With the end of the Cold War, national interests gained renewed prominence, with major implications for civil rights and civil liberties. First, years of deficit spending on national defense and other programs, as well as changing political priorities, abruptly forced the nation into an era of fiscal restraint marked by unprecedented cuts in domestic programs. Many government programs, including those previously viewed as untouchable entitlement programs, quickly were becoming casualties of the new priorities. In addition, because programs devoted to assisting the nation’s disadvantaged, including the federally subsidized Legal Services Corporation, also suffered budget cuts, many low-income people faced severe economic hardship and the loss of invaluable legal counsel. Finally, long-established constitutional principles affecting individual rights, as well as civil liberties generally, were under attack as the changing political climate of the 1980s took firmer hold around the country in the new decade.

The Section's work also necessarily took several directions. Its concern for the most disadvantaged focused on supporting expansion of the federal Medicaid program to provide coverage for all children and pregnant women with family incomes less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, supporting due process protections for persons subject to eviction for drug-related crimes in public housing projects, and opposing denial of public benefits to families because of factors such as the birth of additional children while receiving such benefits.

Recognizing that conditions affecting children and youth translate into problems of crime, homelessness, and poor education, the Section also helped promote juvenile justice standards, rights of children placed in foster care, and the preservation of children’s citizen rights regardless of the citizenship or immigration status of their parents.

Working with the ABA Center on Children and the Law, the Section of International Law and Practice, and others, the Section also co-sponsored a resolution urging U. S. Senate ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children at a time when the United States was one of the few holdouts to signing and ratifying the convention. Subsequently, the Section initiated an ongoing study of the state law impacts of ratification. Preliminary findings of impacts in the area of public education were presented at a national conference in March 1998 and published in the Georgetown Law Center's Journal of Homelessness and Poverty.

Work on the Section's traditional issues also continued. The Section addressed women's health and welfare issues through support of increased federal government health research reforms that would allocate increased funding for research on women’s health issues and would include women in clinical trials performed by the National Institutes of Health. The Section also developed policies addressing inequities in the receipt of Social Security benefits by older, widowed, or divorced women.

Reproductive health issues were a particularly urgent concern, particularly in light of governmental proposals to tie family planning benefits to public benefits. In 1993, for example, the ABA approved a Section-sponsored resolution opposing legislation that would require a woman to use a contraceptive as a penalty for any conduct, as a condition of probation or parole, or as a condition of eligibility for public benefits.

But no issue was more controversial in the early 1990s--either within the ABA or in the country as a whole -- than the issue of abortion and a woman=s right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy. Courts, legislatures, religious organizations and individuals remained deeply divided over the issue, and ABA members were as well. At the ABA Midyear Meeting in February 1990, the Section therefore presented to the House of Delegates a resolution, co-sponsored by numerous other entities to oppose legislation or other governmental action interfering with the confidential relationship between a pregnant woman and her physician or with the decision to terminate a pregnancy. After an intense debate, the resolution was approved, but the position was rescinded at the ABA Annual Meeting in August 1990. After another highly charged debate in the House in August 1992, another policy opposing restrictions on the right to choose and supporting protection of that right consistent with the U. S. Supreme Court's holding in Roe v. Wade. While the policy itself has remained settled since 1992, many members may consider the right to choose the quintessential "controversial" and "divisive" issue within the Association.

As "English Only" proposals gained attention, interest, and political credibility, the Section engaged in the language rights debate, supporting the use of languages other than English at schools, on the job, or in the conduct of business, consistent with the obligation of governments and public institutions to ensure that its programs serve all community members fairly and effectively. The Section also addressed federal drug offenses sentencing guidelines and, with assistance from the Standing Committee on Drug Abuse and others, persuaded the House of Delegates to urge correction of such disparate sentencing provisions.

After decades of progress, even civil rights protections were being severely attacked by the beginning of the decade. Perhaps the Section's greatest challenge in the civil rights area was its ultimately successful effort in summer 1995 to put the ABA on record behind appropriate use of affirmative action as a legal remedy to address discrimination in housing, education, and employment. The U. S. Supreme Court's June 1995 decision in Adarand Construction, Inc. v. Pena clearly had narrowed the types and scope of permissible affirmative action initiatives, several states had taken action to end their programs, and the Clinton Administration was under pressure to end all federal affirmative action programs. But the Section, the national minority bars, the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, the Commission on Opportunities for Minorities in the Profession, and other co-sponsors of the proposed resolution had concluded that continuation of affirmative action was imperative as one means to address a deep-seated problem not yet resolved. Proponents argued that affirmative action is a measured, effective response to discrimination, designed to achieve real, not illusory, equality for women and people of color, and that even under Adarand, properly and narrowly tailored race- or gender-conscious programs remained permissible responses to past and present discrimination. There was dissent in the House of Delegates, but after some debate, the new policy was approved. Shortly thereafter, the Administration announced that its policy would be to "mend, not end" affirmative action and undertook a review of federal programs to ensure their compliance with the Court's new standard.

