A Conversation with the ACLU: Speech, Privacy, and Big Tech

Free speech is a right many Americans hold near and dear to their hearts. But at times, we disagree on the boundaires, benefits, and definition of those simple three words in the First Amendment: freedom of speech. While we have dueled it out in courts across the country, questions of speech consistently make their way to the Supreme Court and are a key focus of one of the nation's leading legal advocacy groups, the ACLU.

Joining us at Manny's to discuss the current state of free speech laws across the country, how technology complicates the question of speech, and how the ACLU is working to protect the rights of all in the US are two phenomenal ACLU staff members. Emerson Sykes is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and Shilpi Agarwal is the legal director at the ACLU of Northern California!

Emerson Sykes is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project where he focuses on First Amendment free speech protections. From 2019-2020, he was also host of At Liberty, the ACLU’s weekly podcast.

Prior to joining the ACLU in 2018, he was a legal advisor for Africa at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). In that role, he provided technical legal assistance to civil society leaders, government officials, law students, and other stakeholders from across Africa to improve the legal framework protecting the freedom of association, assembly, and expression on the regional and national levels. From 2012-13, he served as assistant general counsel to the New York City Council, where he worked to increase transparency for council members’ discretionary spending, and contributed to the council’s friend-of-the-court brief against the NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk” program. In 2011, Emerson was a senior policy fellow in the office of a Member of Parliament in Ghana. Emerson previously conducted research and wrote about U.S. foreign policy for The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, and worked for the National Democratic Institute’s Central and West Africa Team.

Emerson holds a J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar for public interest law, and a Master of Public Affairs degree from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He earned his undergraduate degree in political science at Stanford.

Shilpi Agarwal is the legal director at the ACLU of Northern California. In that role, she provides strategic guidance that shapes the organization’s policy portfolio and its litigation docket. She also oversees every affirmative case brought by the organization and provides direct support to litigation teams.

In her previous role as a staff attorney and senior staff attorney, Shilpi worked on a range of issues including criminal justice, fourth amendment privacy, abolition of the death penalty, free speech, and voting rights. Some of her notable cases include Mathieu v. City of Oakland, which led to the repeal of an Oakland loitering ordinance that was being used to over-police and harass public housing residents; Senior and Disability Action v. Padilla, which secured a court order requiring additional public offices in California to provide voter registration services to people on public assistance and with disabilities; Masters v. California Department of Corrections, which challenged the State of California’s lethal injection protocol as violative of the laws governing state agencies; and Potts v. Trinity County, which secured a federal court injunction protecting free speech rights of a government employee.

Prior to joining the ACLU, Shilpi was an assistant federal public defender in San Francisco, where she regularly briefed and argued issues to uphold the rights of indigent people accused of federal crimes. In that role, Shilpi served as lead counsel in multiple federal trials and argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to that, Shilpi was an associate at Keker & Van Nest (now Keker, Van Nest & Peters), where she worked on complex civil litigation, criminal defense matters, and trials.

Shilpi received a bachelor’s degree in both political science and economics from Stanford University, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she spent a semester working with the Legal Director of ACLU’s national office. After law school, Shilpi clerked for Judge Keith P. Ellison in the Southern District of Texas and then for Judge Betty B. Fletcher in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

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