Bush Lawyers: “We Can Establish a Church and Nobody Can Sue Us”

Posted by Siamang on: 04.09.2007 /

From Americans United’s website:

Taxpayers should not have the legal right to sue even if the federal government undertakes a program of building houses of worship with public money, a Bush administration lawyer told the Supreme Court Feb. 28.

U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement was arguing before the high court in a case dealing with legal “standing” — the right to sue. Clement asserted that a group of taxpayers in Wisconsin should not have the right to sue President George W. Bush over his use of general operating funds to promote the “faith-based” initiative.

Several justices attempted to pin down Clement on the question of when taxpayers can sue. Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked Clement if a taxpayer should have the right to challenge a law that commemorated the Pilgrims “by building a government church at Plymouth Rock where we will have the regular worship in the Puritan religion?”

“I would say no,” Clement replied.

Breyer pressed further, asking about a law that required the government to build churches “all over America” that represented a single denomination.

“Nobody could challenge it?” he asked.

Again Clement replied, “There would not be taxpayer standing.”

Read the whole thing. The legal logic of this should be very frightening to anyone with minority beliefs in this country. The erosion of the right of the individual to sue the government continues. Oh, sure, you HAVE rights, you just can’t sue to keep them from being infringed upon by the government.