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—Conflict—
Continued from page 6.
for an additional $100,000 and
they turned me down flat. 1 went
back to the attorney general and he
said I can’t bankrupt my entire
budget for this one case. The money
for this case is at an end, and if
these guys want to take more deps
and fly around the country, they’re
going to have to find another way
to pay for it.”
Re-enter Bill Keith. In late Sep
tember 1981, Keith met with
Guste in the attorney general’s
Baton Rouge office. “1 have an
idea that I want to share with you,”
Keith told Guste. Keith then des-
cribed several young at
torneys from the creationist
movement with the constitutional
background needed to pursue the
case, and asked Guste to deputize
them as additional attorneys gen
eral, thus further relieving the staff
drain.
“The attorney general was not
overly enthusiastic,” recollects
Keith. “So 1 went a step further. If
he would appoint them, 1 was wil
ling to set up an organization that
would pay these men’s salaries,
transportation, telephone bills, etc.”
“What else could he (Guste) do?”
explained a Guste assistant close to
the case. “The attorney general has
a constitutional obligation to
defend state legislation. There had
been many efforts to repeal this
law, and none of them succeeded.
But at the same time the legislature
wouldn’t give us the extra $ 100,000
we needed to litigate. The attorney
general wouldn’t be acting respon
sibly if he took his entire budget for
litigation to appeal this one case,
and let everything else fall by the
wayside.”
But Marc Stern, legal director of
the American Jewish Congress,
counters, “By allowing this arrange
ment, in effect, the attorney gen
eral didn’t retain the fundamenta
lists the fundamentalists retained
the Attorney General.”
Legal defense fund
In fall 1981, Guste held a press
conference to announce the case
would continue in litigation but
not at taxpayers’ expense. The name
of the organization funding the
additional litigation was not
announced at the time, according
to Keith, “because we didn’t exist
yet and had no name.” However,
the Creation Science Legal Defense
Fund was quickly incorporated with
Keith as president, and Bird as its
lead counsel. As a tax-deductible
501c3 entity, CSLDF began solic
iting monies from across the nation.
Among the donors are major found
ations with a vested interest in
Creation Science and fundamen
talist presidential aspirant Pat
Robertson’s Freedom Council.
With a fundamentalist subsidy
and three CSLDF attorneys now
working as special assistant attor
neys general, Louisiana went back
to court. Bird’s original dismissed
case was appealed to a three-judge
panel in the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals, but they upheld the lower
ruling. A petition was then pres
ented to the full 15 judges of the
Fifth Circuit, and that too was
rejected—but by a close decision of
eight to seven.
As expected, Bird then appealed
to the Supreme Court. Constitu
tional protectionists, including
several major Jewish organizations
that filed amicus briefs, originally
expected Louisiana’s petition to be
summarily denied, explains Stern
of the American Jewish Congress.
But on May 5, the Supreme Court
surprised observers by agreeing to
hear arguments on Louisiana’s
case—the first time it has agreed to
hear such a case in 18 years. The
court will not be deciding the mer
its of the Louisiana law, only
whether it deserves a trial.
The Supreme Court decision to
hear arguments has heartened
creationists because “if they sent us
back to the Fifth Circuit with
instructions to grant us a trial, we
have a strong chance,” explained a
source in Bird’s litigation team.
“Remember, the Appeals Court
only rejected our petition by eight
judges to seven. Our seven judges
are holding. But, one of the eight
(who ruled against) is no longer on
the bench. His replacement is a
Reagan appointee," the Bird source
continued, “and you know the
Reagan record on this issue. Since
March, two new Reagan judges
have been appointed expanding
the court to 17. So we have reason
to believe the Fifth would now be
sympathetic to us.”
Regardless of what the Supreme
Court decides this fall, and what
the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
rr ight rule, Louisiana’s creationism
case is destined for years of addi
tional litigation. At the current
rate, millions of additional dollars
in legal expenses and fees for the
State of Louisiana will be required.
The money numbers have never
been divulged, but it is reliably
learned that thus far creationist
attorneys Wendell Bird, A. Mor
gan Brian and Thomas T. Ander
son have generated in excess of
$750,000 in legal fees and approx
imately $300,000 in expenses on
behalf of the state. The question is
the ethics of consigning the case to
the Creation Science Legal Defense
Fund.
* feature Group Inc.
Next Week: Part Two
The Ethics and Legality
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PAGE 7 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELJTE May 30, 1986