Another voice for saving taxpayers from ACLU fees
Posted on January 31, 2006
More and more people are coming to understand the issue of who pays the ACLU its attorneys’ fees in a large number of its lawsuits (answer: you, the taxpayer). In the article excerpted below, author and retired Marine Thomas D. Segel adds his perspective to a problem that the Stop The ACLU Coalition and CourtZero.org have been working together on for some time:
Seldom does a week pass in the USA without another media report about the American Civil Liberties Union filing suit against the government. It is forever filing action against some municipality displaying what the accuser deems an unacceptable symbol or a claimed unconstitutional position. [snip]
What the American public is never told is just how this organization views this country or how it manages to fund most of its litigation. [snip]The usual mode of attack is to pick small town governments, school boards or other tax supported organizations that fear the tremendous expense of a lengthy debate in the courts. Rather than exhaust their budgets in litigation, those who are threatened cave and concede to ACLU demands.
But, what about those 6,000 court cases being filed each year? Where does the funding come from to take on such extensive legal work? The answer is…right out of your pocket.For almost thirty years the ACLU has rubbed its hands gleefully as it tapped the government piggy bank to cover its attacks on just about everything American. In 1976 The Civil Rights Attorneys Fee Awards Act (42 U.S.C. Section 1988) was passed by Congress and signed into law. Though it was written with the best of intentions, this legislation is another very egregious example of unintended consequences. The purpose of the law was to encourage private attorneys to take on cases to protect civil and constitutional rights. It was not intended to support an organization filing thousands upon thousands of disruptive cases. [snip]
Though the awarding of fees is optional, virtually all judges, over the past three decades, have signed off on allowing these payments.Remember, Congress did not insist that judges’ award attorney fees under 42 U.S.C. Section 1988. This part of the law made such action discretionary. Still judges have determined that those attorneys who prevail in litigation should receive attorney fees …even if there are really no fees being paid to the attorneys. [snip] This happens because large firms often support the ACLU position pro bono. Also many individual attorneys volunteer as ACLU lawyers. This means in the majority of cases there are really no fees associated with the legal action.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
The joint StopTheACLU/CourtZero petition, which can be found at this link, is now at 21,590 signatures. I think the time has come to close it down, filter it for bogus signatures, and send it on to Congress, but feel free to sign it now if you haven’t. Don’t worry about the ads and such you see after signing, you can ignore that and your signature will count.
Coming soon: the joint StopTheACLU/CourtZero project to research and catalog real cases with excessive fees (said project does not yet have a name). While I’m an attorney, civil rights cases are not my speciality, though I’ve handled a couple. The blogosphere, and this site’s readership, most likely contain lawyers who do have first hand experience in the area and can help us to gather information on whether or not fees awarded to the ACLU and other groups like PFAW are disproportionate to the amount of work actually done. If you have such expertise or information, contact Jay at Jay-at-stoptheaclu.com or myself at Craig-at-courtzero.org.
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6 Responses to “Another voice for saving taxpayers from ACLU fees”
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After seeing your email, I knew you would post on this. Once you turn the petition in, I’m gonna have to come up with something else to put on my blogads. Some way that folks can get involved and do stuff.
It is time to stop this funding of private so called legal groups with tax payer dollars. They should take these cases on a contingency basis, just like other law suits. They get a percentage of the settlement. Their legal fees usually amount to an excess of the actual settlement anyway. In Chicago, we have the same problem with the Peoples Law Office.
My problem with the ACLU is they pick and choose their battles. If Justice is blind then so should their picking procedure. They say they exposue freedom and equality yet they usually do not display these traits.
Raymond B
http://www.voteswagon.com
Fish, Mermaids And Meds
Triage just got a call from an agent, asking for clarification of what classifies as stolen meds.
The agent had a member on the phone who said she lives on a house boat in Illinois, and that a Mermaid or fish got on the boat, and stole her meds.
John d…
Your belief that: (a) the ACLU picks small governmental entities to sue and (b) that they realize big awards of attorney fees from such cases, are nonsense, and demonstrate quite well that you know nothing about civil rights suits.
The reason most suits are against small towns, rural counties, and country school systems is because the governing bodies of such areas are almost exclusively the ones who that decide to violate the law. Even small urban areas and bedroom communities know that their populace isn’t religiously homogeneous, so it never occurs to them that they will intentionally engage in unlawful acts just because one of the county commissioners or the president of the school board wants to.
Moreover, if such an entity decides to settle the suit rather than drain its coffers for no reason but to stroke the ego of a powerful citizen, there is generally no opportunity for a court to award a fee, nor has the ACLU lawyer had to invest enough time in the case to justify much in any event; it is very rare for the settlement to include an agreement that the body will pay something for attorney fees, and the lawyers do not have the option to reject a settlement that gives the client what he has asked for just because they would like to get a fee. Even those cases that go to trial almost never result in fee awards that approach the value of the time that the volunteer or staff attorneys have put into it, and in those instances in which the judge has the discretion to deny fees, they often do.
Your idea that no fee is justified since the lawyers are all working pro bono is likewise wrong. Most such suits are handled principally by staff lawyers for the national or state organization (where the state affiliate is lucky enough to be able to afford such a luxury). Staff attorneys’ time costs money, and it is certainly not unreasonable for the organization to recover some portion of the salary they are paid. Moreover, even when attorneys in private practice handle the suit, it is not always pro bono. In the South and plains states, there are generally very few volunteer attorneys who handle all litigation for the state ACLU, and they are most often sole practitioners or with very small firms. In those circumstances, there is often an agreement that most, or even all, of any fee earned will go to the attorney, not the ACLU.
Two final points: you should know that the vast majority of civil rights suits are brought by private attorneys who the objecting citizens hire, and the ACLU and other organizations concerned with church/state problems have no involvement at all (except possibly to file an amicus brief in connection with an appeal from a judgment); the suits of this kind in which it is an ACLU staff or volunteer lawyer representing the plaintiffs only seek injunctions against continuation of the government’s unlawful acts, not money damages. Indeed, one of the criteria for the ACLU accepting representation in any suit is that the plaintiff has been, or almost certainly will be, unable to find a lawyer, because he cannot afford to pay,there is no potential for a contingent fee (because there will not be any money recovery), and the small likelihood of a fee award that will pay the lawyer for his time does not justify him devoting his effort to it, when he has other work for which he is far more likely to get paid a reasonable amount.
well put mr hinkle.