Alert: Contact Your House Representatives Now To Pass Public Expression Of Religion Act
Posted on September 25, 2006
Update: HOUSE PASSES PERA: 244 TO 173!Update: ROLL CALL VOTE IN HOUSE ON PERA AT 6:30 (EDT) CONTACT CONGRESS NOW!
S 3696 (PERA), sponsored by Sen. Brownback (R-Kan), a companion bill to H.R. 2679 (PERA), sponsored by Rep. Hostetter (R-Ind.), would amend all relevant federal laws to eliminate the authority of judges to award taxpayer-paid attorney fees to the ACLU, or anyone else, in lawsuits under the Establishment of Religion Clause of the First Amendment against veterans memorials, the Boy Scouts, or the public display of the Ten Commandments of other symbols of America’s history with a religious aspect.
This legislation will stop your taxes from paying the ACLU to attack our Christian heritage and symbols. Act now before it is too late.
It will be voted on today in the House.
NRB has learned that PERA, the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005 (H.R. 2679) introduced by Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN), is expected to be considered for a floor vote in the House, tomorrow, Tuesday, September 26th. This critical legislation, which has been supported by NRB, would protect our government agencies and their civil servants from having to pay huge attorneys fees awards to groups like the ACLU when they sue over references to God and religion in public settings.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Urge your listeners and viewers to contact their representatives in Congress and urge him/her to “vote for H.R. 2679, Public Expression in Religion Act of 2005, also known as PERA.”
CONSIDER THIS: This legislation would avoid the outrageous funding (through taxpayer dollars) of the ACLU, atheist organizations, and others who want to strip acknowledgements of God from the public square, and for that reason this bill is a major plus. But more than that, it would also force more of these cases to face the bright sunlight of a court of law, rather than the present situation of government officials being intimidated into capitulating through private settlements with these radical secularist law groups for fear of facing mammoth attorneys fee awards if they lose at trial.
WHY THE TIMING IS CRITICAL: PERA will be brought to the House Floor on the very challenging “suspension calendar,” which means that debate is limited, it is possible that amendments may be restricted, and the bill must pass with a 2/3-majority. Therefore it is critical that your audience contact Capitol Hill today!
I have already recieved a letter from my Representative and have been assured of his vote. I contacted him on the day the bill was approved by the House Committee on the Judiciary, so I got an old form letter. Nevertheless it was assuring.
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Church And State, News
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16 Responses to “Alert: Contact Your House Representatives Now To Pass Public Expression Of Religion Act”
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Honest questions:
Why should the government be exempt from paying the plantiffs’ attorneys fees if it loses in a trial?
Can you demonstrate that the awards have been significantly beyond those that are typically awarded to the victors in comparably-sized civil cases?
The intention of the orginal act that is being amended was to provide for those too poor to defend their civil rights by paying their attorney’s fees. The ACLU have put this on its head. They are well funded enough, and they use this provision to threaten small schools and governments that can’t afford the attorney’s fees into submitting to the ACLU…in most cases far before it even goest to courts.
Only the rich deserve rights.
I have only a limited awareness of said act, so I’ll concede your understanding of its intention for the time being.
On a more theoretical level, I’ll ask again: Why should the government be exempt from paying attorneys fees if it loses in a trial?
My understanding is that in most, if not all, cases a plaintiff can sue for actual damages, punitive damages, and attorney fees. In this sort of case, there are probably no actual damages and punitive damages are a murky issue, so I won’t bother bringing them into the picture, but attorney fees seem like a reasonable thing to award. If the defendant is deemed guilty (liable, responsible, etc…), why should the plaintiff bear the cost of proving it, irrespective of the paintiffs financial means?
Jeff Molby,
The Lawsuits are unconstitutional anyways as the federal bill of rights is intended to limit the federal government and not the state and local governments. The States have their own constitution which is to limit them. The ACLU should be aware of this fact as I assume they have competent lawyers working for them. Their violation of the U.S. Constitution makes them fair game.
I respectfully disagree.
BTW, could someone fix comment #8? It appears I neglected to put a closing tag after the quote.
Nothing in PERA prevents the filing of Establishment Clause cases. PERA merely re-establishes the American rule that each side pays its own attorneys. If the ACLU has filed these cases pro bono on principle, and not for profit and political purpose, then PERA should have no effect on filing them.
