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Sunday, June 13, 2010
Ind. Law - More on "Allen County hires outsiders to defend in abortion dispute"
Yet another story today on Fort Wayne's new ordinance, this one by FWJG reporter Angela Mapes Turner. (See entry on yesterday's story here.) Today's story is headed "Legal team touts 83% success rate." Some quotes:
The Christian legal group defending Allen County against a lawsuit challenging its patient-safety ordinance is one of the best-funded and most successful of its type in the country.The ILB has been unable to determine the final outcome of the Missouri challenge.Even if Allen County residents haven’t heard of the Alliance Defense Fund, chances are they’re familiar with the organization’s work. The group, which boasts a winning record, says it has fought battles similar to the one it will wage for the county.
Several government agencies nationwide have allowed the group to go to bat for them on social and religious issues. Locally, it was involved in a federal court case out of Huntington County. * * *
Although this fight would be the Alliance Defense Fund’s most visible in northeast Indiana, it wouldn’t be the first time the organization has jumped into the fray of local court battles.
Last year, the group filed a friend-of-the-court brief in U.S. District Court in Fort Wayne on behalf of the Huntington County Community School Corp. but did not represent the school district in a lawsuit to block a religious education program at Horace Mann School.
A parent represented by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the school district to shut down the program, arguing that the school district violated the First Amendment by allowing the program to be conducted on school property during instructional time.
That case was settled last year when the school district agreed to remove trailers where Bible lessons were taught from school grounds and pay a settlement.
The group has fought to uphold gay-marriage bans and helped lead the legal challenge to San Francisco’s same-sex unions. An attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund has argued in Indiana for a constitutional marriage amendment limiting marriage to a man and woman. * * *
If success can be measured in financial terms, the Alliance Defense Fund is well-positioned.
Its assets totaled more than $33.7 million in 2008, the most recent year data was available from GuideStar, an organization that tracks non-profits.
Alliance Defense Fund touts its successes in the courtrooms as well. In 2008, the Alliance Defense Fund had an 83 percent success rate in all cases litigated to conclusion, and since it began in 1994, the group and its allies have won more than three out of four cases, according to the Alliance Defense Fund’s website.
Allen County commissioners said its offer to defend the county for free is the Alliance Defense Fund’s top selling point, downplaying the abortion issue and saying Klopfer brought abortion to the forefront by challenging the ordinance.
“We have not made this about abortion,” Commissioner Nelson Peters said Friday. “We’ve made this about general patient safety.”
But whether or not there is a financial cost, Americans United’s Lynn said, there can be a cost in having a partisan organization represent the county.
“Sometimes these groups pressure communities into fighting legal battles they have no chance of winning,” he said. “Some of these cases can deeply divide communities.”
Katie Blechacz, a spokeswoman for the Alliance Defense Fund, would not say whether the group approached Allen County to offer help or whether the county asked for it.
Blechacz said there has not been a case that directly mirrors the one it will take on in Allen County. But some cases have similarities, and there are many cases of the Alliance Defense Fund representing governmental bodies, she said.
In 2007, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt’s administration retained Alliance Defense Fund attorneys after Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against a state law that would require abortion clinics to be designated as ambulatory surgical clinics. The law meant those clinics would have to meet specific safety standards, similar in intention to Allen County’s ordinance.
More recently, Alliance Defense Fund has represented parties working with the Arizona attorney general to defend Arizona’s informed-consent law. That suit pairs the Alliance Defense Fund with the Bioethics Defense Fund and Life Legal Defense Fund as co-counsel, and it pits them against the same opponent as in the Allen County case, the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 13, 2010 11:46 AM
Posted to Indiana Law