Attorneys' Fees In Church Cases To Be Tested

A bill to prevent the award of attorneys' fees in establishment-of-religion cases brought in federal courts faces its first key test today in Congress.

The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the legislation, called the Public Expression of Religion Act.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. John Hostettler, a Republican of Indiana, said yesterday that the measure is designed to prevent organizations that bring church-state cases from intimidating local governments with the specter of a massive award of attorney's fees.

"It's the Sword of Damocles, you might say, that hangs over every one of these entities,"Mr. Hostettler said. He said he believes that local officials are giving in to groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, despite indications that the Supreme Court would be amenable to the use of religious themes in public monuments and buildings.

"I believe it'll pass tomorrow," he told The New York Sun. "There's a lot of excitement about this bill."

A veterans' group, the American Legion, has pushed hard for the legislation in order to preserve war memorials that include religious symbols such as crosses. One monument, a mountaintop cross in San Diego, has been the subject of litigation for more than 15 years. Last month, Justice Kennedy blocked a lower court order that the cross be taken down immediately.

"I'm appalled at the notion that the ACLU or any other purported public interest law firm would be suing veterans' memorials and then seeking taxpayer-funded attorney fee awards," a lawyer and unit commander with the American Legion, Rees Lloyd, said. Mr. Lloyd, a former ACLU staff attorney, accused the group of seeking to profit from such cases.

"The ACLU has lost all moorings and common sense and rationality and proportionality," he said. "It's become the Taliban of American liberal secularism."

The ACLU did not return calls seeking comment for this article.

The executive director of Americans United, Rev. Barry Lynn, said the proposed law is a back-door effort to discourage lawyers from bringing cases under the Constitution's establishment clause. "That's why the religious right likes this. They can't win on the merits, so they're trying to keep us out of court," he said.

Rev. Lynn said the "fee-stripping" restriction would apply not only to litigation over religious symbolism, but also over the teaching of creationism in public schools. "No other professional people are expected to work for nothing to get people their fundamental rights," he said.