Partially funded by conservative foundations, legal advocacy group fights
for re-segregation of America

By Bill Berkowitz
Created Jan 10 2007 - 8:30am

Pacific Legal Foundation on the wrong side of history

In early December several hundred pro-affirmative action demonstrators
carrying signs reading "Fight for Equality" gathered outside the U.S.
Supreme Court to witness to an historic occasion. For the first time since
the ground breaking 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, when the Supreme Court
ruled against separate but equal in America's public schools, the justices
were hearing a case that could test that landmark ruling.

According to the Associated Press, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two
cases testing when race may be used as a basis for assigning students to
public schools. "The school policies in contention...are designed to keep
schools from segregating along the same lines as neighborhoods," the AP
reported. In Seattle, Washington, "only high school students are affected,"
while the Louisville, Kentucky "plan applies system-wide."

The Seattle Times pointed out that in attendance at the proceedings were the
widow of Thurgood Marshall -- "the first African-American Supreme Court
justice who, as a young lawyer, argued and won the landmark
school-integration case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954," Sen. Edward
Kennedy, D-Mass., "who co-authored a brief supporting the Seattle and
Louisville, Ky., school districts' use of race in assigning students to
schools," and John Heyburn II, the U.S. district judge "who ruled in the
Louisville case, showed up to see what the court thought of his ruling."

In its brief to the court, the Seattle school district pointed out that "The
plan has prevented the re-segregation that inevitably would result from the
community's segregated housing patterns and that most likely would produce
many schools that might be perceived as 'failing."' (For more on the
arguments see ScotusBlog.)

The Bush administration is siding with "parents who are suing the school
districts, much as it intervened on behalf of college and graduate students
who challenged affirmative action policies before the Supreme Court in
2003," AP reported.

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a Sacramento, California-based
anti-affirmative action legal organization is aiding the Seattle parents
hoping to have that city's school integration plan scuttled, and is part of
the team fighting Louisville's school district. The foundation submitted
legal briefs to the Supreme Court supporting challenges to the integration
plans.

"The impact of the decisions in these two cases is going to transcend
Louisville and Seattle because there are many school districts around the
country, according to studies, that continue to use race in one degree or
another in the assigning of kids to schools," said Harold Johnson, a Pacific
Legal Foundation attorney. "There isn't the academic support for these
social engineering policies. They may make some people feel good, but we
don't see the evidence that they are raising achievement levels."

Founded in 1973, in recent years, the PLF has been at the hub of battles
against affirmative action. A PLF press release stated: "On March 5, 1973
government regulators found a foe; mainstream Americans found a friend;
freedom in America found new meaning. On that day, Pacific Legal Foundation
was established turning the voices that wouldn't be heard into the voices
that couldn't be silenced. Since then, PLF has filled the void and has
proven itself as a potent representative in the courts for Americans who
have grown weary of overregulation by big government, over-indulgence by the
courts, and excessive interference in the American way of life."

In October of last year, as a way of honoring the accomplishments of Ward
Connerly and marking the 10-year anniversary of Proposition 209 -- the
California initiative prohibiting racial preferences in public education --
the PLF sued the Berkeley school district, "alleging its school assignment
policy violates" the proposition. Paul Beard, the lead lawyer for the case,
called Connerly, a wealthy African American businessman who has spearheaded
anti-affirmative action initiatives around the country, "the spokesperson
for racial equality, in our viewpoint."

"In 2001, PLF represented Connerly's American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI)
and provided pro-bono counsel to then California Governor Pete Wilson in a
successful effort to expand the scope of Prop. 209," Diversity News'
Jennifer Millman recently reported.

According to ExxonSecrets.org, PLF received initial financial support from
initial financial support came from members of the California Chamber of
Commerce and J. Simon Fluor of the Fluor Corporation's oil, nuclear and
mineral dollars. Since 1998, PLF has received more than $100,000 from
ExxonMobil.

Between 1985 and 2005, the PLF received more than $5 million in grants from
right wing foundations. Unlike most mainstream press reports on the Supreme
Court hearing, which were satisfied to identify the Pacific Legal Foundation
as a conservative legal group and leave it at that, Jennifer Millman took a
closer look at the organization's funding stream.

She found that amongst the organizations consistent and largest benefactors
were five influential and aggressive right wing foundations: the Scaife
Family Foundations, the Castle Rock (Coors) Foundation, the now-defunct John
M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

The following are excerpts from Millman's report:

Scaife Family Foundations

The Scaife Family Foundations -- Sarah Scaife, Carthage and Allegheny --
are funded by industrial tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife, who inherited $200
million from his mother in the 1960s. He was a presidential appointment of
the U.S. Advisory Commission for Public Diplomacy during the Reagan and
first Bush administrations.

Scaife gave former U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese $1.9 million to start
PLF. Between 1985 and 2005, Scaife gave more than $4.5 million to PLF. He is
the primary supporter of the Heritage Foundation, of which he is a trustee
and Meese a former staff member.

