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ACLJ's Argument: 'Separationists' Have No Standing in Notre Dame Case

By Jim Brown
December 11, 2006

(AgapePress) - A group that specializes in constitutional law is urging the highest court in the U.S. to deny taxpayer standing in a church-state case.

The federal government had funded a teacher training program through a grant to the University of Notre Dame. However, strict advocates of the "separation of church and state" filed a lawsuit claiming the program violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The grant expired while the case was still pending in the trial court, and the federal trial court threw the case out as moot. Yet the Court of Appeals resurrected the case, allowing the plaintiffs to sue Notre Dame to force the school to reimburse the government for the grant money. The Catholic university then asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.

The American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) has filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the school, asking the court to hold that the same rules apply to church-state separationists as to everyone else.

"Notre Dame has asked the Supreme Court to hear the case on the theory that the third party, namely the separationists, has no standing to ask for money to be paid from party C to Party D," says ACLJ's senior litigation counsel Walter Weber. "They're not going to get any benefit," he continues. "So we filed an amicus brief saying not only is that right, but that the Supreme Court should use this case as an opportunity to revisit the whole question of federal taxpayer standing."

Weber points out that, unfortunately, since the late 1960s there has been a special exception for church-state cases. "Someone who is no more than a federal taxpayer can march into court and say, 'I object to what President Bush is doing, or I object to what Congress is doing' -- even though it doesn't affect them anymore than it does any other taxpayer in the whole country," says the attorney.

"So we pointed out that this is really an anomalous exception, that it runs contrary to the direction of the law in every other area -- and it's basically unfair," Weber adds. "Why should they get some sort of special right to go in and complain as a taxpayer when no one else does?"

Weber believes the high court will take the case, noting that Chief Justice John Roberts and other members of the court believe very strongly in the separation of powers and see the courts as limited to cases and controversies. The ACLJ says the court will likely decide within the next two months whether to hear the case. If the court accepts University of Notre Dame v. Laskowski, it could hear and decide the case by the end of June 2007.