Civil rights are not self-enforcing. What that means is that you don't just enact civil rights laws and expect that people will comply with them on their own. Same goes for the Constitution. We all talk about how wonderful the Constitution is, but it's just a document waiting to be enforced by people who care about it. The way our society is structured, it's usually civil rights lawyers who take necessary action to make sure that the civil rights laws and the Constitution are complied with.

In 1976, Congress passed a law that said that if the civil rights plaintiff wins the case, her lawyer gets her legal fees paid by the defendant, usually a company or government agency. This way, the lawyers have an incentive to take the case without charge in the hopes that the payday comes when the plaintiff wins. The reason for this law was that without lawyers willing to take that chance, few civil rights lawsuits will be filed as the lawyer has no economic incentive to proceed, especially since most civil rights plaintiffs have no money to pay a lawyer. Lawyers cannot always work for free, so they would not bring these cases and instead focus on cases that will bring in the bucks, like personal injury and divorce cases.

I would say that the Attorneys' Fees Law of 1976 did as much to make this country free and democratic as the civil rights laws themselves, for without this law the civil rights statutes are almost meaningless as there's no one willing to represent civil rights victims in court.

Congress today is run by rightists who think that the public display of religious symbols is more important than granting people the health insurance they need to live productive and long lives. They also think that putting a Christmas tree on public property or having kids recite the Lord's Prayer in school is more important than making sure the troops in Iraq have enough body armor.

So it comes as no surprise that these radical conservatives want to push their religious preferences on everyone else. They have figured out a way to do it: by making it impossible for lawyers to get paid if they win one of these cases. That way, the cases are not pursued and the religious fanatics can do whatever they want. Some people may argue that I am overstating the case in stating that laws like this would be the first step in killing civil rights in this country. I don't think so.

Attorneys' Fees In Church Cases To Be Tested
BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 26, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/36773

A bill to prevent the award of attorneys' fees in establishment-of-religion cases brought in federal courts faces its first key test today in Congress.

The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the legislation, called the Public Expression of Religion Act.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. John Hostettler, a Republican of Indiana, said yesterday that the measure is designed to prevent organizations that bring church-state cases from intimidating local governments with the specter of a massive award of attorney's fees.

"It's the Sword of Damocles, you might say, that hangs over every one of these entities,"Mr. Hostettler said. He said he believes that local officials are giving in to groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, despite indications that the Supreme Court would be amenable to the use of religious themes in public monuments and buildings.

"I believe it'll pass tomorrow," he told The New York Sun. "There's a lot of excitement about this bill."

A veterans' group, the American Legion, has pushed hard for the legislation in order to preserve war memorials that include religious symbols such as crosses. One monument, a mountaintop cross in San Diego, has been the subject of litigation for more than 15 years. Last month, Justice Kennedy blocked a lower court order that the cross be taken down immediately.

"I'm appalled at the notion that the ACLU or any other purported public interest law firm would be suing veterans' memorials and then seeking taxpayer-funded attorney fee awards," a lawyer and unit commander with the American Legion, Rees Lloyd, said. Mr. Lloyd, a former ACLU staff attorney, accused the group of seeking to profit from such cases.

"The ACLU has lost all moorings and common sense and rationality and proportionality," he said. "It's become the Taliban of American liberal secularism."

The ACLU did not return calls seeking comment for this article.

The executive director of Americans United, Rev. Barry Lynn, said the proposed law is a back-door effort to discourage lawyers from bringing cases under the Constitution's establishment clause. "That's why the religious right likes this. They can't win on the merits, so they're trying to keep us out of court," he said.

Rev. Lynn said the "fee-stripping" restriction would apply not only to litigation over religious symbolism, but also over the teaching of creationism in public schools. "No other professional people are expected to work for nothing to get people their fundamental rights," he said.