How About Tort Reform for the Christian Right?
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:13 am
The euphemistically titled “Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act” is expected to be up on the Senate floor Wednesday – the deadline for House bills to pass the Senate. Sugar Land Republican Rep. Charlie Howard’s HB 3678 already exposed some hypocrisy on the House floor in April when some members, facing a long and possibly revealing debate on the bill, tried to curb the discussion – in other words, limit free speech on a so-called free speech bill.
The bill’s trip through the Senate Education committee last week added new layers of irony to the legislation.
Howard’s argument against all amendments offered on the House floor was that the bill was so carefully constructed by constitutional experts that any addition would open the legislation up to lawsuits. Though Howard cried unconstitutional on the House floor in the face of any proposed change to the bill, that didn’t stop supporters from changing the bill in the Senate.
The first Senate committee substitute boasted a new enforcement provision that would have allowed students suing schools for violating this law to recover attorney fees and other damages. A second clause would have given the attorney general the authority to enforce the law.
The clauses are interesting, to say the least, given Howard’s main argument for the bill – that it will prevent schools from going through costly lawsuits at the taxpayer’s expense. Even the bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands), was uncomfortable with the enforcement language and removed it from the bill.
“Quite honestly I didn’t catch this provision,” Williams said in the May 17 Senate Education committee hearing, when committee members pointed out that the language may open the door to abusive lawsuits against schools.
“I’m reluctant to create a new cause of action,” Williams said in an interview. He said the language was written by Kelly Coghlan, chief counsel at Coghlan and Associates law firm. Coghlan is one of the bill’s main writers, along with Kelly Shackelford, president of the Free Market Foundation and chief counsel at Liberty Legal Institute. Both Coghlan and Shackelford have worked on lawsuits against schools for limiting students’ religious expression. Hmmm.
Shackelford also said in an interview that Coghlan had written the enforcement element of the bill, and that both had supported it.
“I don’t think [the enforcement provision] would increase litigation,” Shackelford said. “By allowing enforcement, the districts would train teachers. They would say, ‘Let’s make sure we understand this,’ and there would be less lawsuits.”
When the Observer asked Coghlan who had written the provision, he repeatedly said, “It’s irrelevant who wrote that,” because the language had been stripped. He then abruptly hung up the phone.
During the May 17 hearing, when Sen. Florence Shapiro asked a question about the bill, Shackelford pointed to Coghlan and said, “He could speak to that. He wrote the bill.”
Perhaps Coghlan’s reticence to talk about who authored the bill stems from a recognition that it might appear unseemly to some that lawyers who make money by suing school districts wrote complicated legislation that could leave Texas schools vulnerable to more lawsuits. We’ll never know, since he doesn’t want to talk about it.
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
If they want to limit lawsuits it would be best not to pass this legislation. The schools are required to give students a “Limited Form” in which the schools must designed the subject. This “Limited Form” is to include:
(1) football games;
(2) any other athletic events designated by the district;
(3) opening announcements and greetings for the school day
(4) any additional events designated by the district, which may include, without limitation, assemblies and pep rallies.
Giving a student a platform and then acting suprised that the student said a prayer will not keep you out of federal court.