Advocate for Civil Liberties
An alternative title for this story is “PAID ADVOCATE FOR PEOPLE AND DOGS” – you are invited to read on to learn why.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Sarah Wunsch (SW) was born in Brooklyn, New York City. Her mother was a librarian; her father was a mechanical engineer.
CHILDHOOD
Before she was even a teenager, SW was always sympathetic to people who seemed to need more help and protection than others. This extended to watching sports with her parents, who were diehard fans of the Boston Red Sox. SW recalls that “If the Red Sox were clobbering the other team, she’d start rooting for the other team because she felt badly for them.”
EDUCATION
SW’s early commitment to advocacy for others was honed during her years as a student at Cornell University.
FIRST JOBS ARE NEVER A BINDING CAREER COMMITMENT
Not yet sure of a final career path but needing a job for earnings to support herself financially, SW’s first choice of a job was to follow her mother’s career path as a librarian, rather than pursuing additional, specialized education to follow her father’s path into mechanical engineering.
Bored by the confines of a library, SW next chose a career involving more human interaction, as an 8th grade social studies teacher. In this context, SW presented current political / social issues to her students for discussion, including personal rights under the U.S. Constitution and the serious effects upon people’s freedoms when their legal rights are ignored.
COMMITMENT TO ADVOCACY FOR OTHERS LEADS TO A CAREER
While discussing important Constitution issues with her students, SW came to the realization that for herself to have the most effect as an advocate for people who were being systematically denied their legal rights, while preserving her personal freedom to make her own career decisions, she should be licensed to practice law, which, of course, would require attending and graduating from an accredited law school, passing a state’s Bar Exam and then gaining some real world experience while working with seasoned lawyers who would share their practical tips for success in a courtroom or in an appeals court hearing.
So, SW enrolled in the Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, eventually graduating, and passing the NJ Bar exam to commence her next career as a licensed attorney.
SW’s first job within the legal profession was as a lawyer for the Union of Electrical, Radio and Mechanical Workers. From there, she worked for the Constitutional Rights Center in New York, followed by serving as Director of the Cambridge (Mass.) Human Rights Commission, before moving to the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of Massachusetts.
While employed by the ACLU, SW championed citizen legal protections while bringing innovative challenges to the courts in a wide range of causes:
- Safeguarding a wide range of public behavior, such as tattooing, wearing certain hairstyles in school, videotaping on-duty police activity, and panhandling for small amounts of change. During her litigation advocacy for panhandlers, SW told the court: “If we ever end up a society where you can’t ask for help, we’re in deep trouble.” The Massachusetts court then ruled that in that state, peaceful requests for spare change or other kinds of help were protected forms of free speech.
- Persuading the New York Court of Appeals to rule that married men may be prosecuted for raping their wives. With that decision in 1984, New York joined 17 other states that had abolished the ‘marital rape exemption’, when its Chief Justice wrote that “A married woman has the same right to control her own body as does an unmarried woman.”
- Challenging racial profiling at Boston’s Logan International Airport.
- Opposed infringement of the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
- SW even ghostwrote a letter to the Massachusetts state legislature on behalf of her bull terrier, “Czonka,” opposing a bill that would have forced owners to muzzle and chain some dog breeds while in public. The letter stated: “I am a bull terrier, and I am proud of it. I am also a pacifist; I run home when I hear another dog growl, even when I’m not the target of the growl. So, I really resent it when legislators start making prejudiced statements about an entire breed. Even my friends the pit bulls can be perfectly nice dogs. It’s not the breed. The problem lies with bad human owners and individual dogs.” Eventually, “Czonka’s testimony won the day” as the Governor signed a law prohibiting specific breed-based laws.
CAREER SATISFACTION
SW’s career in championing citizens’ protections on issues of race, gender and free speech has positively affected not only the specific individuals involved in each litigation, but U.S. citizens everywhere, then living and for generations thereafter – assuming future law makers (legislators) or law interpreters (courts) continue to honor the rights which SW won for her clients and others in like circumstances.
_________________________________________________________________________
This career story is based on several sources: An obituary written by Sam Roberts, published by The New York Times on September 8, 2023, plus internet research.
