Written by Don Byrd
Pittsylvania County, Virginia will be required to be nearly $60,000 in legal fees if a court approves the motion filed by the ACLU of Virginia. The dispute is over Christian prayers being used to open Board of Supervisor meetings. Courts (and particularly the 4th Circuit, which covers Virginia) have been clear that consistently opening government meetings with sectarian prayer violates the separation of church and state. Attorney’s fees are typically granted to plaintiffs who bring successful First Amendment lawsuits. Here, the ACLU argues that the approach of the county in defending the suit led to the hefty bill.
“Plaintiff’s attorneys had to spend considerable time responding to novel defenses raised by the defendants, such as the notion that plaintiff’s prior unfriendly history with the board deprived her of standing, as well as defendants’ extraordinary suggestions that judges are not competent to determine whether prayers are ‘sectarian,’ and that the court should simply ignore the case law on the issue,” the petition stated.
Also, the petition stated that the ACLU’s time spent on the case “came at the expense of working on or developing other cases.”
The petition also cited the undesirability of the case, including Hudson’s and the attorneys’ exposure to hostility as a result of the lawsuit.
Should the Supervisors decide to appeal the judge’s recent permanent injunction against the prayer policy, the bill will go higher.
