By Olivia O’Neal
TheStatehouseFile.com
October 23, 2026
After expressing his worry that incoming Executive Director Nikkita Oliver would fundamentally change how the ACLU of Indiana chooses cases, the organization’s former director of philanthropy says he was fired and four lawyers who share his concerns resigned in protest.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which often acts as a check on the state’s Republican supermajority, has now postponed Oliver’s start date and launched an external review as a result of the controversy surrounding the hiring of the lawyer and advocate for Palestinian rights, trans rights and other causes.
Neil Hudelson, who served as the ACLU of Indiana’s director of philanthropy since 2014, told TheStatehouseFile.com on Friday that he met with an ACLU of Indiana human resources representative following a “disastrous” meeting with Oliver this fall. He said he was subsequently terminated by the ACLU of Indiana board, after which four members of the legal staff submitted their resignations.
“I’ve worked at the ACLU [of Indiana] for 12 years. I’ve been a professional for about 20. I’ve worked in some pretty tough political campaigns. I’ve never had to turn in an HR report, but I did like 48 hours after that meeting [with Oliver],” he said.
“The parts I can get into are where Nikkita very explicitly [said] we will absolutely stop taking cases specifically around organizations or people whose speech we—by ‘we’ [I] mean ‘I,’ Nikkita—disagreed with, right? And we were going to start taking cases based purely around a harm reduction lens.”
In a statement to TheStatehouseFile.com sent by spokesperson Deirdre Murphy Ramsey of Precision Strategies, the ACLU of Indiana board denied basic components of Hudelson’s claims.
“The Board is not aware of any formal HR complaints made about Nikkita. Nikkita has not started at the affiliate in a managerial capacity,” the statement said. “Our documentation from staff and Nikkita reports that a few coffee meet and greets occurred over the summer and both parties said that they were productive conversations.”
It supplied TSF with a statement from Oliver, which said, “These allegations are false. It is distressing that a small group of staff who have, at most, interacted with me once seem to have generated these rumors and false allegations. It is equally distressing to see community members misinformed by these rumors and false allegations before we have even had the opportunity to meet.”
In a separate statement to TheStatehouseFile.com, the ACLU of Indiana confirmed that legal director Ken Falk, deputy legal director Gavin Rose, senior staff attorney Stevie Pactor and staff attorney Josh Bleisch resigned and that another unnamed staff member was terminated. One of the four who resigned was a finalist for the executive director position after Christopher Daley left in September 2025. The statement also said some of the resignations were tendered prior to Oliver’s selection.
“It seems that the staff left, at best, because of a misunderstanding, but given the contradictory reports and that one of the people who resigned was an internal candidate, the board is awaiting the results of a third party HR review,” the board statement said. “Due to the contradictory reports and inaccurate rumors among current staff, the Board delayed Nikkita’s in-office start date and launched the third party review to establish the facts and ensure healthier conditions for a smoother transition.”
A longtime staffer who wished to remain anonymous to avoid professional repercussions told TheStatehouseFile.com that ACLU of Indiana staff are directed not to respond to media inquiries.
“I do not know if the ACLU [of Indiana] doesn’t recognize the irony in requiring its staff to remain silent, or if it doesn’t care,” the staffer said. “Most of the community knows… the attorneys quite well and knows precisely how profound their decades-long commitment to the ACLU [of Indiana] has been, and therefore understands exactly how bad things must be going in order for for us to walk out the door.”
The staffer also said multiple people working at the ACLU of Indiana had expressed concerns over the incoming director’s “potentially anti-Semitic behavior.”
“When you tell someone that we have concerns about what the person you just hired as our incoming executive director has said, it doesn’t matter if it’s on a formal form to our human resources department,”the staffer said. “It’s a legitimate concern that needs to be taken seriously, and I don’t think the board can sweep that under the rug by simply saying that this was in the context of opposing this particular candidate. Of course, it was, but that doesn’t change the substance of what they said.”
Oliver ran for public offices in Seattle.
The staffer also said that when employees sat down with Oliver during the interview process and reviewed application materials, they found evidence that Oliver advocated for movement lawyering, a form of legal advocacy aimed at supporting social justice.
The Indianapolis Star reported Thursday that staffers filed two complaints against Oliver with the ACLU of Indiana’s human resources director. In a separate statement to TheStatehouseFile.com, the ACLU of Indiana said there were “continued communications” by staff about the board’s choosing Oliver as the next executive director but reiterated that no official human resource complaint was made.
“Given all communications received, this just added to the contradictory accounts and narratives,” the statement said. That’s why it has hired an HR firm to investigate “rumors, unsubstantiated accusations, and long-standing complaints about workplace culture.”
“I want to be clear that several of the people who resigned remain at the ACLU of Indiana and some of them never had a meeting or conversation with Nikkita,” the board statement said.Some are staying on to finish up work with current clients.
As for Oliver, who uses they/them pronouns, it said they are “currently meeting with affiliates from around the country to gather more detail about their strategic approaches and learnings while building not only strong legal capacity for their ACLU of Indiana affiliates but also strong and integrated community engagement, advocacy, and communications strategies. Nikkita will bring those learnings back to the ACLU of Indiana.”
The statement went on to say that Oliver is not changing the purpose of the ACLU of Indiana and that the board “does not fully understand where that rumor began.” Oliver has yet to work in a managerial capacity and has not made any proposals to change the ACLU of Indiana’s goals. Rather,Oliver has spent a year building relationships and creating a “collective vision for the future” with contributions from team leaders, according to the statement.
In the meantime, the ACLU of Indiana is working to find an interim legal director to replace Ken Falk, a lawyer and former law professor frequently seen at the Indiana Statehouse. And media from Indianapolis to London have picked up the story.
Roughly a month ago, about 50 members of the Jewish community and organizers for Palestinian rights, including several rabbis, wrote to the ACLU of Indiana to express support of Oliver.
“As a public figure, it’s not uncommon for people to try to mischaracterize me online; however, it’s disheartening that these current mischaracterizations seem to come from a small group of individuals whose work is rooted in defending due process,” Oliver said in their statement. “Because transparency is essential, I welcome a fair, third-party review.”
Editor’s note: TSF Publisher and Franklin College Pulliam School of Journalism Director John Krull served as executive director of the ACLU of Indiana from 1998 to 2004. He played no role in the reporting or editing of this story.
Olivia O’Neal is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news site powered by Franklin College journalism students.
