothers me. We spent a year fighting for that kind of public access channel. Unfortunately, we were up against very powerful forces and stakeholders and we lost. The argument those folks kept making was, “If we have public access television we’ll have pornography on the airwaves.” It’s possible to impose standards on public access television that makes it impermissible to broadcast material that is illegal. But other than that, I think that people can change the channel if something is offensive to them.

Berns: You’ve been asked why you left the ACLU of Nevada, and you’ve said you felt it was just time to move on and that the reasons are a lot less important than the fact that the parting is amicable. Why are you leaving?

Peck: I just think it’s time. When I came here I took on the challenge of building an ACLU that would become an effective part of and a permanent player on the Nevada landscape. I believe I’ve done that. The ACLU now has nine employees. It is on very sound financial footing that ensures its long-term sustainability. It is widely respected even by those who we have fought with over the years, and I just thought it was time to move on and look for some new challenges. Maybe even in Nevada, maybe.

Berns: So, what’s next?

Peck: I’m going to catch my breath. I’m 58 and I have a 4 1/2-year-old baby. The time I can spend with her is incredibly precious to me. I’m going to spend a few weeks hanging out with her and talk to folks who do political consulting work if I believe in what they are doing.

I certainly want to put myself in a position that the next job I take on, I can take on with the same conviction and passion of the last one. Today’s newspaper featured a story about the domestic partnership bill that was passed last legislative session here in Nevada. We played a very important part in getting that bill passed. I’m very proud of that. Maybe I could look at doing that kind of work on the national level. I’m going to look at ... myriad ... possibilities and try to come up with something that makes sense for me at this time of my life.

Let’s not consider this a wake, let’s consider this a celebration. I hope there are plenty of opportunities to speak to important law and policy issues in the years to come.

Transcribed by Mary Manning