Religious Liberty Fights Aren’t Pissing Contests.
Over the past 24 hours, I have been repeatedly pressed to publicly respond to arguments made before the Connecticut Supreme Court in Spillane v. Lamont regarding the We The Patriots USA v. Connecticut Office of Early Childhood case that my colleagues and I will be petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court for review in the next month of so. I typically don’t pay attention to white noise of that nature, but, having been urged to respond, I will express my opinions.
Religious liberty fights aren’t pissing contests. Various organizations and individual plaintiffs bring different theories into court. At the end of the day, we all have the same goal: restoring religious exemptions for school children whose parents don’t want them to take vaccines.
Individual plaintiffs typically can’t pursue these cases without donor support or organizational support. They simply don’t have the means on their own to pay the costs of such litigation (let alone attorneys’ fees), which can easily reach $10,000 to $20,000 between printing costs for the U.S. Supreme Court and expert witness fees. Thus, the organizations and attorneys have to compete for donor money. The Apostle Paul truthfully said: “For the love of money is the root of all evil….”
I have been doing vaccine religious cases since I was licensed as a lawyer. I’ve been doing civil rights cases for about the same amount of time. Nothing creates conflict between attorneys and organizations on the same side of an issue faster than a competition for dollars. That conflict is typically vicious, especially as the stakes get bigger.
The Spillane case has exemplified that conduct. The plaintiffs’ briefs in that case criticize my client, We The Patriots USA, and its vice-president Brian Festa as bringing its challenge to Connecticut’s repeal of the religious exemption for school vaccinations simply as a marketing exercise. The criticism continued in oral argument and bordered on outright accusing Mr. Festa and We The Patriots USA of being grifters. Spillane‘s counsel then apparently attacked WTP’s efforts in Milford Christian Church v. Russell-Tucker on social media.
The Spillane plaintiffs did not need to go there. The issues in the appeal before the Connecticut Supreme Court are fundamentally distinguishable from the issues decided by the Second Circuit in We The Patriots USA v. Connecticut Office of Early Childhood case. The Second Circuit issued a definitive decision as to the merits in WTP. The Connecticut Supreme Court is considering a nuanced jurisdictional issue in Spillane. Yes, there is some overlap, but not to the extent that it required a cowardly public smearing of Mr. Festa and We The Patriots USA, Inc.
The We The Patriots USA case encountered the problem that civil rights cases typically do: a cantankerous trial court judge named Janet Bond Arterton. Since I have been licensed, Judge Arterton has repeatedly and erroneously batted down my religious liberty challenges and my Second Amendment challenges. I currently have two more appeals of her decisions at the Second Circuit (Nastri v. Dykes and Grant v. Lamont). I am aware of other organizations who have also been forced to pursue appeals of her decisions against constitutional liberties.
Far from upholding Judge Arteron’s procedural missteps or reprimanding me and my colleagues for any deficiencies in WTP, the Second Circuit actually reprimanded Judge Arterton for her procedural missteps and reached the merits as a result. Our merits panel at the Second Circuit, however, also had a similar distaste for religious liberty claims as Judge Bianco pointed out in a stinging dissent.
We now are at the door of bringing the issue of religious exemptions to the United States Supreme Court. The last time We The Patriots USA, Brian Festa, and my colleagues and I reached this point, we persuaded three Supreme Court justices to agree with us. We only need one more justice for the Supreme Court to hear the case and issue a nationwide decision. I stand by the quality of the work that my colleagues and I have performed to this point, and we remain confident that we will persuade a fourth justice to accept the We The Patriots USA v. Connecticut Office of Early Childhood case.
If you want to support that effort, that’s fine by me. If you want to support another effort, that’s also fine by me. Just don’t sit on the sidelines doing nothing.
I don’t get into pissing contests, especially over religious liberty. There’s enough of the pie for everyone. Quite frankly, I am rooting for the Spillane plaintiffs to prevail on a jurisdictional issue that I have been battling the state of Connecticut for years on. Apart from their smears on my clients, I thought they made a good argument regarding the actual issues at play. Their win will be my clients’ win. The same goes for a win that my clients secure.
Organizations and attorneys have to compete for your dollars. I get it. This fight, however, is way too important to turn it into a pissing contest. We all want religious liberty restored for the parents and children of Connecticut. Let’s keep our eye on the prize.