Education Law

The Price-Tag

These Court cases cost a lot of money, especially when you lose. You might remember that a few years ago some counties in Kentucky wanted to put the Ten Commandments in the courthouse. The case was calledMcCreary County v. ACLU, because the ACLU sued to have them removed. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and the counties lost. Well, not only did the counties have to pay their own lawyers (to lose the case), but they now have also been ordered to pay the ACLU of Kentucky more than $400,000 in attorney's fees.

There is a price-tag to these things and I am amazed how often people are willing to pay it for relatively silly cases. In this Kentucky case, the law was pretty clear that the Ten Commandments was not going to fly in a new display in a public courthouse, even before they ever posted them. They would have been wise to listen to their counsel and forget about it - instead, local taxpayers are going to have to foot the (sizeable) bill.

Full post as published by Edjurist on March 17, 2009 (boomark / email).