Marjorie Heins

Marjorie Heins is an activist, writer, and founder of the Free Expression Policy Project (http://fepproject.org/), a U.S. based organization dedicated to exploring challenges to free expression from censorship, media regulation, and intellectual property laws. She began the project in 2000 while at the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC).

Heins founded and directed the Arts Censorship Project at the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991-1998, during the years in which arts censorship were a particularly controversial and active field. During that time, she worked on a number of high-profile arts censorship matters. Heins was co-counsel on the ACLU's Reno v. ACLU brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately led to striking the Communications Decency Act as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. Heins also worked on Karen Finley's lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Arts.^[1]

In the 1980s as staff counsel at the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU, she litigated numerous civil rights matters, including LGBT rights and free speech. One matter involved a litigation against Boston University for the discharge of the Dean of Students on the basis of her complaints about discrimination on the part of the university.^[2] This story is told in Cutting the Mustard (1988).

Heins was chief of the Civil Rights Division of the Office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts and visiting professor at Boston College Law School. She was a journalist in the 1970s in San Francisco, and an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War.

Heins was admitted to the New York bar in 1993 and the Massachusetts bar in 1978. She received her J.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School in 1978, and a B.A., with distinction, from Cornell University in 1967. She is currently an adjunct professor at New York University.

Bibliography

Books

• Not in Front of the Children: 'Indecency', Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (2001) (ISBN 0-8090-7399-4)
• Sex, Sin and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars (1993; rev. 1998) (ISBN 1-56584-048-8)
• Cutting the Mustard: Affirmative Action and the Nature of Excellence (1988), with Pat Oliphant, illustrator (ISBN 0-571-12974-9)
• "Banning Words: A Comment on 'Words that Wound'" 18 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 585 (1983)
• Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story of Los Siete de la Raza (1972) (ISBN 0-87867-010-6)

Reports and Articles

• Indecency: The ongoing American debate over sex, children, free speech, and dirty words (1997; report)
• AlterNet Articles

Notable Cases Litigated

• Urofsky v. Gilmore, 216 F.3d 401 (4th Cir. 2000) (argued for professors challenging constitutionality of Virginia law restricting access to sexually explicit material on work computers)
• Finley v. National Endowment for the Arts, 100 F.3d 671 (9th Cir. 1996) (ACLU co-counsel for artists challenging NEA funding criteria as impermissibly vague)
• American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, 929 F.Supp. 824 (E.D.Pa. 1996) (ACLU co-counsel for coalition challenging statute restricting "indecent speech" on the Internet)

Awards and honors

• Eli M. Oboler Award (2002, American Library Association) for best published work in intellectual freedom for Not in Front of the Children (2001)
• Luther McNair Award (1991, Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts) for significant contributions to civil liberties
• "First Amendment Hero" (1992 & 1993, Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression)

References

1. ^ Finley v. National Endowment of the Arts, 100 F.3d 671 (9th Cir. 1996).
2. ^ Barbara Lightner, "Interview with Marjorie Heins", IOBA Standard, v.3, no. 3 (Aug. 2002).

External links

• FEPProject.org at the NYU Brennan Center for Justice

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