So sue me: The House of Representatives is set to vote today on a bill that is either ironically or sarcastically called the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005, or HR 2679 IH. Nice-sounding title, eh? You’d think it’s intended to protect your right to religious expression, but you’d be wrong.
It’s designed to protect official yahoos who blurt Bible babble or religious hate language or manage to trample someone’s civil rights through some obnoxious conflation of church and state. Let’s say you’re offended by a yahoo acting in his official capacity who spouts a bunch of religious garbage. You can sue sue the yahoo for violating your civil rights underthe Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights, Section 1979 of the Revised Statutes of the United States (42 U.S.C. 1983). But with this new amendment, you can’t make him pay your legal fees and court costs. Here’s the actual language from the bill:
A Bill: To amend the Revised Statutes of the United States to eliminate the chilling effect on the constitutionally protected expression of religion by State and local officials that results from the threat that potential litigants may seek damages and attorney’s fees.
The amendment, which already has passed the Senate, and only needs to be ratified by the House and signed by the Worst President Ever to become law. Talk about deprivation of rights ….
You have to love the language and how they twisted it to make it sound like the amendment is actually protecting officials from the “chilling effect” of the “threat of litigation.” Said another way, it protects the official’s right to spout religious hate language while protecting your right to pay your attorney for suing the bastard. Beauty!
Want to complain to your representative about it? You can do it here.
Thanks to AK for the tip.
