Bryan Fischer
When the wicked rule
By Bryan Fischer
"When the wicked rule, the people groan." Proverbs 29:2
The City of Boise is coming after my home, to collect a federal court judgment against me and Brandi Swindell for $10,131, in connection with our effort to protect the public display of a Ten Commandments monument in Boise's Julia Davis Park.
The June 23 letter says the city of Boise has taken action to place "an automatic lien against all real and personal property under your individual names."
According to the missive, "This Judgment will remain on your credit record until the debt is paid in full." And if it is not resolved by July 15, the city says, "[W]e will proceed against you to collect the amounts due, plus interests and costs."
You may read the city's letter here.
This matter goes back to the very beginning of our battle with the city in January of 2004. When we got wind of the city's surreptitious plan to remove the monument — which had stood peacefully in the park since 1965 — Ms. Swindell and I asked Mayor David Bieter for a public hearing before the city yanked the monument out of the ground. When he refused, Ms. Swindell and I sought an injunction against the city to prevent removal of the monument, in order to give us time to organize a community response.
The effort to remove the monument from the park was initiated by city councilman Alan Shealy, a man who refuses to participate in the invocation that opens city council meetings (he stands ramrod straight and glares either at the back wall or the bowed head of the clergyman offering the prayer) and refuses to say the words "under God" when the Pledge of Allegiance is recited as the first order of city business.
Mr. Shealy's leadership in this issue gives the lie to the city's claim that its actions were all about avoiding a lawsuit from Kansas crank Fred Phelps. When Phelps rattled his saber at the neighboring cities of Nampa and Caldwell, their mayors told him to take a hike and haven't heard from him since. The empty legal threat was just a bogeyman to give Mr. Shealy the pretext he needed to remove any mention of God from Boise's public square.
The city had slipped the monument removal item on to its agenda as late as legally possible, concealed it under a euphemistic label (calling it the "Fraternal Order of Eagles" monument, as if anybody knew what that was), scheduled it for discussion at a pre-council meeting that the public never attends, and scheduled the monument for immediate removal. When we went to the part site the day after the city council vote, cut lines had already been spray-painted onto the ground surrounding the monument. City leaders clearly hoped that they could make it disappear before anybody noticed.
We had no option but to move quickly if the city was to be stopped and this part of our city's cultural heritage was to be protected.
As you are aware, the ACLU has padded its coffers by successfully suing cities on the grounds that the presence of religious monuments offends them. We reasoned that, if being offended is a legitimate basis to initiate legal action, then we had the same right to challenge the city on the grounds that removing this monument offended us. As private citizens, we sought a preliminary injunction from a federal judge.
This judge, who had ruled in 1995 that a similar monument in Bannock County was constitutionally protected, rejected our motion, and to make matters worse, ordered us to pay $10,131 in attorney's fees to the city. The city had asked for over $14,000, an amount so obviously excessive that the judge trimmed it by over 25% before sticking it to us.
This, mind you, was despite the fact that the city has a full-time staff of several dozen lawyers, who are already being paid to do the legal work of the city. In other words, the city asked this judge to force us to pay their own attorneys to do the jobs they were already being paid by taxpayers to do, and the judge meekly complied.
Ms. Swindell and I both work, then as now, for small non-profit organizations and thus have limited means. We couldn't have paid the attorney's fee award if we'd had to, and had no expectation that the city would use its massive resources to seek to punish its own citizens in this way. According to a conversation with the senior counsel of one of the nation's leading First Amendment law firms, it is highly unusual for a city to go after private citizens in this fashion.
We did manage to hold the city off for 70 days, but they finally dug the monument out of the ground and stuck it on private property at the end of March, 2004, breaking state law regarding the disposal of surplus city property in the process.
We then collected 19,000 signatures in the summer of 2004 to put an initiative before Boise voters to see if they'd like a new Ten Commandments display to go into the park, in the same place occupied by the former one. The city spent an estimated $130,000 of taxpayer monies in an ultimately vain attempt to block our right to vote, finally being ordered by the state Supreme Court to put the issue on the ballot by a 4-1 vote.
