Here's the plaintiff's summary (including all the legal docs at the bottom of the page), a blog post with lots of helpful links, and here's some great legal analysis of the case's importance."What this case is really about is the basic question [of] whether citizens have the right to sue to keep the government from violating the First Amendment," said Richard Katskee, assistant legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
His organization, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, People for the American Way and other groups supportive of church-state separation have filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation's position.
The case will mark the first time the justices deal with President Bush's faith-based initiatives -- his attempt to expand the government's ability to fund social services through churches and other religious charities.
However, Hein does not deal directly with whether the program violates the First Amendment's ban on government establishment of religion, as some of its critics contend. Rather, the court will consider a narrower issue -- whether a group of taxpayers has "standing," or the right to sue, over the use of general executive-branch funds to promote the faith-based plan.
If citizens are not allowed to use their status as taxpaying citizens in order to procure standing to challenge the federal government's use of funds to establish religion, in violation of the 1st Amendment, then we're all in for a world of hurting. All of us, on every side of every fence. I can only hope that the historically great (but hardly perfect) Supreme Court will protect our country's freedom of religion and uphold the Constitution. Keep your fingers crossed...this one really matters.
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Technorati tags: Religion, Church-state, Politics
