The county committee of the Barrow County Republican Party passed a resolution Monday calling for Georgia senators and congressmen to support H.R. 725, the “Veterans' Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2007.”
The federal legislation, introduced by Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, calls for a statutory amendment which would “prevent the use of the legal system in a manner that extorts money from State and local governments, and the Federal Government, and inhibits such governments' constitutional actions under the first, tenth, and fourteenth amendments.”
According to a written statement released by Kenneth Young, chairman of the Barrow County Republican Party, the legislation is needed to end abuses by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The 1976 Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act allows the ACLU to collect attorney’s fees for lawsuits involving the Pledge of Allegiance and displays of crosses or the Ten Commandments on public property.
According to the resolution, the ACLU is using the act as a means of “asserting a civil right not to see a cross or the Ten Commandments displayed on public property.”
In Georgia alone, the ACLU has received over $225,000 in legal fees stemming from lawsuits against Barrow and Habersham Counties over Ten Commandments displays. The ACLU received over half a million dollars in the landmark Alabama case where Judge Roy Moore was forced to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom.