During the 1990s, the Section also sponsored several programs and projects to examine civil rights trends and promote civil rights advancement. With the 1992 inauguration of its Thurgood Marshall Award, presented that first year to Justice Marshall himself in one of his last major public appearances, the Section began a series of ABA Annual Meeting programs on civil rights issues, including voting rights, fair housing, public school education and funding, and--this year--the use of litigation vs. dispute resolution in contemporary civil rights cases. At the 1999 ABA Midyear Meeting in Los Angeles, the Section sponsored a program with Court TV and the Anti-defamation League that brought together the city's leaders and civil rights activists to discuss progress made in race relations since the city's major civil rights disturbances in 1992. The Section also continues to raise civil rights consciousness within the legal community through projects supported by the Bernard G. and Geraldine R. Segal Fund for Civil Rights, established in 1992.

Another traditional concern of the Section—protection of religious, speech, and association rights guaranteed under the First Amendment—also has demanded increased attention in the 1990s. In 1995, the Section led one major fight against a major challenge to the First Amendment principle of separation of church and state. Together with the Section of Litigation, the Section proposed and ABA policy position opposing the adoption of a Constitutional amendment or federal legislation that would officially sanction prayer in public schools. At the time, numerous bills designed to support such activity had been introduced in Congress, and the topic generated considerable debate in the House of Delegates. With some opposition, the proposal was approved.

Early in the decade, the Section proposed a resolution supporting the right of Native Americans to exercise their religious traditions with minimum interference by the federal government. In 1997, the Section developed an ABA amicus curiae brief supporting the constitutionality of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which the Congress had enacted in 1994 in response to a 1990 U. S. Supreme Court decision upholding an employer's right to fire an employee who failed a substance abuse test, even if the use of the substance was part of the employee's religious observance. The brief focused on the importance of Congress' ability to use its own powers under the 14th Amendment to protect individual rights, including First Amendment religious freedom rights, as well as civil rights. But the Court struck down the law, leaving open the question of Congress' appropriate 14th Amendment powers in other contexts.
During this decade, the Section also has been active in First Amendment free speech and privacy issues. A 1990 resolution, for example, supported reauthorization of the National Endowment for the Arts program with no restrictions on the content of NEA grants, and a 1993 resolution opposed the use of government funding programs as a means of suppressing speech activities by government grantees.

The Section also has made significant contributions to the health care policy debate. In 1996, the Section authored a resolution that supported protecting the confidentiality of personally identifiable health information in either paper or electronic form, and in 1999, developed a supplemental policy advocating further protections in response to technological developments affecting data collection and confidentiality. The Section was invited to provide testimony on pending privacy rights legislation before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on this new policy position.

Probably no other activity in the decade, however, has had a greater impact within the profession and around the country than the Section's work relating to the death penalty. In 1997, the Section-sponsored resolution, co-sponsored by the Litigation Section, calling on jurisdictions that impose capital punishment not to carry out the death penalty until they can implement policies and procedures consistent with longstanding ABA policy intended to ensure that death penalty cases are administered fairly and impartially, in accordance with due process, and minimize the risk that innocent persons may be executed. The proposal initially had been submitted for House consideration in summer 1996, following Congressional actions further restricting habeas corpus rights of appeal and defunding capital case resource centers. Although the Section withdrew the proposal temporarily to permit interested ABA members more time to study the report and recommendation, the Section went forward with the proposed resolution at the Midyear Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, out of a conviction that the ABA and the legal profession could wait no longer to address a growing need for competent, adequately funded capital case representation in a period when the number of death penalty cases was climbing. The resolution also was intended to focus attention on the series of policies developed by the Criminal Justice Section, the IRR Section, and the Section of Litigation since the 1970s to address some of the most critical concerns in death penalty cases today.

After strong and thoughtful debate, the resolution passed with an easy majority that surprised even some proponents; but it was clear from the vote that the resolution passed precisely because lawyers, regardless of their areas of practice, had concluded that the death penalty system is not working fairly in the United States today. The House action prompted unprecedented media coverage, including editorial commentary, much of it positive, in outlets around the country, and interest in and coverage of the issue has been continued since then. In addition, the resolution has prompted calls for similar action in numerous other bar associations, as well as state legislative consideration of moratorium legislation. In June 1999, the Nebraska legislature became the first to approve a state moratorium, and although the governor vetoed that measure, the legislature subsequently approved funding for a study of death penalty processes in that state. The Section has established a Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation to track developments and has summarized them in a September 1998 report, entitled, Refocusing the Death Penalty Discussion in America: Impacts of the American Bar Association Call for a Moratorium on Executions, and a 1999 update to that report. The United Nations conducted its own investigation and in April 1998 issued a report recommending that the United States stop executions until it can ensure that death penalty cases are administered fairly and impartially, in accordance with due process. The UN report included a copy of the ABA's 1997 resolution.