Even though we prevailed, we did not seek attorney's fees from the city in the Supreme Court case. We just wanted our right to vote.
The city of Boise has an annual budget of $479 million, and thus is certainly in a position to waive this award of attorney's fees. The city routinely waives fees for such things as soccer tournaments and Lewis and Clark expositions, yet the city's mayor and his accomplices on the city council are still determined to come after us for $10,000. This is a sad indication of what this city is prepared to do to its own citizens who do nothing more than exercise their right to freedom of speech and to seek redress for their grievances.
And even though an award of attorney's fees is not self-executing, meaning the city must initiate action to collect, we heard nothing from the city for 4 ½ years until they informed us they were dropping the hammer on us and giving us three weeks to cough up the money.
A friend of mine observed over the weekend that fascism is the use of public resources to crush private citizens. Our circumstance may be a case in point.
So we have until July 15 to find a way to satisfy the city's demand. Appealing the judge's 2004 ruling would have required an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where its left-leaning tilt means that we would be likely to lose and be at risk for another $80,000 in attorney's fees. Ms. Swindell and I simply were not in a position to risk that kind of financial exposure.
The judge, of course, had the legal authority to impose the judgment, and the city has the legal right to come after my home to collect it. But as slavery taught us, what is legal is not necessarily the same thing as what is right.
The bottom line is that the city continues to make elective choices to punish its own people. No one forced the city of Boise to come after two of its own private citizens for attorney's fees in the first place, and no one forced it to come after the home in which I raised my children to collect.
Yet the city of Boise and its mayor, David Bieter, are determined to use its half billion dollar budget and its massive team of attorneys to harass, intimidate and punish their own citizens for doing nothing more than exercising their constitutional rights in an effort to protect our cultural heritage and a public symbol of God's abiding truth.
The issue for us has, from the very beginning, been about just one thing: will the city of Boise be a city which continues to acknowledge God and his transcendent standards for human behavior, or will it join the sad and growing ranks of those who put God's law behind their backs.
Alas, it looks as though the verdict is in.
© Bryan Fischer
"When the wicked rule, the people groan." Proverbs 29:2
The City of Boise is coming after my home, to collect a federal court judgment against me and Brandi Swindell for $10,131, in connection with our effort to protect the public display of a Ten Commandments monument in Boise's Julia Davis Park.
The June 23 letter says the city of Boise has taken action to place "an automatic lien against all real and personal property under your individual names."
According to the missive, "This Judgment will remain on your credit record until the debt is paid in full." And if it is not resolved by July 15, the city says, "[W]e will proceed against you to collect the amounts due, plus interests and costs."
You may read the city's letter here.
This matter goes back to the very beginning of our battle with the city in January of 2004. When we got wind of the city's surreptitious plan to remove the monument — which had stood peacefully in the park since 1965 — Ms. Swindell and I asked Mayor David Bieter for a public hearing before the city yanked the monument out of the ground. When he refused, Ms. Swindell and I sought an injunction against the city to prevent removal of the monument, in order to give us time to organize a community response.
The effort to remove the monument from the park was initiated by city councilman Alan Shealy, a man who refuses to participate in the invocation that opens city council meetings (he stands ramrod straight and glares either at the back wall or the bowed head of the clergyman offering the prayer) and refuses to say the words "under God" when the Pledge of Allegiance is recited as the first order of city business.
Mr. Shealy's leadership in this issue gives the lie to the city's claim that its actions were all about avoiding a lawsuit from Kansas crank Fred Phelps. When Phelps rattled his saber at the neighboring cities of Nampa and Caldwell, their mayors told him to take a hike and haven't heard from him since. The empty legal threat was just a bogeyman to give Mr. Shealy the pretext he needed to remove any mention of God from Boise's public square.
The city had slipped the monument removal item on to its agenda as late as legally possible, concealed it under a euphemistic label (calling it the "Fraternal Order of Eagles" monument, as if anybody knew what that was), scheduled it for discussion at a pre-council meeting that the public never attends, and scheduled the monument for immediate removal. When we went to the part site the day after the city council vote, cut lines had already been spray-painted onto the ground surrounding the monument. City leaders clearly hoped that they could make it disappear before anybody noticed.
