For Immediate Release: May 9, 2018
Contact: press@prwatch.org
Big-budget religious-right organizations are waging a sustained crusade to advance their controversial social agenda by rigging the rules in state courts, according to a new report released by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).
Ten of the largest groups with a combined annual budget of more than $220 million have spent millions over the past decade to mount a relentless attack on traditional safeguards designed to insulate judges from politics, including merit selection, campaign finance laws, and judicial codes of conduct that limit what judges can say about legal issues likely to come before their courts.
The Christian right groups oppose same-sex marriage and adoption rights, promote gay conversion therapy, oppose reproductive rights, and fight for broad religious exemptions. Some have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Emboldened by the successful ousting of three state Supreme Court justices in Iowa in 2010, as retaliation for the Court’s unanimous decision overturning a ban on same-sex marriage, those conservative religious groups have used legal challenges, legislation, and dark-money election spending in more than a dozen states to politicize state courts.
“All courts are under attack by conservative warriors,” said Arn Pearson, CMD’s executive director and the report’s author. “But since Iowa, those most at risk are in the states.”
“The organized Christian right thinks judges should be accountable to ‘values’ voters, and does not believe in the separation of church and state,” Pearson said.
While the religious right has not been able to replicate its Iowa rout, it has successfully teamed up with corporate and partisan players to abolish merit selection in Tennessee, win a conservative majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, and mount a major 2016 challenge against four Kansas Supreme Court justices based on their rulings on abortion, the death penalty, and school funding.
Those efforts have been bolstered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which allowed corporations–including nonprofits–to pour money into judicial elections for the first time in more than a century.
“The influence of big money–already pervasive in federal and state elections–increasingly casts a shadow over how state judges handle controversial cases concerning equal marriage or privacy rights,” Pearson said. “Million-dollar-plus campaigns against sitting judges have become the new normal and can intimidate judges, who are supposed to be neutral arbiters of the law, even when unsuccessful.”
Outside spending on state supreme court elections has more than tripled since 2010, reaching a record $28 million in the 2015-16 judicial elections.
Citizens United and many of the state attacks on judicial independence have been masterminded by James Bopp, an Indiana attorney and GOP insider who has represented groups like Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, National Organization for Marriage, and National Right to Life.
Focus on the Family and its advocacy partner, the Family Policy Alliance, have been major players in that effort. The groups spent a combined $93 million in 2016 and funneled nearly $7 million to a network of local partners in 38 states between 2012 and 2015.
Focus on the Family recently declared itself a church and announced that it will no longer file informational tax returns with the IRS.
“The religious right wants to win ‘Christ-centered’ courts that reflect their extreme religious views, and they will continue to wage a series of small battles until they get there,” Pearson said. “Ensuring that courts will protect the constitutional and civil rights of all Americans, regardless of their religious views, will take an equal commitment from supporters of an independent judiciary.”
Read the report: Conquering the Courts
David Armiak, Max Abbott, and Cynthia Moothart contributed to this report.
This report was made possible by funding from the Piper Fund, an initiative of the Proteus Fund.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is a nationally recognized watchdog that
leads in-depth, award-winning investigations into the hidden avenues of influence that
undermine our democracy, environment, and economic prosperity.
whatever happened to the separation of church and state ?
Wisconsin residents will recall Justice Prosser clenching the throat of Judge Bradley, in a fit of rage in 2011. This is the level of Christian soldierdom expected, when the radical right put one of their own in office. There is nothing Christian like about these groups, they are about power and nothing else. They’ve seen the numbers and are aware they will become extinct – without using extremist measures, to remain exasperatingly relevant. A true Christian would prefer our country become a nation whose principles keep the many cultural elements of this grand experiment in democracy, safe for diversity.
I agree except for the last sentence. Christianity has splintered into hundreds if not thousands of cults and there is no such thing as a true Christian. There is no one Bible either, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant versions do not have all the same books, and the Coptics, oh my where to start?
Dan Barker’s “God:The Most unpleasant character in all fiction” does an excellent job of explaining the many horrible actions supported by the various Bibles that “true Christians” may refer to. Bryan Frazier’s comments were spot on excellent.
The Republican Party and the Radical Religious Right Agenda Exposed.
Enforced Uniformity of Religion by the Radical Religious Right and the Breakdown of Democracy in the United States.
Twenty-five years ago, dominionists targeted the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could advance their agenda. At the same time, a small group of Republican strategists targeted fundamentalist, Pentecostal and charismatic churches to expand the base of the Republican Party. This is not about traditional Republicans or conservative Christians. It is about the manipulation of people of a certain faith for political power. It is about the rise of dominionists in the U.S. federal government.
As we listen to the cadre of Republican candidates vying for their party’s nominations, be aware of their sermons and identify where they are as dominionists. Learn to recognize the signs that define and identify the dominionists. We have all heard statements coming from the mouths of these candidates as they speak to their Evangelical Religious Right base and supporters that identify them as Dominionists of one definition or another.
These Christian Reconstructionists: advocate theocracy and the restoration of Mosaic Law. Christian Reconstructionism advocates the restoration of Old Testament civil and moral laws in order to reconstruct present American society into an Old Testament type Mosaic form and that the three main areas of society – family, church, government – should all be biblically modeled, the Bible being the sole standard. This would include severe punishments for law breakers. Some Christian Reconstructionists advocate death for adulterers, abortionists, idolaters, murderers, homosexuals, rapists, etc.
Today’s hard right seeks total dominion. It’s packing the courts and rigging the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself.
Dominionists are very close to controlling all three branches of the federal government from which they could impose their narrow interpretation of scripture on the rest of society. People so close to full political power are not going to go away. The American people need to maintain vigilance and understand the history of how dominionists came to political power. And we need to embrace democracy with a passion — for it was voter apathy that allowed leaders like Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham and Jim Bakker, etc. to get so many dominionists elected to Congress in the first place.