In an announcement that surely disappointed its recent clients in Charlottesville, Virginia, the American Civil Liberties Union said on Friday that it would no longer defend armed hate groups. The change in policy followed the ACLU of Virginia’s decision to file suit to ensure that an assortment of white supremacist groups could hold the now-notorious “Unite the Right” rally earlier this month in Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park. While the ACLU wasn’t responsible for the fatal violence that ensued, the entire organization was convulsed in the fallout. One ACLU of Virginia board member resigned in protest. In a historic gesture, three California affiliates broke with the Virginia branch and the national organization to condemn the lawsuit. “If white supremacists march into our towns armed to the teeth and with the intent to harm people, they are not engaging in activity protected by the United States Constitution,” they said.

The ACLU’s national leadership ultimately agreed. “If a protest group insists, ‘No, we want to be able to carry loaded firearms,’ well, we don’t have to represent them. They can find someone else,” executive director Anthony Romero told The Wall Street Journal. Romero claimed that this was consistent with the organization’s position on gun control. On Twitter, one ACLU attorney insisted that the new policy was in sync with older concerns about defending armed groups:

1934 ACLU pamphlet re defending Nazis specifically notes it will not defend "drilling with arms." Same as today. https://t.co/Ge2zoj6tmR pic.twitter.com/TBiBK9K8lI — Joshua Block (@JoshACLU) August 18, 2017

In a statement to the New Republic, an ACLU spokesperson said the new policy will be applied on a “case by case” basis, meaning greater scrutiny will be applied to possible clients. “If we determine that any potential client intends to subvert their rights under the First Amendment to cause violence, we wouldn’t represent them. The First Amendment doesn’t protect violence, that hasn’t changed,” Noa Yachot said.

Still, it’s undeniable that the group’s new policy is a softening of what has been held up as a timeless, impartial principle of American democracy. It seems like a radical gesture for radical times, an admission that Charlottesville had pit competing claims to free expression against each other. The ACLU’s compromise balances its historical absolutism with pragmatism. But it also raises a question: Is it ever possible to define, and then fairly restrict, dangerous speech?

Free speech absolutists say it’s impossible. Any attempt to define dangerous speech is a slippery slope for future acts of censorship, they claim, and the ACLU’s own case history is a model for this position. In 1978, it famously filed suit on behalf of a neo-Nazi group when the town of Skokie, Illinois, tried to ban them from marching through the center of town; the ACLU reportedly lost 10,000 members over the decision. It also defended the North American Man/Boy Love Association, Oliver North, and a Santeria church that practices ritual animal sacrifice. And it stood up for the civil rights of minorities threatened by the policies of Donald Trump, leading to a surge in membership and donations over the past year.