Scaife funds Connerly's ACRI, [Linda] Chavez's CEO [Center for Economic
Opportunity - Equal Opportunity Foundation], and the Center for Individual
Rights, which together comprise the triumvirate leading the campaign to end
affirmative action. Other major grant recipients include the National
Association of Scholars, co-author of Prop. 209 -- which banned affirmative
action in California -- and the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy
Research. UCCR Vice Chair Abigail Thernstrom, a Manhattan Institute senior
fellow, is on the board of the Equal Opportunity Foundation, which directs
funding for CEO.

Castle Rock Foundation

Coors Brewing Company's support for anti-gay groups led to a 10-year
boycott led by AFL-CIO in 1977. Pressured to reform, Coors began funding
Black and Latino groups through the Adolph Coors Foundation and became one
of the first companies to offer domestic-partner benefits to employees in
1995. In 1993, the Coors family created the Castle Rock Foundation to
separate the Coors name from its conservative agenda. The Castle Rock and
Adolph Coors Foundations have the same board of directors, the same staff
and the same address.

Coors co-owner Joseph Coors founded and financed the conservative Heritage
Foundation, which later received most of its support from Richard Mellon
Scaife. Coors was a Heritage trustee until March 2003. Ambassador Holland
Coors, President Reagan's appointment to the National Year of the Americas,
has been on the board since 1998.

Major grant recipients include the Heritage Foundation, the National
Association of Scholars and the Institute for Justice, which was founded by
anti-affirmative-action leader Clint Bolick, a disciple of ultraconservative
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Castle Rock gave PLF $340,000
between 1985 and 2005.

John M. Olin Foundation

The New York-based John M. Olin Foundation grew out of a family-owned
chemical and munitions manufacturing business. The foundation, which
dissolved in 2005, was charged with spending all assets within a generation
of Olin's death, lest its mission be altered. Grant recipients included CEO,
the Heritage Foundation, the National Association of Scholars and the
Manhattan Institute. Specifically, Olin funded the research of CEO founder
Linda Chavez and former Secretary of Education William Bennett.

When former Olin Foundation President [the late] Michael Joyce left to run
the Bradley Foundation, William Simon, who was secretary of the treasury
[under] Nixon and Ford, took over. Joyce had worked under Simon at a
neoconservative think-tank prior to joining Olin, and it was Simon who asked
him to take the helm at Bradley. Olin gave PLF $669,000 between 1985 and
2005.

Bradley Foundation

The Allen-Bradley Company, a manufacturer of electronic and radio
equipment, was one of the last major Milwaukee-based companies to racially
integrate, which it did only under legal pressure. In 1968, the company had
7,000 employees, only 32 of whom were black and 14 Latino. When the
Allen-Bradley company was sold in 1985, the name of the foundation was
changed to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation to separate the company
name from its conservative cause.

Bradley is the principal supporter of [Ward] Connerly's ACRI [American
Civil Rights Institute]. ACRI co-chair Thomas Rhodes is on the Bradley board
of directors...

The foundation gives to the Institute for Justice, where founder Clint
Bolick drafted a federal bill to eliminate affirmative action. Other major
grant recipients include the Heritage Foundation, the National Association
of Scholars and the American Enterprise Institute...Bradley gave PLF
$327,000 between 1985 and 2005.

Recently, the PLF was asked by the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
Committee, the campaign organization that sponsored Proposal 2 -- the
Michigan anti-affirmative action initiative that was successful in
November's election -- to defend the measure against legal challenges.
Looking ahead to any potential legal battle over Proposal 2, Alan W. Foutz,
a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, said, "We think that most of the
arguments to be hurled at it already have been thoroughly vetted and
rejected by the courts."

Fighting to re-segregate America is not the only battlefront for the PLF,
Scott Silver, the executive director of Wild Wilderness, pointed out in an
email exchange. The organization "is the anchor of the wise-use property
rights movement. They are a well funded legal hit shop that routinely
litigates on a broad range of anti-social, anti-democratic and
anti-environmental issues.

"Unlike conservative think tanks supported by the usual suspects -- Scaife,
Coors, Bradley, ExxonMobil -- PLF delivers much more than merely
white-papers and op-eds written with the hope of slowing shifting public
opinion, perception and policy," Silver added. "PLF earns its retainer by
delivering law suits against such things as Equal Rights, Endangered Species
and Clean Air."

"Anti-environmental from the start," ExxonSecrets.org pointed out, "PLF's
early actions supported the use of DDT, the use of herbicides in national
forests, and the use of public range land without requiring an environmental
impact review." The organization "also supported at least six pro-nuclear
power cases before the early eighties while accepting funding from Pacific
General Electric (PGE), a utility which has gained a great deal through the
development of nuclear power in the Pacific Northwest.

"In the nineteen-eighties PLF won several cases that are considered
landmarks by those working on property rights issues today: Nollan v the
California Coastal Commission and First Church, both Supreme Court victories
which provide precedence for the takings litigation pursued today...In
October 2003, PLF Vice President M. David Stirling had an Op-Ed published in
which he defended President Bush's environmental record and condemned former
President Clinton for endorsing the Kyoto Protocol."

"When PLF wins a legal battle, the harm occurs almost immediately and may be
felt for decades," Scott Silver noted. "In the case of species extinction
and global warming, the harm may last forever."
_______

About author Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative
movement. His WorkingForChange column Conservative Watch documents the
strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American
Right.

--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson