ACLU Legal Director Wheeler to Resign Post to Pursue Other Goals

Betty Wheeler, the American Civil Liberties Union legal director who has engineered a resounding string of court victories in high-profile cases, announced Thursday that she will leave her job at the end of January.

Wheeler, 37, who has filled the San Diego ACLU’s only paid staff attorney slot since 1988, said she plans to take three months off before deciding what to do next. She said she simply wants time to do some “creative loitering” and to travel.

The ACLU plans a nationwide search for a replacement, said Linda Hills, executive director of the San Diego office.

“I am very sorry to see her leave,” Hills said. “I think that ACLU lawyers generally are among the best in the country, and Betty is among the best of the ACLU lawyers.”

With Wheeler as legal director, the ACLU has racked up a winning record in a remarkable number of headline-generating cases. It secured an injunction preventing abortion foes from blocking San Diego medical clinics. On free-speech grounds, it persuaded one court to overturn a curbside hiring ban in Encinitas and another to conclude that San Diego City College administrators had censored a “politically sensitive” play that touched on race-related issues.

The ACLU won court-ordered caps on inmate populations at the county’s jails and, just last week, persuaded a judge to impose a cap on the population at Juvenile Hall.

The only major case still remaining on Wheeler’s docket involves the legality of the large crosses atop Mt. Helix near La Mesa and Mt. Soledad in La Jolla.

A San Diego federal judge ruled last December that the two symbols are illegal, an improper mix of church and state, and had to come down. A federal appeals court is weighing the case.

“I think Betty is a brilliant attorney,” Hills said. “We have had a first-rate and very exciting legal program during her tenure as legal director.”

Wheeler said in an interview earlier this year that she believed her work was marked by an adherence to principle: “In our view, the client is not really the individual as much as it is the Bill of Rights.”

Wheeler said Thursday that she plans to remain in San Diego after her three months off, which begin Feb. 1. It is unclear what kind of job she will look for later, she said, adding that she expects civil rights work to remain her priority.

Wheeler came to San Diego in February, 1988. The San Diego ACLU was so taken with her 10-year record of civil liberties work in her hometown of Amarillo, Tex.--she handled the first police misconduct cases ever brought in Amarillo--that she was hired even though she had not yet passed the California bar exam. She soon did.

Wheeler is a graduate of Colorado Women’s College in Denver. She went to law school at Georgetown University in Washington.