Tim Macdonald always believed lawyers have a responsibility to give back to their communities and represent disenfranchised people. Now he’s stepping away from corporate law and taking his talents to the ACLU of Colorado full time.

The organization picked Macdonald as its new legal director, the first person to step into that position in nearly 30 years.

Mark Silverstein, who has had the role since 1996, announced last May he would retire.

Macdonald comes to the ACLU after spending the first two-and-a-half decades of his legal career at Arnold & Porter — a corporate law firm with offices in the U.S. and internationally. He has partnered with the ACLU on civil rights cases throughout his career. That includes leading a trial team last year in a federal case over how law enforcement handled protests that proliferated in 2020 in response to George Floyd’s death during his arrest by Minneapolis police. The jury found police used excessive force against demonstrators in the early days of protests, and awarded a group of 12 people $14 million total.

He spoke with the Denver Gazette about his personal mentors, current top civil liberties issues, and policing accountability.

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Could you contextualize the civil rights work that you’ve done with the ACLU while you’ve been at the firm, for people who just may know Arnold & Porter as a corporate law firm and may not necessarily be as familiar with the civil rights work it does as well?

The very first pro bono case that I worked on when I was a baby lawyer back in, I think it was 1998 or 1999, was a reproductive rights case, where I was a brand-new lawyer and had just joined the firm. The firm was already cooperating counsel with the ACLU, challenging some abortion restrictions.

And so I met Mark Silverstein then, and I thought: “That’s a great job and important job.” That was, I think, my first introduction to the ACLU. Over the course of my career, I was involved in a number of other cases. I was counsel in the Douglas County voucher case that went on for many years. I handled a police abuse case on behalf of a woman who was misidentified as a criminal and then strip-searched and taken to the county jail.

Then I’ve also done cases with the national ACLU and other civil rights organizations. I’ve done a number of cases defending immigrants’ rights. I’ve done other police cases; I’ve done a number of cases involving the rights of unhoused people through the Colorado Lawyers Committee. So all of those cases have been core to the values of my firm. To me personally, I have since my first day as a lawyer believed that it was an obligation that that each of us has to give back to the community; to represent those who are disenfranchised.

So when I look back on my career, the cases that that that have meant the most to me, and had the biggest impact, are all of my civil rights and pro bono cases over the years.

What do you think are some of the challenges to civil liberties that really are top of mind right now? What issues do you think we’re seeing right now that in several years or a couple of decades we might point to and say, “This really was one of the civil rights issues of that time?”

On a statewide level, (Colorado), I think, is in a decent place with respect to reproductive rights. But I don’t think that’s true across all the pockets of the state. Across our state, I think we’re going to see some counties or county health departments taking certain actions that are seen as an effort to restrict reproductive rights.

We’ve obviously seen both across the country and in pockets of our state attacks on immigrants and immigrants’ rights. It’s often easy to demonize the “other.” We see that in our national politics. And so I think, unfortunately, there are a lot of civil rights issues that maybe we thought were answered, and putting behind us things we thought were established. We’re having to re-fight those battles, in addition to new ones.

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I want to touch on these cases you’ve worked on that have to do with police conduct. Most recently, one went to trial last year. But since then, there continue to be smaller settlements that are coming through City Council in cases that come from the George Floyd protests.

Then we had that shooting in Lower Downtown in July, where six or seven people were injured. What do you think can be done about holding law enforcement accountable when we see that same kind of conduct continue?

One of the things that I have always believed is you can’t just litigate your way out of problems. You need a multi-pronged approach, and that includes legislative strategy, and an advocacy and organizing approach. And then, as a lawyer, I think you can add a litigation approach. But I think the police reform issue is obviously a tough nut to crack.

I think there are noble and fine people in our city and cities across the country that don’t set out to create a system that produces the kind of results we see, where our fellow community members are brutalized by the police, like we just saw in the Tyre Nichols situation. And so figuring out the solution, whether it’s here in Denver, or whether it’s in Aurora, I think, is going to take a different way of thinking. We can’t approach the task with just one tool. We have to look at it systemically and come up with different ways of approaching the problem.

Who have been your personal mentors in your career as an attorney?

Mark (Silverstein) is a person that I have always admired and looked up to for the work that he’s done on behalf of civil rights. That’s why when he said he was retiring I thought: “I have to try to do this. This is something that matters so much.”

Connie Talmage, who has led the Colorado Lawyers Committee for the last 22 years, is another person. I’ve worked closely with the Colorado Lawyers Committee almost my whole career as well. I served on the executive committee there, and I’ve done a lot of civil rights cases and pro bono cases through the Colorado Lawyers Committee.

There’s a guy named Jim Scarboro who ran the Arnold & Porter office when I was a baby lawyer, and he was a sort of legendary figure, at least in in the Colorado legal world, for many years. He’s one of the best lawyers that I’ve ever known. He’s a dedicated, committed person to public service and public interest. Even though he was at a law firm, he helped start the Colorado Innocence Project. He got me involved in the Colorado Lawyers Committee; he did ACLU cases.

On a personal level, he taught me so much about being a lawyer; being a good citizen; being a good human being. “To whom much is given much is asked” — you know the old adage, and he was a perfect example of that. He instilled in me that every day, you have an obligation to roll your sleeves up and try to make the community a better place.

ACLU of Colorado names Tim Macdonald as legal director