We had no option but to move quickly if the city was to be stopped and this part of our city's cultural heritage was to be protected.
As you are aware, the ACLU has padded its coffers by successfully suing cities on the grounds that the presence of religious monuments offends them. We reasoned that, if being offended is a legitimate basis to initiate legal action, then we had the same right to challenge the city on the grounds that removing this monument offended us. As private citizens, we sought a preliminary injunction from a federal judge.
This judge, who had ruled in 1995 that a similar monument in Bannock County was constitutionally protected, rejected our motion, and to make matters worse, ordered us to pay $10,131 in attorney's fees to the city. The city had asked for over $14,000, an amount so obviously excessive that the judge trimmed it by over 25% before sticking it to us.
This, mind you, was despite the fact that the city has a full-time staff of several dozen lawyers, who are already being paid to do the legal work of the city. In other words, the city asked this judge to force us to pay their own attorneys to do the jobs they were already being paid by taxpayers to do, and the judge meekly complied.
Ms. Swindell and I both work, then as now, for small non-profit organizations and thus have limited means. We couldn't have paid the attorney's fee award if we'd had to, and had no expectation that the city would use its massive resources to seek to punish its own citizens in this way. According to a conversation with the senior counsel of one of the nation's leading First Amendment law firms, it is highly unusual for a city to go after private citizens in this fashion.
We did manage to hold the city off for 70 days, but they finally dug the monument out of the ground and stuck it on private property at the end of March, 2004, breaking state law regarding the disposal of surplus city property in the process.
We then collected 19,000 signatures in the summer of 2004 to put an initiative before Boise voters to see if they'd like a new Ten Commandments display to go into the park, in the same place occupied by the former one. The city spent an estimated $130,000 of taxpayer monies in an ultimately vain attempt to block our right to vote, finally being ordered by the state Supreme Court to put the issue on the ballot by a 4-1 vote.
Even though we prevailed, we did not seek attorney's fees from the city in the Supreme Court case. We just wanted our right to vote.
The city of Boise has an annual budget of $479 million, and thus is certainly in a position to waive this award of attorney's fees. The city routinely waives fees for such things as soccer tournaments and Lewis and Clark expositions, yet the city's mayor and his accomplices on the city council are still determined to come after us for $10,000. This is a sad indication of what this city is prepared to do to its own citizens who do nothing more than exercise their right to freedom of speech and to seek redress for their grievances.
And even though an award of attorney's fees is not self-executing, meaning the city must initiate action to collect, we heard nothing from the city for 4 ½ years until they informed us they were dropping the hammer on us and giving us three weeks to cough up the money.
A friend of mine observed over the weekend that fascism is the use of public resources to crush private citizens. Our circumstance may be a case in point.
So we have until July 15 to find a way to satisfy the city's demand. Appealing the judge's 2004 ruling would have required an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where its left-leaning tilt means that we would be likely to lose and be at risk for another $80,000 in attorney's fees. Ms. Swindell and I simply were not in a position to risk that kind of financial exposure.
The judge, of course, had the legal authority to impose the judgment, and the city has the legal right to come after my home to collect it. But as slavery taught us, what is legal is not necessarily the same thing as what is right.
The bottom line is that the city continues to make elective choices to punish its own people. No one forced the city of Boise to come after two of its own private citizens for attorney's fees in the first place, and no one forced it to come after the home in which I raised my children to collect.
Yet the city of Boise and its mayor, David Bieter, are determined to use its half billion dollar budget and its massive team of attorneys to harass, intimidate and punish their own citizens for doing nothing more than exercising their constitutional rights in an effort to protect our cultural heritage and a public symbol of God's abiding truth.
The issue for us has, from the very beginning, been about just one thing: will the city of Boise be a city which continues to acknowledge God and his transcendent standards for human behavior, or will it join the sad and growing ranks of those who put God's law behind their backs.
Alas, it looks as though the verdict is in.
© Bryan Fischer
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