This is one in a series of profiles marking the 60th anniversary of the ACLU of Kentucky’s founding. Each week through December 2015 we will highlight the story of one member, client, case, board or staff member that has been an integral part of our organization’s rich history.
Bill Stone
“I think if anyone feels strongly about an issue and wants to undertake either legal representation for someone or involvement in times of change, my example here is that one lawyer with a group of clients can actually change the course of constitutional law history.”
When Bill Stone volunteered in 1978 to represent a group of plaintiffs challenging a new state law requiring all public school classrooms to display a copy of the Ten Commandments, he had no idea what he was in for. “I didn’t expect that I would be spending two years of my life on the case,” he said.
Stone, a young lawyer who had only joined the ACLU the year before, began work on the landmark case by looking for what he called “perfect plaintiffs.”
“We had a mother with children in school, a Jewish rabbi, we had a nonbeliever,” Stone explained. “I honestly thought it was a case I would file at Franklin Circuit Court and probably win within a month.” The results were not what he expected.
After losing in the circuit court, Stone pursued the case through the Kentucky legal system and all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he won the case without the aid of oral arguments. Stone explained that his case “set the standard for religion in the classroom,” and is still cited in new decisions today.
After his Ten Commandments case, Stone worked on many other cases for the ACLU-KY. However, he points to his work in 2006 with Jenessa Bryan and Emi Ramirez to set up a Youth Rights Leadership Conference as something that he is “extremely proud of.”
When the national ACLU notified affiliates of potential grants for youth programs, Stone wrote up a proposal, and the ACLU-KY was awarded one of the grants. He, Bryan, and Ramirez then went to work designing a program full of speakers and activities. “We put the whole agenda together and selected the student organizers who helped us put on the program,” Stone said. “I’m probably as proud of doing that youth rights conference as I am of any litigation because I think it’s been continuing since 2006."