Agape Press has an article about Rees Lloyd's testimony in favor of HR 2679. As usual, it's chock full of half-truths and falsehoods. And as usual, STACLU cites it approvingly without bothering to correct any of those falsehoods. For instance:

The ACLU received half a million dollars from the Alabama Ten Commandments case, and $950,000 in attorneys fees in a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts. Steve Crampton, chief counsel with the AFA Law Center and a constitutional law specialist, says the ACLU is able to collect these fees because of an obscure provision of the Civil Rights Act, which PERA is designed to amend.

First of all, there is nothing the least bit obscure about the fee shifting provision. It's well known, and it's used by every plaintiff who takes the government to court for violating the Constitution - including the ADF and the AFA, where Crampton works. Talk about hypocrisy. More importantly, it isn't true that the ACLU received those amounts in those cases. That may have been the amount that was awarded to the plaintiff (because they won the case, remember), but that's not what the ACLU actually got. Rees Lloyd knows better, he's been involved in such cases.

He knows the difference between fees and costs, and he knows that the bulk of the legal work is usually done not by the ACLU but by a private law firm. Out of such awards first has to come all of the costs of the litigation, which can be very high depending on how long the case dragged on, how many depositions were taken, and so forth. Then in most cases, the bulk of the fees will go not to the ACLU but to the private law firm that handled the case. In most such cases, the ACLU will end up with only a small portion in legal fees, but even then they can only recover the fees for the billable hours their attorneys actually put in on the case. So the rewards merely cover the expense of the trial. It's hardly a profitable thing to do.

"It was really just the ACLU and its like organizations on the left that ever benefited from this provision," Crampton contends.

This is a baldfaced lie and Crampton damn well knows it. There have been lots of cases where conservative Christian legal groups have sued the government for violating the constitution, won, and been reimbursed for expenses just like the ACLU. Is he seriously going to claim that the ACLJ didn't get reimbursed for costs and fees in Lamb's Chapel? Or that the plaintiffs in Mergens and Good News Club didn't get the same benefit when they won? If you have to resort to lies to back up your position, your position must be awfully weak.