Юрист с 18-летним опытом защиты прав обвиняемых возглавила ACLU в Южной Дакоте, Северной Дакоте и Вайоминге

By Cora Van Olson “If you didn’t know it before, I want you to know it now: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is here to protect the people’s rights and the people’s civil liberties,” Martha Rossiter, the new legal director for the ACLU of South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming, told the Press & Dakotan. The ACLU of South Dakota recently named Rossiter, a Yankton native and University of South Dakota (USD) graduate, to lead and expand the ACLU’s legal program in terms of litigation and legal advocacy aimed at advancing civil liberties and civil rights in the state. According to the announcement, Rossiter comes to the ACLU with nearly two decades of experience in criminal defense and civil rights proceedings, litigating jury trials in more than 100 criminal and civil cases in both state and federal courts. Rossiter has been with the Pennington County Public Defender’s Office for the last nine years. Prior to that, she worked for the Kern County Public Defender’s office in Bakersfield, California, where she defended the constitutional rights of people in the justice system. She later litigated civil rights cases involving law enforcement agencies in Southern California. Through her work over the last 18 years, Rossiter reflected on how she has helped many individuals. “In fact, two nights ago, I got a random text from somebody saying, ‘You represented me two years ago, and I told you I was going to do better. I’m graduating and this is my graduation date.’ I’ve really gotten to understand the impact that I can have and I feel pretty fortunate about that,” she told the P&D earlier this week. Rossiter’s journey began in Yankton, where she graduated from Yankton High School. “My parents lived on Douglas Avenue for 45 years,” she said. “I went to Sacred Heart Catholic School at the elementary and middle school levels, then Yankton High School where I graduated in 1997.” From there, Rossiter took three years off to explore a career in acting on the East Coast. “I ended up touring back into the Midwest and lived in Minnesota and did theater up in Minneapolis for about three years total,” she said. “Then I went to the University of South Dakota and got my undergrad in criminal justice and psychology and graduated in 2004.” Rossiter graduated cum laude from USD and also later as a scholarship student from the University of La Verne College of Law in Southern California. She passed the bar exam in California and practiced law there for about a decade before moving back to South Dakota to care for her ailing father. “I did mostly criminal defense and some civil rights stuff and some personal injury stuff, and then I moved back,” she said. “I had my daughter, and then I decided I wanted to go back to work. I saw that the Pennington County Public Defender was hiring, and I heard about the director that was there at the time, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s where I belong right now.’” As a public defender, Rossiter has been helping people charged with crimes in Pennington County but has also been actively protecting their civil rights, she said. “I have solidly protected everybody’s individual rights by making sure that prosecutors and the courts, in particular in Pennington, didn’t run them over,” she said, explaining that it is not uncommon for prosecutors in any jurisdiction to charge people with crimes that they didn’t commit or to charge them with more crimes than they’ve committed. “I have protected those people,” she said. “There are lots of people who are free today because I represented them, and I don’t think that that’s unique to me. That’s unique to public defense because they are the ground-level civil rights attorneys.” Rossiter said she had always seen herself as a public defender. However, the Dobbs decision, handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, which ended nearly 50 years of federal constitutional protection for abortion, made her want to do more. “When that decision came down, I thought about my mom, who legitimately fought to make sure that women could have health care, and knew about back-alley abortions and people dying,” she said. “To have that lost was so impactful on me that I decided that there was something more I was being called for.” When she saw the job posting for the ACLU, Rossiter said, “That’s what I need to do.” Now, a year later, she is ready to hit the ground running. “I’m very interested in voting rights, the impact of some municipalities on voting and immigrant rights,” Rossiter said. “My interest is in being more visible and making sure that the community understands that the ACLU is here for them and actually being responsive and being part of the community.” However, there are First Amendment issues that the ACLU of South Dakota has not been able to address because of capacity, Rossiter said. “We need to be more active in the courtroom when there are issues that demand it,” she said. “We partner with other firms, and I am interested in expanding that too, so that we can have more of our community involved in securing the rights of everybody.” Rossiter said she wants the people of all three states under her jurisdiction to know she is there for them and is looking out for their rights. “If you feel like your rights are being violated, your free speech rights, your ability to vote, I’d like to know. If you have family members that, if not immigrants, have been harmed through the immigration process, I want to know,” she said. “I want the community to feel more a part of the ACLU because the ACLU is theirs.”