 |
 ACLJ Lawyers Exposed as Ideologues, not Winners Promise Counties Adult Entertainment Controls |
|
Compiled By GayToday
Brevard County, Florida— Lawyers working for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) a firm established by televangelist Pat Robertson and serving the sex-control agenda of the Religious Reich, are fast becoming known as clumsy ideologues and poor losers. A May 27th loss in San Francisco has been followed, according to reports, by another in Bay County, Florida.
On Monday, GayToday's editor, in a long and rambling interview, told morning talk-show host Connie Fishbaugh (CNN affiliate Newstalk--1060 AM radio, Brevard County) that taxpayers were sure to regret a recent hiring by the County Commission of Pat Robertson's legal 'yes' men. "They're not interested in winning cases when they can get involved in local sex-control ordinances," said Nichols, " because they only want to get folks stirred up and to get gaudy publicity for Pat Robertson's twisted ideology. They're dumbo preachers in lawyers' clothing."
Sunday's Florida Today (a Gannett newspaper serving Central Florida's Brevard County, home to the John F. Kennedy Space Center) printed lengthy front-page headlines in an expose : "Conservative group hired to rewrite Brevard's adult-entertainment law has left another Florida county mired in a legal mess. Critics: Center too biased for job. Bay County Ordinance 'fatally flawed' ". A color photograph of the interior of a Cocoa Beach strip club showed exotic dancers gesturing to a small audience. The Gannett news expose explained how Bay County, located in the Florida panhandle, had hired lawyers to write precisely what Brevard County Commissioners hired ACLJ to write: an effective adult entertainment ordinance. "The Panhandle resort county," wrote Florida Today's John Tuohy, "now has extensive legal fees, an ordinance that needs re-writing, and a two-year delay in implementing the law because of a court challenge." Bay County settled with its local strip clubs, convinced, finally, that it would lose if the case went to trial, thanks to the ACLJ's legal incompetence. "It could have been more expensive" for taxpayers said Florida Today, if such had occurred. One attorney critiqued the ACLJ's work as "very weak" constitutionally and "fatally flawed". On Monday, following by only one day the Gannett paper's account of Bay County's troubles, Florida Today published an Op-ed guest editorial by Jack Nichols, GayToday's Senior Editor, who offered the following critique of the County Commission's decision to hire Robertson's most-favored firm: Adult Entertainment Code Will Spur Lawsuits By Jack Nichols Guest Columnist
"It's hard to fathom why the Brevard County Commission (with one absent and one objecting) are now calling on a law firm that promotes Pat Robertson's causes, namely The American Center for Law and Justice. Surely Brevard's commissioners must recall those brimstone-laced Orlando weather predictions Robertson made last year. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, I say, are two peas in a pod. "If the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has true expertise, why then—on May 27-- have its legal beagles lost a suit that was initiated two years ago by them against the City of San Francisco? U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilkin rejected ACLJ's specious claim to higher moral grounds, upholding the city's domestic partnership law and siding with the city. "In the face of its U.S. District Court loss the ACLJ is promising to launch an appeal. "We will appeal this decision directly to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals," said crestfallen ACLJ Chief Counsel, Jay Sekulow. "The merits of our case remain strong and we will challenge this ruling." "Brevard County's American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has warned County Commissioners that adult entertainment rules written by this Robertson-founded law firm will end up costing local taxpayers millions in court fees. If ACLJ's defeat in San Francisco provides an indication, Brevard taxpayers, then, should set aside tidy sums so as to sustain the County Commission's moralistic excursion into the adult entertainment field. "The ACLJ's failed challenge to San Francisco's law must worry its zealous legal propagandists/meddlers elsewhere who are challenging similar domestic partnership ordinances in Santa Barbara, California Boston, Massachusetts and New York City, New York. "ACLJ's unsuccessful suit was filed against San Francisco in 1997 on behalf of S.D. Myers, Inc. -- an Ohio-based contractor that had previously performed maintenance on the city's electric transformers. S.D. Myers' contract was not renewed after it refused to comply with San Francisco's domestic partners ordinance." |
