Injunction Granted in Louisiana Church Funding Suit : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)

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Injunction Granted in Louisiana Church Funding Suit

Posted on: October 9, 2007 9:13 AM, by Ed Brayton

A few weeks ago I reported on an ACLU suit against the state of Louisiana over two earmarks in the budget that gave $120,000 to two churches in the state without any statement of purpose whatsoever. A Federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction stopping the transfer pending the outcome of the case (see the order here). The state should just admit they can't do this, but I suspect they won't.

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I find it amusing that people in the media will openly worry about Mitt Romney's Mormonism, but they won't come out and say "Will Romney give my tax money to Mormons like George Bush is doing to evangelical christians?"

Since Bush has been getting away with it for six years, he's encouraging state governments to do the same thing.

Posted by: WTFWJD | October 9, 2007 12:27 PM

I haven't read too many preliminary injunction decisions, but this one seems to me to make an unusually strong statement, and this decision read more like a final disposition than I had expected. To grant a preliminary injunction, the standard is a strong likliehood of prevailing on the merits, but in the decision the judge seems to actually make a decision on the merits, stating bluntly that the grants violate the Supreme Court's Lemon test.

With such a strong statement--and one that I have a hard time imagining a good counterargument against--I wonder if the State will try to let this quietly go away, or if they'll actually try to fight it.

But I keep forgetting: these conservatives are the true constitutionalists, so anything they do must be constitutionally ok.

Posted by: JamesH | October 9, 2007 9:05 PM