Bullying for Dollars
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneys who shake down taxpayers with lawsuits against cities, counties, schools and library boards have collected tens of millions of dollars over the years while stripping communities of some aspect of their heritage, usually Christian symbols, prayers or Ten Commandments monuments.
By Robert Knight at The American Civil rights Union
On any given day, holdups are going down somewhere in America. But the perps are equipped with brief-cases, not guns, and they usually score far more than your average mugger.
I’m talking about American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneys who shake down taxpayers with lawsuits against cities, counties, schools and library boards. They have collected tens of millions of dollars over the years while stripping communities of some aspect of their heritage, usually Christian symbols, prayers or Ten Commandments monuments.
Sadly, when faced with the threat of huge legal bills, public officials usually give up even when their case is winnable.
Since 1976, the ACLU’s aggressive self-financing and bullying has been enabled by the Civil Rights Attorney Fee Act. This federal law was a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and was designed to assist people who could not afford counsel in racially oriented civil rights cases. But it has been hijacked by the ACLU for wholesale attacks on America’s religious heritage, traditional values and even the principle of self-governance.
With jurisdictions at every level facing record debt, it’s getting easier for the ACLU to intimidate public officials.
Here are some of the most recent examples of how the ACLU puts the fear of evolution (it couldn’t be God) into keepers of public treasuries.
• In Santa Rosa County, Fla., legal costs from a 2009 suit over school prayer that is still simmering had topped $705,000 as of April 8 and are rising. The ACLU’s award – so far – is $196,500.
• In South Dakota, the state attorney general estimates that it could cost as much as $4 million in legal fees to defend the state’s tough new abortion law against a challenge by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.
• In February, a court ordered the town of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., to pay the ACLU $11,200 in legal fees for its suit against the town for opening its city council meetings with a prayer. That’s down from the $38,000 sought by the ACLU, but doesn’t include the town’s own legal costs.
• In 2008, the ACLU nabbed $42,700 in legal fees after suing Slidell, La., officials to remove a picture of Jesus from the Slidell City Court. There’s no word on whether the ACLU will demand that it be replaced with a picture of Al Gore or just the planet Earth.
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