http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/17/how-the-lawyers-plan-to-stifle-speech-and-faith/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork

How the lawyers plan to stifle speech and faith

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Last week the American Bar Association (ABA) changed its model ethics rules for lawyers, prohibiting attorneys from engaging in speech or being a member of any organization — even churches — that holds traditional views on marriage, sexuality and other issues. It now goes to each state’s courts for consideration, which must emphatically reject Model Rule 8.4 as an unprecedented threat to religious liberty, both for attorneys and their clients.

The ABA adopted Model Rule 8.4, which makes it unethical — and thus something for which a lawyer could lose his or her license to practice law — to “discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law.”

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The rule’s official comments sweepingly interpret discrimination “related” to practicing law to include “verbal conduct” and “business or social activities.” Anything a lawyer says to another person — whether speaking in church or over dinner — sharing his viewpoints on same-sex marriage, transgenderism, Black Lives Matter or illegal immigration, would enable any hearer to file a complaint with the state bar authority.

Indeed, a lawyer’s church membership and worship activities are “social activities.” Churches that are evangelical, Roman Catholic or numerous other faiths (such as Orthodox Jews), have official doctrinal positions that marriage is between one man with one woman and that God purposefully creates each person with a fixed biological sex. Many churches also have certain views about socioeconomic issues. A liberal activist could file a complaint based solely upon such membership or participation, or even casual discussions over coffee.

The speaker could then be punished by the state’s bar, possibly losing his or her law license. Even if the complaint ultimately fails, the effects are devastating. Any person can file an ethics complaint against a lawyer. Any plausible complaint can precipitate a formal investigation by a state supreme court, requiring the lawyer to spend thousands of dollars on legal representation, attend hearings, and create a permanent public record that the lawyer was officially investigated for potentially unethical conduct. Bar complaints are toxic to any lawyer’s business and career.

The ABA is a private organization with 400,000 members; most of America’s 1.3 million lawyers are not part of the ABA. But while licenses to practice law are granted by each state’s judiciary, most state bars fashion their ethics rules after the ABA’s model rules, or adopt ABA rules outright.

A lawyer who loses a license can no longer earn a living, either in private practice or working for a law firm or company performing legal work. This fuses economic and social issues. Nobody should want to ban any productive adult from being economically self-sufficient; everyone needs the ability to work at a job to support his or her family.

Nor do we want to destroy any citizen’s constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and religion, or for people of faith to go unprotected when religious or moral values are threatened because lawyers fear to represent them.

Frighteningly, the ABA leaders’ statements verify that they understand — and intend — the ramifications of Model Rule 8.4. President Paulette Brown advocates that the ABA must prevent “bias” in ways that go far beyond current law. Committee member Drucilla Ramey insists bar authorities go “to the top of the legal profession” to “incentivize” attorneys to change their views and speech on these issues, views and speech often informed by attorneys’ religion. All this, despite committee testimony that such a rule has “little relation to concerns” arising in most lawyers’ offices, could be “used tactically against someone inappropriately,” and will “have a chilling effect on something that has always been in the best traditions of the bar: representing minority views and unpopular positions or clients.”

The purpose of our legal system is to ensure freedom. Popular speech rarely needs legal protection. The law protects dissenters’ right to disagree with governmental orthodoxy. It must not become a weapon to oppress those dissenters.

We must launch a nationwide campaign encouraging each state’s judiciary to reject such a requirement, and litigate in federal court if necessary. State supreme courts and state bars are government actors, bound by the First Amendment rights of free speech, freedom of association, and free exercise of religion. This rule grossly violates all of those fundamental rights.

The ABA’s un-American censorship regime is beyond draconian; it coerces conformity regarding religious and political beliefs on a level unprecedented in American history. It borders on fascism, and must be explicitly repudiated.

• Edwin Meese III was the 75th attorney general of the United States. Kelly J. Shackelford is president and CEO of First Liberty Institute.

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http://mobile.wnd.com/2016/02/bible-verse-too-hot-for-school-killing-fundraiser/

BIBLE VERSE TOO HOT FOR SCHOOL, KILLING FUNDRAISER

Actor Jim Caviezel portraying Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ.”

A Colorado college has decided to kill a fundraising program that sold personalized name plates for athletic facility lockers rather than allow one to feature the Bible reference Colossians 3:23, because if people looked it up, they would find the verse includes the word “Lord.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom on Friday filed a notice dismissing its lawsuit against Colorado Mines, explaining the school had “removed all donor nameplates from its football locker room rather than allow a former football player to include a Bible reference.”

Last year, the dispute erupted when the college promoted the program without any restrictions on the messages donors were allowed to inscribe.

Donors to a new Clear Creek Athletics Complex were allowed to dictate an inscription for a personalized nameplate that would be placed in the new football locker room.

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

Michael Lucas, who played defensive nose tackle for the school and graduated in 2003, made a $2,500 donation and requested “Colossians 3:23 and Micah 5:9.”

But the message was rejected by the school, the ADF lawsuit explained, because one of the Bible verses includes the word “Lord.”

“CSM officials objected because they said, after the fact, that nameplate quotes could not include the words ‘Lord,’ ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’ or make reference to Bible verses that contain those words. They claimed that to allow them would be a violation of the First Amendment,” ADF said.

However, the lawyers argued that the First Amendment actually protects such speech.

Furthermore, the school’s official policy prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion.

And slogans such as “Give ‘Em Hell” and “Take your whiskey clear” were approved by the school.

On Friday, ADF confirmed the school withdrew the lawsuit after it decided “to end the fundraising program associated with the nameplates.”

The school’s president, Paul Johnson, told school supporters in a letter that the original program was canceled, and the decision was made to “remove all existing plaques.”

“All plaques have been removed, whether or not they contained a quote,” he wrote.

He said a new program with strict limits on what will be posted was being launched.

The application form for the new program specifies “No free text quotes.”

He wrote, “Mines never intended for the new locker room to be a public forum for individual expression, nor do we believe anyone could reasonably assert that a private locker room would be viewed as a public space.”

But the campus is supported by tax dollars, as are most public universities.

“Although we strongly stand behind the merits of the original fundraising program and our decision to maintain the locker room as a private space for the football program, rather than a public space for expression, we also wish to remove any potential for further misunderstanding,” he said.

That’s why there are substantial restrictions on the new program, he explained.

“Public colleges are supposed to be a marketplace of ideas, but the School of Mines has indicated it prefers anti-religious hostility,” said ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer. “It’s ridiculous and sad that the school felt the need to punish everyone who participated in the program simply because it could not stomach a Bible reference on one plaque – a reference that was not even going to include the text of the verses.”

ADF explained the original program specifically “allowed individuals to express a personalized message on their nameplates without any stated restrictions.”

The organization said the school now “oddly claims in the letter that it didn’t intend to allow ‘individual expression.'”

“The school initially imposed no restrictions – or even guidelines – on the type of message a donor could include, and contrary to what the school argued, the First Amendment protects – not restricts – a simple reference to a Bible verse in this context,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Hacker. “Because the school apparently feared a simple Scripture reference would be like asbestos on the locker room walls, it decided to purge any trace of free expression from the facility.”

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

School officials had told Lucas that whatever he put on the nameplate could not include, nor could it even reference, a verse with the words “God, “Lord” or “Jesus.”

They told him: “The U.S. Constitution and our university policy prohibiting unlawful discrimination are the bases for our not permitting biblical inscriptions on the lockers. As a state university, we must be very attentive to the separation of church and state, and avoid even the appearance of promoting or supporting one particular religion or set of religious beliefs over others.”

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