NAACP v. Alabama ruled in 1958 that Alabama could not force the NAACP to reveal its membership lists. The Supreme Court held that compelled disclosure threatened members’ freedom of association and violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Alabama had sought the organization’s records during a legal campaign aimed at restricting its activities in the state. The NAACP argued that revealing members’ identities could expose them to economic retaliation, harassment, and violence.
The unanimous decision, written by Justice John Marshall Harlan II, became an important precedent for associational privacy. It did not give organizations unlimited immunity from regulation, but it required the government to show a sufficiently strong justification before demanding sensitive membership information.