Litigation Bites: ‘Progressive’ Group’s Ill-Timed Legal Action Brings Victory for Christian Prayer in Public Schools
Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Lawsuits are Born of Greed, Not Intellectual Honesty
To litigate or not is a question nonprofit advocates take great care in answering.
Unless the nonprofit advocacy group is the ACLU or LDF, both of which have more cash than God or the Koch brothers, nonprofit advocates choose to be humble about lodging lawsuits — they are expensive to bring and never guaranteed to provide happy outcomes in a nation where the federal courts, including SCOTUS, are controlled by right-wing judges.
So why was the lawsuit against a Washington state school district filed to stop a high school football coach from uttering Christian prayer with his students on the field following games? The group that hunted down parents too swindle into bringing the loser lawsuit is running out of donors and its membership is dwindling.
The tiny white group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State cannot help itself. The organization needs cash fast because the group’s wealthy but old supporters and members are dying off. That is the sole reason why Americans United reached out to a set of gullible parents in Washington state to dupe them into bringing a legally suspect lawsuit.
That case was decided today by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of the Christian coach and declared he had a constitutional right to pray at the public school with his students. The thing is, Americans United knew this would happen. The Supreme Court or SCOTUS and the federal courts are controlled by right-wing judges for many years now. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which sided with Americans United and propelled the case to SCOTUS, is a lonely desert with declining power and influence.
For more than five years, I worked in the communication’s shop of Americans United, where I was harassed by its Communications Director Joe Conn. Conn is a crotchety old white man from Kentucky, who not only took a nasty shot at me because I tested positive for HIV, but dehumanized women who had to deal with him.
When I left the organization, it was a staff of barely 30 people. All white, all from the Washington, D.C. area, and all delusional.
Today the group is led by another “reformed” monotheist, who is also white, wealthy, and thin-skinned. Rachel Laser is a lot like her predecessor the Rev. Barry Lynn, a clown who itched to become a talking radio personality like Howard Stern. Lynn, like Conn, served for more than 30 years at the organization. Laser has told people I used to work with that she can’t figure out how to connect with youth across the country and that all actions taken by the group must bring in money. The development department has ballooned under Laser as has stupidity and greed.
Avarice is what explains the high court’s opinion today. The lawsuit was brought because Laser’s ongoing lust to save a treacherous and useless nonprofit org in Washington, D.C. The Washington State parents are not to blame for they were targeted for their stupidity.
