> Rather than attacking the business, the ACLU should address the structural issues that prevent people from participating in the mainstream economy.
But, that's exactly what they're doing here. Businesses are an institutionalized, structural component of society and, believe it or not, cash purchases are still part of the mainstream economy.
I know you mean that the ACLU should be focused on making plastic accessible to those who don't have access yet, but I think it's worth acknowledging that the issues with going full plastic might be significantly more difficult to tackle than simply preserving the existing payments system. If we're addressing the systemic inequity behind access to banked payments we're going to have to solve issues pertaining to financial stability, proof of identity and reform an incredibly large, complex bureaucracy which has been designed to exclude the people who don't have access. While you're busy addressing the broader systemic inequity of our finance system, the people who you're trying to help are still going to be facing exclusion by businesses who have gone cashless.
If we accept the premise that a cashless society is a desirable end goal and the very true fact that it isn't the fault of vendors that people have been systemically excluded from newer payments systems, we should also acknowledge there isn't an easy way to fix that. Until that's fixed, it will be up to these businesses to choose whether or not they're going to act in a way that excludes customers with cash.