On that date, Mitchell is expected to meet with Zachary Heiden, legal director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union; Betsy Smith, executive director of EqualityMaine; and Katherine Knox, an attorney Bernstein Shur, Sawyer, & Nelson and lobbyist for EqualityMaine.
CCL administrator Mike Hein learned of the meeting following a Freedom of Access request made to Mitchell’s office seeking documents referencing conversations or meetings with the Maine Civil Liberties Union or any “gay rights” organization, including the Human Rights Campaign, Equality Maine and others regarding the outcome of the Nov. 3 referendum vote on Question 1.
In response, Hein obtained a memo from Peggy Schaffer, who works in Senator Mitchell’s office, entitled “Next Steps,” describing the Dec. 9 meeting and listing attendees.
Hein asserts the next steps are to re-group and plan following the defeat of Question 1. The Nov. 3 results showed 300,848 Maine voters in favor of overturning the same-sex marriage law and 267,828 opposed. CCL seeks access to the meeting and is calling for it to be open to the press.
David Loughran, communications director for the Senate President’s Office said the meeting is like any other.
“I’m looking at her calendar and she has at least seven meetings on that day,” David Loughran, communication director of the Senate President’s Office, said Monday. “She has several meetings on the state budget, jobs, the economy… She’s doing the business of the legislature and she will continue to meet with constituents.”
Meeting with the Maine Civil Liberties Union is no different than any other meeting, he said.
Zachary Heiden, an attorney with the Maine Civil Liberties Union, said it’s common for the group to meet yearly with both Senate and House leadership and sees Wednesday’s meeting as being in the same vein.
“We have a mission of promoting civil rights and we do that in the court of public opinion and in the legislature,” he said Monday. “Part of how we do that is we meet with as many legislators as possible and we meet with senate and house leadership to talk about a whole range of concerns of which we are advocating. We do this every session.”
Just as the MCLU would not attend another group’s meeting with lawmakers, he assumes other groups would not wish to attend the MCLU meeting.
“It’s our understanding leadership meets with anyone, so I don’t think these are exclusive meetings, but we want our meeting to be about our concerns,” Heiden said. “I would expect that this other organization would do the same with their meetings.”
Heiden says MCLU’s commitment to equal protection under the law is constant and will not change following the Nov. 3 vote.
“I think we will probably talk about the recent election. It was a major campaign – and legislation – and we definitely talk about what happened in every election,” he said.
“They seem to hope that this issue is over,” he said of the Christian Civic League. “This [the referendum] was obviously a setback, but we and all the other people who are committed to full legal equality for gay and lesbians see this as a civil rights struggle of our lifetime. We’re not giving up. Five years. Ten years… whatever it takes, this is part of our commitment to civil rights.”