Although ACLU has no actual attorney fees (all cases are handled by staff or volunteer attorneys), it has profited greatly from such cases, including: $950,000 to drive the Boy Scouts out of San Diego’s Balboa Park; $500,00 in the Judge Roy Moore Ten Commandments case; and, most recently, $2,000,000 against the Dover School Board in the Intelligent Design case – even though the law firm representing the ACLU waived all attorney fees.
Further, in hearings on PERA, by the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Marc Stern, the general counsel of the American Jewish Congress, ACLU’s strongest defender, admitted, under questioning, that the ACLU and others are using the threat of attorney fees as “a club” against local elected bodies.
“Only the rich deserve rights.”
You don’t have to be rich to be represented PRO BONO by the ACLU.
I don’t doubt that this is true, but I don’t necessarily see it as a problem, because I don’t think that the following statement is true:
It’s my understanding that it is quite common in this country for the loser (assuming there is a clear loser in a particular case) to pay the winner’s legal expenses. The logic behind this is quite simple: had the loser not committed the original offense, no litigation would have been necessary.
Let’s face it, litigation in this country is expensive. There’s really nothing we can do about that without destroying the market economy.
The current system gives likely winner a “club” with which to threaten the likely loser, but if you remove the right to seek compensation, you’re simply handing the “club” to the likely loser. Now the likely loser can discourage suits by making it clear that they would fight until it was prohibitively expensive for the plaintiff. This seems less ideal than the current situation.
This part of your argument actually has some merit. I would consider supporting legislation that limited the award to actual expenses, rather than “reasonable and customary”.
The ACLU should be re-named the ANTI-American Cop-out Liberals Union. They are against anything the restricts people’s total lack of responsibility for their actions. I know Shakespeare did NOT write, “First, kill all the lawyers”, but whoever coined that urban legend certainly HAS a point. Frivolous Law suits should be illegal, and are immoral. The ACLU should have to pay the legal expenses of ALL cases they LOSE. See if they LIKE THAT!
When well-funded, powerful, ACLU lawyers go before judges who are current or former ACLU members (and who violate the law by refusing to recuse themselves) it’s nothing more than extortion. This law remove the financial incentive the ACLU has in extorting money from smaller groups taht are not violating the law, but which do something the ACLU happens to disagree with. In other words, the law protects citizens from criminals. Why would you have a problem with that?
That’s not currently the case? I don’t have a problem with it. The loser should (almost) always have to pay the winner’s tab.
Those are serious allegations, Danny. However, even if we presume them to be true, the correct course of action would be to prosecute the judges that aren’t doing their duty, not to strip away what is otherwise a very reasonable statute.
Jeff Molby - It is not “common” for a defendant to always pay the legal fees of the plaintiff. The loser pays court costs, but the plaintiff’s attorney is usually paid out of the settlement, i.e. 1/3 of the jury award.
The whole point of the ACLU was to help people who couldn’t afford their own lawyer. If the ACLU takes millions in attorneys fees from the defendants everytime, then why DO people need the ACLU? Poor people could just get their own lawyer and HE could be paid out of the millions in attorneys fees each case. It makes no sense. If the ACLU takes attorneys fees then they have no reason to exist.
Plus, everything cannot always be black and white. The fact is, the ACLU blackmails small school districts, etc. into settling cases because the threat of litigation is absurdly high ONLY WHEN the ACLU is representing the plaintiff.
I should have been clearer… The ACLU gets attorneys fees because long ago COngress gave the plaintiff the ability to get attorneys fees for Constitutional and Civil Rights cases. Not your average case.
Again, in the majority of lawsuits, the defendant does NOT pay the plaintiffs attorneys fees. Congress was just trying to help out the poor guy in getting Constitutional protection. But the ACLU has turned it upside down by blackmailing people - hardly Congress’ intent. Simply, its no longer necessary in todays world for the ACLU to take millions in every case. They, and other “civil rights orgs,” are more than adequately funded.
“The loser should (almost) always have to pay the winner’s tab.”
Thats the way they do it in europe. But not america.
Jeff Molby,
It is a historic fact that the federal Bill of Rights was intended to limit the Federal government and not the state. A controversial interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Supreme Court, who is part of the federal government, applied it to the states. They used the clause that states “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” to apply the federal Bill of Rights to the states. The problem with that reasoning is that the clause is meant to overturn a conclusion by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case that was referring to the Article IV Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution and not to the federal Bill of Rights. One other fact the court ignores is section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment which basically states that only Congress was given the power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment by appropriate legislation and not the Executive or Judicial branches except in a supporting roll.