The ACLU and its allies have been getting away with this for decades. Representing clients that have experienced no real harm, they have succeeded in eliminating ceremonies and other practices mentioning God and our nation’s dependence on Him, some of which date back to before the founding of our Republic. But finally the courts are waking up. They are imposing the standing rules across the board and rejecting these lawsuits until the ACLU finds someone who has actually been harmed by the government’s actions.
For example, on October 30, the federal appeals court for Indiana, the 7th Circuit, threw out a lawsuit by the local branch of the ACLU that challenged the tradition of the Indiana Legislature to open its sessions with invocations by local clergymen. The ACLU assembled “taxpayers” to challenge the practice. The 7th Circuit ruled that “they have not shown that the legislature has extracted from them tax dollars for the establishment and implementation of a program that violates the Establishment Clause.” The Supreme Court last spring also rejected taxpayer standing for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who wanted to challenge a White House conference where nothing religious happened. The atheist group claimed that government officials would violate the Establishment Clause by merely urging faith-based groups to apply for federal grants to conduct programs to help the poor.
In July, the federal appeals court for Louisiana, the 5th Circuit, rejected a lawsuit by the ACLU, which represented “offended observers” who challenged the practice of the Tangipahoa Parish School Board to open its meetings with prayer. The ACLU claims it forgot to mention in its legal pleadings that its clients had attended the meetings when there was prayer. Oops! It’s kind of hard to be offended by the prayers when you aren’t even present to hear them. The federal appeals court rightly dismissed the lawsuit with such a cotton candy foundation.
New enforcement of the requirement that the ACLU bring clients to court who have standing–that is, who have actually been injured by the government’s actions–will not totally stop the extreme lawsuits. But if the ACLU has difficulty finding people actually suffering from government actions that acknowledge America’s religious heritage, then maybe that says something about the validity of its assertions about what the Establishment Clause means.
Jordan Lorence
Jordan Lorence is a senior counsel at the Washington, D.C., office of the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation (www.telladf.org).