ACORN v. USA – They Are Suing the Government

Published Thu, Nov 12 2009 11:09 AM

Our friends at ACORN are at it again. Rather than accept the fact that an organization engaging in fraudulent and criminal activity should not have access to your tax dollars, they've decided to file a lawsuit against the United States. Specifically they've named HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, OMB Director Peter Orszag, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in the lawsuit.

ACORN is getting desperate. They've been without federal funding since October 1, 2009. Congress must act by December 18th to determine whether to restore funding of ACORN.

ACORN is again making the tired claim that Congressional defunding of ACORN is an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder. But when filing desperate litigation one needs to make some desperate claims as well. ACORN claims its First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights are being violated.

Former FEC Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky has refuted these claims before:

"The Defund ACORN Act does not meet the legal definition of a bill of attainder.  There is no valid reason why the courts would not defer to the legislative judgment of Congress as to the regulatory purposes of the statute.  Congressional concern over an organization that receives taxpayer funds engaging in numerous violations of the law is more than enough justification to meet any test applied by a court trying to determine the reasonableness and rational basis for such legislation."

This is merely the desperate act of a corrupt organization unwilling to admit its culpability.

The defense of this litigation will fall on the Department of Justice. I certainly hope they are willing to stand up in defense of this necessary and proper defunding of ACORN. This lawsuit needs to be zealously defended, not dismissed like the case against the Black Panthers.

by Chris Berg
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Comments

# Marsha Breazeale said on Thursday, November 12, 2009 2:54 PM

No. 1: The receipt of funds by ACORN paid over by the USA is the result of a CONTRACT, not the exercise of a RIGHT by ACORN.  The lawsuit needed to assert breach to have any effect, not assert violation of a mis-interpreted constitutionally-protected right.

No. 2: The Defund ACORN Act cannot be a bill of attainder because ACORN holds no "right" to receive federal funding, and the withholding of funding does not impair, restrict or suspend any recognized consitutional right held by ACORN which the USA is required to protect, and "punishment" as set out in the Fifth Amendment can be delivered by government only by the impairment, restriction or suspension of a constitutional right.

No. 3: The USA has a higher public duty to spend tax dollars collected from the citizens in a manner which fulfills the prior-legislated purpose for the collection of those dollars.  To fund ACORN even one more dollar after the USA was placed on actual notice of illegal activities (which is evidenced by the criminal charges filed against ACORN for voter registration fraud before the video tapes surfaced) would have placed the USA in violation of its fiduciary capacity to execute the public trust.  The outrageous and egregious conduct of ACORN-trained and supervised personnel depicted on the tapes shocks the conscience and warrants suspension of possible mis-appropriation of tax dollars until full investigation can be completed.

No. 4: The Federal judicial system needs to write a detailed explanation of its position relative to privilege v. right relative to the First and Fifth Amendments when issuing the Order to Dismiss, to stop other like-minded private organizations from following ACORN's example of abuse of our legal system for political gain.

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