Many people are unaware that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) exploits a little known law that lets them recover huge fees if they win religious expression lawsuits. This is why they can be so aggressive, and it is also why municipalities often cave in when the ACLU threatens them. Thankfully, there is a Senate bill aimed at correcting this perversion of the judicial system.
Balderdash. The law allows recovery of reasonable expenses — no profit. The Senate bill would make it impossible for any Christian to sue any government that infringed the Christian’s rights. It’s a stealth bill to eliminate religious liberty.
Where did you get such a bizarre take on the bill?
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The question is what are reasonable expenses. If they are full-rate legal fees to in-house or related counsel, for example, that would include lots of profit.
I have read this in several places, including http://stoptheaclu.com/ and Whistleblower magazine (published by the folks at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/).
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You don’t understand how cases are run. If ACLU had in-house counsel to go to court, the expenses would be reduced, and so would the awards. Generally, counsel for ACLU is provided at cost or less. The fees run high when silly litigation requires a lot of depositions, for example — the court recorders and transcribers (people who don’t pay estate taxes, by and large) cannot afford to work for free. They get paid, and the expenses run higher.
What I’m curious about is why you think a prevailing party against a governmental body should not be able to collect fair fees? The ACLU recently defended the right of Virginia Christians to put creches on the courthouse squares in every Virginia county — and they won. Why shouldn’t the ACLU have the right to collect from the ogres of Virginia who tried to prevent those creches from going up?
I don’t understand why you think oppressors, found to be oppressors in court, shouldn’t have to pay a modest sum to cover the legal expenses of the oppressed? If governments never had to pay for their stealing rights from Americans, whose rights could be safe?
Ed Brayton makes the case better than I can, here: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/06/davescot_on_hr_2679.php
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